Star Wars has been a favorite story of mine since I was a kid. Throughout elementary school, I was engulfed by its merchandise. My bedsheets to my lunch box were all Star Wars. I even had their action figures. I was in it, knee-deep. My mom bought me storybooks with records in it too! I loved it!
The storyline, even as we knew it as kids, was a tragedy. Boy grows up to fight evil, that evil turns out to be his father, then the boy turns his father to the light, just to lose his father in the end. And the,n there’s that really strange part where boy kisses his sister intimately – that just is gross, haha.
But the true tragedy of Star Wars would unfold decades after it was sold to Disney. The legendary franchise that created twenty years of canon folklore was SUDDENLY tossed aside, overnight. Then the real Sith Lord, Kathleen Kennedy, used Star Wars as her own personal soapbox.
Fans revolted, but it didn’t matter. The dark side was too powerful and ruthless.
It didn’t matter to Kennedy that she was creating movies that didn’t make any sense in the world of Star Wars, or to the fans that had amassed over the past 20 years. And it didn’t matter that George Lucas had outlined for Disney the next three episodes. Kennedy had an agenda and no story to tell.
THE FORCE IS FEMALE
Rey would be an omnipotent woman, require no real training to be a Jedi, and just kick ass from day one. There was no leveling up needed. From her first appearance in The Force Awakens, she almost defeated Kylo Ren with no training. She defeated Luke Skywalker in a pseudo swordfight in The Last Jedi, again with no sword fight training. She practiced hitting a rock – and that’s about it. Then in the Rise of Skywalker, spoiler alert, she killed Palpatine by taking two lightsabers, crossing their streams like in Ghostbusters – really? And she did this quite easily. She even showed up in Episode 9 with a plethora of new force powers even Yoda didn’t have – all without training.
So, Rey killed Palpatine, and in doing so, wiped out 20 plus years of folklore that said Anakan Skywalker would bring balance to the force. You would think Kathleen Kennedy would at least respect that lore, but nope. Then to add insult to injury, Rey identified as a Skywalker, even though she wasn’t related to that bloodline, because that’s the new trend right now. You can be anything you want, even trans-Jedi.
How did the new version of Star Wars explain Rey’s omnipotence? How could she fly better than Poe and fight better than Luke, without any instruction?
They didn’t.
She just was powerful because that’s who she was – dare I say – a female? It’s pretty much the same narrative of Captain Marvel. In that movie, all Captain Marvel had to do was close her eyes, block out all the male negativity, and she could be all she could imagine – no training needed.
And therein lies the real-life tragedy of Star Wars.
Intentional bad writing, forced onto the silver screen, because loyalties to SJW narratives prevented screenwriters from producing real characters that we could relate to.
Wouldn’t it have been better to have a Rey who had obvious faults? Maybe she had abandonment, anger, and trust issues, that she had to overcome? Maybe she had a telegraphing fighting style that Luke had to drill out of her?
Nope.
She was perfect.
And you can’t have a male training a woman. Not in this new woman power #metoo world.
In The Last Jedi, Luke Skywalker was the problem. He didn’t want to play the hero, he wanted to cower, that’s a 180 of the Luke we’ve come to know. Rey’s only issue was herself – and her need to “find her identity.”
Sigh.
If there is one thing that we can learn as storytellers from Kathleen Kennedy, is to toss our agendas aside when we write. And more importantly, if you are hired to write or produce for a franchise, respect the fictional world that was created for these characters to roam in. If there’s one thing that is awesome about Star Wars is that its world is so deep and detailed, it has its own Wikipedia It’s so deep, you can find model numbers of X-Wing fighters, the type of engines they have, and who manufactured them.
And I’ll be very blunt here. Kathleen Kennedy did not have to reinvent the wheel as she claimed. There were books that she could literally have adapted and everyone would have been happy.
The question is, where do we go from here?
Hopefully – up? Disney Plus looks promising…..
Steve Young
