I wonder if some were in this very thread that seemed to come out of the woodwork , think I may have come across a few on Facebook as well …https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/star-wars-last-jedi-was-targeted-by-russian-trolls-study-says-1148475
“Star Wars has always been politically left-leaning.”
If you consider anything to the left of Nazism as “politically left-leaning” then I guess this statement is true.
Well Lucas is openly left leaning, so if his biases slipped in that’s the way it’s go. And he’s on record as saying the original films were a comment on Nixon and Vietnam, amongst other things. Whether the politics actually make it through in the film is up for debate, but I think the argument that the ST is significantly more politically biased than the OT is not accurate, mostly because I don’t actually think the ST is all that political (the most commonly cited factor, a diverse cast, should not be considered a political statement in my mind).
+10000
That’s a bit excessive, don’t you think 😉
Yes, of course George Lucas is openly left-leaning, but to state so matter-of-factly that Star Wars has obviously always been that way I think is a reach. You have to look really hard to find political commentary or real-world parallels in the OT. Of course there are little things here and there in the prequels. And while I agree that casting a female lead and ethnic minorities does not really make the TFA politically progressive (which the study in question suggests), TLJ does make some very obvious (painfully so at times) social and political commentary.
All this to say that sometimes Star Wars gets political, but to say it has been from the start seems like a bit of a retcon.