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Why does the EU hate villains?

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Is it because Vader was somehow 'good' in the end that the EU seems obsessed with making sure the villains are actually pretty good? No one seems actually villainous in the EU.

THRAWN- Really only wanted order and stability. Was motivated to protect the galaxy from the Vong. A hell of a guy in all regards. Frankly, the "heroes" were stupid for fighting him

TALON CARDE- Not only a honest and good smuggler who's kind to his employees, eventually he's not even a smuggler, but an 'information broker' who no doubt only deals with good guys.

DAALA- Sure she's a lunatic who wants superweapons to oppress the galaxy, but eventually she's President of the Galaxy, where she's downright benign and forces women's equality on the Empire.

MARA JADE- Pretty much a straight ahead hero after a bad start when she's semi-controlled by the dead Emporer.

DARTH VECTIVUS- A really nice guy who, despite being a Sith lord, spent all of his time in the honest pursuit of business ventures and spending time with his family, no doubt barbequeing with his kids.

LOST TRIBE OF THE SITH- A colony of Sith whose philosophy is to harness the Dark Side to help eachother out.

THE EMPIRE- By "Fate of the Jedi" the Moffs are still mainyl bad (the male ones at least) but the Empire is good, even Luke thinking it's just a great option for people who want a little more 'order' in their lives.

DARTH CAEDUS- Seemed evil, but only became a Sith lord when it was clearly laid out to him and the reader that things would be much much worse if he DIDN'T become a Sith Lord.

How are we supposed to root for the 'good guys' with this kind of stuff?!

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TheBoost said:

How are we supposed to root for the 'good guys' with this kind of stuff?!

I  think the answer lies is rooting for the neutral guys.  Those who literally call it as they see it.

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Where does the bit about Thrawn and the Vong come in?

You know, it kind of reminds me of Optimus Prime.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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xhonzi said:

Where does the bit about Thrawn and the Vong come in?

You know, it kind of reminds me of Optimus Prime.

 I think it was in maybe Outbound Flight that Thrawn learned about the Vong while in the Outer Rim... or one of those. They all blur together.

Seriously, Thrawn is smarter, cooler, more far thinking and more morally centered than the heroes we bought the books to read about. As much as I hate the term, doesn't that kinda make him a Mary Sue?

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Thrawn is not a good guy.  He started out as one, but despite his principles he got caught up into believing in the overuse of military force and more and more became corrupted by it.  Whatever good intentions he may have, he has done some pretty horrible things, quite enough to make him a villain to me.

Also, Zahn revised his own view of Thrawn somewhat as he went along.  The new direction he chose to take him is fascinating, but it's not quite 100% consistent with how he's presented in his first trilogy.  There especially we see him for the villainous figure he is.

I do agree, though, that those other EU 'villains' you mention are presented in a ridiculous fashion.  The obsession some of these so-called 'authors' have with making the dark side be really not so bad is annoying as hell.

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I think it's a load of revisonist nonsense. In the OT, bad guys were bad guys and, yeah, Vader changed sides, but he was a special exception. There was none of this "the imperials have a valid point of view and they really just want order" and all that shit. All this Boba-Fett-is-a-great-guy-with-a-code-of-honor guff. The old EU (OOT era and the years following) had some bad guys who were a bit less bad, like an Alderaanian-born stormtrooper who helped Leia and a Nagai who befriends Leia and in the end the imperials and Nagai ally with the Alliance against the Toffs, but the empire isn't shown as this honorable bunch who just want to bring order to the galaxy while the rebels cause the deaths of civilians like you get in more recent EU. Boba Fett was bounty hunter scum, not the hero of his own stories. And they sure would never have put an imperial running the new Republic. Dark siders weren't ok people and when Luke got close with a dark side woman she was a double agent sent to get to him, not his future wife. Mara Jade was a good character, but I always did find it a bit odd how everybody was so fine and dandy about her having been the Emperor's agent. I think once Star Wars got into the 90s, the EU ran off a bit on its own way, and got more distant from the original spirit of Star Wars. I mean, when you have the rebels doing suicide attacks on civilians (actually happened in a Dark Horse comic) then you know something's wrong.

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That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.

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I think that is one of the reasons of the failure of the prequels is its modern sensibility about moral relativism which is completely out of step from the pretty cut and dry good guys, bad guys motif from the originals.  Nobody really to root for and no central hero only a whiny anti hero in Hayden you want somebody to give the smack down to.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Ahhh..... post-Modernism.

All your heroes suck.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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xhonzi said:

Ahhh..... post-Modernism.

All your heroes suck.

 I guess you're kind of right.

The New Jedi Order is extremely ambiguous, with mass genocider Kyp Durroon and former Imperial assassin Mara Jade both on the Council.

The Rebellion only succeeded in destabilizing the galaxy in time for it not to be able to marshall a defense against the Vong.

The heroes managed to stop Darth Caedus just as he successfully brought peace to the galaxy.

This thread could just as easily be "Why does the EU Hate Heroes?"

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The Yuuzhan Vong weren't ambigious. They weren't evil really they just had a completely different way of doing things, which by our definition were evil but I think you get what Im saying.

The Emperor continued in the EU and he certainly wasn't confused with a charity worker.

Senator Viqi Shesh was unrepentant up to the end.

and although she was quite insane Alema Rar was evil to the end.

and in my universe Darth Revan was evil to the core, enslaving the entire galaxy BWAHAHAHA. ah hem... sorry.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain.
"A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes"...James Feibleman (1904-1987)
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vote_for_palpatine said:

That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.

 

Because in the real world there are no heroes and villians. There is no black and white. Not to say that the psychology of the characters in the prequels was realistic or rational, it wasn't. But moral relativism is a fact. people's behavior is based on the their life experiences and circumstance, and the way you described moral relativism as "good guys = oppressors and bad guys=misunderstood" is a gross oversimplification and in itself black and white. No one is born into this world as "evil", we all have both good and evil in is, it's just that sometimes one side takes over. While the original "Star Wars" was pretty black and white, the OT as a whole was all about moral relativism. The old Jedi, caught up in their dogmatic way of seeing the world, were sure that Anakin was "evil" and thats that. Luke however, saw his whole person and knew that somewhere, the "good" in his father was there, buried deep down but there. When you reduce the human psyche to "good guys and bad guys", "us and them", you turn human beings into symbols, which is okay for pure popcorn entertainment and fictional characters but It's far removed from any remotely true representation of humanity or realism. You're dealing with archetypes or symbols then, not people. But I digress...this board is about Star Wars, not moral relativity...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p

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Octorox said:

...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p

You're welcome.

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Octo- I don't think that tact is far off subject:  Why does [modern literature] hate [good and evil]?

It reminds me of a great line in Zero Effect (one of my faves, by the by): Zero has more or less stated that does his job to protect innocent people from evil people.  You know, the bad guys.  His assistant, goes off on him, There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys!

I do agree that there is good and evil in all of us.  However, I do think there is actual good and evil.  I do think that there are people we can accurately call "Good" because they are overwhelmingly so.  And likewise I believe there are people we can call "Bad" or "Evil".  Or, rather, "Heroes" and "Villains."

Moral relativism says that "This is true/good for you, but it is false/bad for me."  That I don't agree with.  I think truth is truth, and good is good, and that there are people who wrongly disagree.  But that's me.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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Octorox said:

vote_for_palpatine said:

That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.

 

Because in the real world there are no heroes and villians. There is no black and white. Not to say that the psychology of the characters in the prequels was realistic or rational, it wasn't. But moral relativism is a fact. people's behavior is based on the their life experiences and circumstance, and the way you described moral relativism as "good guys = oppressors and bad guys=misunderstood" is a gross oversimplification and in itself black and white. No one is born into this world as "evil", we all have both good and evil in is, it's just that sometimes one side takes over. While the original "Star Wars" was pretty black and white, the OT as a whole was all about moral relativism. The old Jedi, caught up in their dogmatic way of seeing the world, were sure that Anakin was "evil" and thats that. Luke however, saw his whole person and knew that somewhere, the "good" in his father was there, buried deep down but there. When you reduce the human psyche to "good guys and bad guys", "us and them", you turn human beings into symbols, which is okay for pure popcorn entertainment and fictional characters but It's far removed from any remotely true representation of humanity or realism. You're dealing with archetypes or symbols then, not people. But I digress...this board is about Star Wars, not moral relativity...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p

 I had no idea.

So then it must follow that mass murderers such as Stalin were not truly committing acts of evil - our biased, Western perception of what is good and what is bad made Stalin appear to be evil. He was, in reality, no worse than Roosevelt or Truman. I think I've got it.

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vote_for_palpatine said:

Octorox said:

vote_for_palpatine said:

That's the way the world in general is going. No one's right, no one's wrong, good people are oppressors/exploiters, bad people are misunderstood victims of circumstance. Authentic hero/villain stories are rare, but they will sell (Dark Knight, for one) in large part because the fictionsphere is chock full of liquid morality. People don't inherently believe all of that relativist stuff, but that's more or less all that's out there right now.

 

Because in the real world there are no heroes and villians. There is no black and white. Not to say that the psychology of the characters in the prequels was realistic or rational, it wasn't. But moral relativism is a fact. people's behavior is based on the their life experiences and circumstance, and the way you described moral relativism as "good guys = oppressors and bad guys=misunderstood" is a gross oversimplification and in itself black and white. No one is born into this world as "evil", we all have both good and evil in is, it's just that sometimes one side takes over. While the original "Star Wars" was pretty black and white, the OT as a whole was all about moral relativism. The old Jedi, caught up in their dogmatic way of seeing the world, were sure that Anakin was "evil" and thats that. Luke however, saw his whole person and knew that somewhere, the "good" in his father was there, buried deep down but there. When you reduce the human psyche to "good guys and bad guys", "us and them", you turn human beings into symbols, which is okay for pure popcorn entertainment and fictional characters but It's far removed from any remotely true representation of humanity or realism. You're dealing with archetypes or symbols then, not people. But I digress...this board is about Star Wars, not moral relativity...although none of the threads in this board seem to be able to stay on topic :p

 I had no idea.

So then it must follow that mass murderers such as Stalin were not truly committing acts of evil - our biased, Western perception of what is good and what is bad made Stalin appear to be evil. He was, in reality, no worse than Roosevelt or Truman. I think I've got it.

There's no need to give me a sarcastic retort. I was just stating my philosophy. And yes, Stalin did a lot of terrible things. No one is saying Truman and Roosevelt were on the level of Stalin, they didn't assassinate mass numbers of people for not agreeing with them. I'm not sure I believe in complete moral relativism, there are certain values that all human beings share. But just because Stalin did awful things doesn't mean Russians = bad, Americans= good. It doesn't even mean that Communism = bad, Capitalism = good. Many brutal dictators have upheld regimes of neoliberalism and corporatism against the people's will and the CIA and American corporations have supported and equipped those dictators. Many brutal dictators have upheld regimes of communism and socialism against the people's will and the Soviets supported them. But I don't think we should just say "bad guy! lets blow em' up and be done with it!" I think we should take some time to look into the social conditions that allowed for that person's rise to power, allowed this terrible things to happen, and allowed for that person's psyche to be developed in that way. That doesn't mean that person shouldn't be stopped. They certainly should, of course.

 

Anyway, I don't really want to have a political debate. I'll admit that I'm not incredibly knowledgeable of such things, I'm only going on what I know. We are talking about fiction here, and you haven't addressed any parts of my answer that dealt with Star Wars, let's focus on that and how morality is presented in that piece of fiction.

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xhonzi said:

Octo- I don't think that tact is far off subject:  Why does [modern literature] hate [good and evil]?

It reminds me of a great line in Zero Effect (one of my faves, by the by): Zero has more or less stated that does his job to protect innocent people from evil people.  You know, the bad guys.  His assistant, goes off on him, There aren't evil guys and innocent guys. It's just... It's just... It's just a bunch of guys!

I do agree that there is good and evil in all of us.  However, I do think there is actual good and evil.  I do think that there are people we can accurately call "Good" because they are overwhelmingly so.  And likewise I believe there are people we can call "Bad" or "Evil".  Or, rather, "Heroes" and "Villains."

Moral relativism says that "This is true/good for you, but it is false/bad for me."  That I don't agree with.  I think truth is truth, and good is good, and that there are people who wrongly disagree.  But that's me.

Thanks for the reply. I agree. For a good example of a fictional character who sees the world in black and white in a world of gray I would look at Rorschach from Watchmen. It's easy to empathize with the character, he's seen so much evil in his life, and he is well intentioned but it also easy to look at the flaws in his philosophy and modus operandi. I don't think I believe in complete moral relativism either, but I believe in shades of gray, I believe people can change (although realistically some people are mentally beyond that point) and I believe in keeping and open mind and looking at an issue from all sides, "stepping in the other person's shoe" if you will. Although it seems vote-for-palpatine would believe I think mass murder is justified :(...although again that's a question Watchmen looks at, I'd definitely recommend it, film or novel.

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The OT followed the good vs evil non-moral-relativistic approach, so it's reasonable to expect spinoff material based on it to follow that. The PT tried to be greyer, but it was still a lot more good-and-evil than it wanted to pretend. The EU tries to be greyer than either trilogy and that's definitely a mistaken direction. In Star Wars, we shouldn't have the rebels suicide-attacking civilians while the imperials are this moral bunch. That's just total bullshit. As for the argument that the greyer stuff is realistic, that misses the point that star wars is not supposed to be realistic. Trying to make it realistic is a mistake. If you want realistic gray science fiction, go watch Battlestar Galactica. Star Wars is not supposed to be Battlestar Galactica.

 

 

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Actually it is a mistake in Battlestar Galactica as well at least the 78 version which was a star wars clone for tv.

Right down to Dirk Benedicts starbuck being a Han Solo type.

The realistic Galactica and politics nonsense was started by Ronald Moore who had already helped star trek jump the shark, maybe not as bad as Braga or Berman but pretty awful nontheless.

He did not create Galactica and while the remake stayed true to galactica's mythology in the beginning it completely jumped the shark with the cylon subplot and the end of the series was absolutely awful.  The guy should never be able to write television again so awful.

Maybe not as Awful as JJ's Abrams Star Trek but still a false Clone of the original series created by Glen Larson.

The one change i actually liked was Starbuck as a kickass female warrior and pilot, and a completely believable character created around that and a backstory.  I would venture to give credit to the other writers before ron moore though, he was kind of like the producer more than anything.

As for heroes being unrealistic that have morals and are good hearted people i find that bullshit there were plenty of such heroes who served in World War I and World War II.  The American Revolution and the Civil War as well. I would even say there are many young people who are shedding blood right now in the middle east and abroad so we have freedom to talk about silly things like star wars.

 

Star Wars itself references many Eastern tenets of religion or spirituality.  There must always be two opposing forces a yin and a yang, good and evil one cannot exist independently of the other and they have to neutralize each other out for their to be a balance.  Though this may be a western oversimplification, not sure but i think this is what i read in some book about star wars. 

 

The idea of absolute evil and absolute good is shown to be incompatible with human experience, people are more a product of their environment and the choices they make as far as phychology is concerned.  And Look at the Example given in Return of the Jedi luke makes the choice to throw his lighstaber away rather than become as evil as his father, he renounces the evil temptations of the emporer even if it costs him his life, because he believed in a spark of goodness in his father.  Star Wars kind of plays off on the whole idea of destiny vs free will, not sure if the two ideas and concepts always mesh together.

Moral Relativism always leads into discussion of Religion and politics and i would rather not go into that here so i removed any overt reference to such in my post other than the fact that lucas played with the concepts of the two in creating his universe.  The fact that their was no moral relativism in the original trilogy says that the prequels are like star wars turned on its head, so they are false and not in canon with the oot.

 

Lucas came back to star wars and decided to revisit it in the context of the 90's morally ambiguous heroes dark for darkness sake, and anti heroes.  Completely out of step with the sources he cribbed for star wars like John Carter of Mars and Flash Gordon, or even the westerns lucas looked to where you had good guys and bad guys, or the swashbuckling films and pirate films of yesteryear.

It seems to me Lucas wanted more to talk about stupid politics Bush and the Iraq war with episode II and III rather than give us a backstory to the trilogy that made any sort of sense.

I wanted a rollicking adventure story where at the end the hero loses everything and goes bad for good reasons a strong and powerful Epic that we were promised.  Instead we got Hayden wooden and whiny delivering Bushisms.

 

Anti heroes may work for the dark knight and watchman, or George RR Martin's fantasy series a song of ice and fire, but they have nothing to do with star wars except maybe in contrast to the hero motif used, as in han solo kind of being an antihero in star wars 77 but then we see he is actually a good dude.

Lucas played Hamill's heroic character of luke who is very straightforward and naive and pure hearted off of the star pirate han solo who is amoral a killer, and a mecernary kind of like the man with no name from sergio leone played by eastwood.

The original trilogy is Luke Centric it is Luke's journey and by co- incidence Hamill bacame a better actor and matured as the series continued in empire and jedi you actually get to see luke grow as a person.  These films are very powerful.  The prequels should have echoed that better than what we got.  Anakin's journey should have been the same prototypical heroes journey as lukes except he was seduced by the darkside and luke held his ground and was tempted but not entirely corrupted, somehow anakin is more weak morally than luke. 

Or are things that way just cause its in the script, Anakin had to go dark to get to  what is known now as episode IV, so Lucas shoehorned a lot of nonsense together slipshod and lazy like.

When the man has the talent or once did to make a strong moving piece of fiction with plenty of help from the right people of course,lol.

 

Now if the script sucks, the acting sucks or directing sucks Lucas can overcompensate with more cgi characters and creatures and environments as if those are more interesting to him than the characters and human relationships are.  I mean in the prequels and crystal skull there seemed to be a whole lot more going on in the background and the bad cgi than the actors as if the actors were a special effect!  The cgi was the main thing, the story and acting took a back seat.  Completely ridiculous it as if they put the carriage before the horse.  Now i Know Spielberg directed skull but Lucas had a very heavy influence on the final film that he may as well just have directed it.

Basically the star wars special editions and prequels made it very clear to me that Lucas does not understand the mentality of his own creation star wars the oot, or that maybe the originals were a happy accident and he did not know what he had on his hands was a veritable classic beloved of millions, or he knew and still decided to destroy it.

I know everyone is entitled to their own opinion but it is completely crazy that he thinks the special editions and prequels are better than the originals.  The very idea is so far off base it is laughable.  None of those films will ever be on the afi list either, too bad mr lucas hates his own creation, done with many many other hands to help him.  The collaboration of these other artists and minds makes it even more of a crime to art as far as i am concerned that the originals only exist in a non anamorphic dvd from a d1 laserdisc master.

“Always loved Vader’s wordless self sacrifice. Another shitty, clueless, revision like Greedo and young Anakin’s ghost. What a fucking shame.” -Simon Pegg.

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Moral relativism entered Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back, and it's been there ever since.  Yes, the original Star Wars was very black and white, but as soon as you reveal that the hero's father was a good Jedi who became evil, and that it's possible for him to be good again, you have moral relativism.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Gaffer Tape said:

Moral relativism entered Star Wars in The Empire Strikes Back, and it's been there ever since.  Yes, the original Star Wars was very black and white, but as soon as you reveal that the hero's father was a good Jedi who became evil, and that it's possible for him to be good again, you have moral relativism.

 I disagree sir.

Anakin had once been good, but as Vader he was pretty non-relativistically evil. There was never any exploration as to how Vader saw himself, justified his actions, nor redeeming qualities of Vader presented.

In ROTJ he chose to die doing a good deed, but his 'evilness' was never in question until that moment. That's a changing character, but the good/evil dichotomy is still fairly cut and dry.

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Well, yes, it's certainly not a character study, but if you establish the precedent that a character can make a choice between good and evil, and that they are not simply stuck on one side of the line or the other, it implies that the characters themselves are not inherently one or the other.  You say Vader is non-relativistically evil, but Luke constantly says, "There is good in him."  And it turns out he is right, which means that Vader has both good and evil traits.  True, there is not really any good example to show this.  We don't see any struggle until the very end, so I'm not arguing that it did a good or deep job from a relativist angle, but the concepts certainly existed.

There is no lingerie in space…

C3PX said: Gaffer is like that hot girl in high school that you think you have a chance with even though she is way out of your league because she is sweet and not a stuck up bitch who pretends you don’t exist… then one day you spot her making out with some skinny twerp, only on second glance you realize it is the goth girl who always sits in the back of class; at that moment it dawns on you why she is never seen hanging off the arm of any of the jocks… and you realize, damn, she really is unobtainable after all. Not that that is going to stop you from dreaming… Only in this case, Gaffer is actually a guy.

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Gaffer Tape said:

Well, yes, it's certainly not a character study, but if you establish the precedent that a character can make a choice between good and evil, and that they are not simply stuck on one side of the line or the other, it implies that the characters themselves are not inherently one or the other.  You say Vader is non-relativistically evil, but Luke constantly says, "There is good in him."  And it turns out he is right, which means that Vader has both good and evil traits.  True, there is not really any good example to show this.  We don't see any struggle until the very end, so I'm not arguing that it did a good or deep job from a relativist angle, but the concepts certainly existed.

 Perhaps we're not in sync as to the use of the term 'moral relativity.'

I'm referrinig to the philisophical conceit that good/evil are not universal truths, that situation, culture, and tradition are part of what is categorized as 'good' or 'bad'. I'm referring to the idea that morallity is subjective.

No matter Vader's personal journey from good to bad to good again, the lines of good and bad are still very sharply defined and objective. "Star Wars" never asks us to see the destruction of Alderaan as a 'good' thing from Vader's point of view, nor is torture and casual murder that Vader does somehow justified from his religious views ("The Sith Antidiscrimination League"). These are all universally seen as 'bad.' Vader himself would probably see them as 'bad' and just not care, given that he's down with the Dark Side.

The closest the OT comes to moral relativism is Obi's line about "from a certain point of view" and even that is (I think) just meant to be his justification for his own lying.  In the PT Palpy tosses out some vaguely moral-relativistic concepts, but again I think that's meant to be seen as just him lying to Anakin, as Palpy's ultimate goal is simply revenge and 'unlimited power.'

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Pooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwweeeeeeeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrrrrr!

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!

 

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I was thinking about this more on a 2 hour drive I had to make today.  Here are my thoughts:

As I said above, "I think truth is truth, and good is good, and that there are people who wrongly disagree."  I mean by this something similar to what an Atheist believes about believers in God.  The Atheist doesn't believe in God, but he readily admits that believers do.  I don't believe in Moral Relativism, but I readily admit that some people do.  And, more to the point, that a lot of bad people do.  In fact, I think that it is hard to be a truly bad person if you don't believe in Moral Relativism. 

When you watch the Godfather (or Watchmen, or countless others) you see people that are bad, but they don't believe that they are.  They don't sit around and think of themselves as the bad guys.  They think of themselves doing what needs to be done in their circumstances.  Sometimes the storyteller is also telling you that YOU would also do as they do if you were in their circumstances.  Sometimes the storyteller is simply telling you how the bad people rationalize what they are doing so that they can continue doing the things they want to do.

Would you really like to see villains who are simply bad for the sake of being bad?  How interesting is that?  How many people are really like that?  I think an honest non-Moral-Relativistic storyteller has to show the logic that villains use to do the bad things they do.  I think the storyteller can do this without showing Moral Relativity.  Unless the Storyteller begins to make the same case the villains do, and then you have something else on your hands.

IT'S MY TRILOGY, AND I WANT IT NOW!

"[George Lucas] rebooted the franchise in 1997 without telling anyone." -skyjedi2005

"Yeah, well, George says a lot of things..." a young 1997 xhonzi on RASSM

"They're my movies." -George Lucas. 19 people won oscars for their work on Star Wars (1977) and George Lucas wasn't one of them.

Rewrite the Prequels!