Fascination With The Sith Isn't Healthy.

[DrNewGod]

Said it better than I could.

FB_IMG_1659396390484.jpg

[godisawesome]

Said it better than I could.

FB_IMG_1659396390484.jpg

I don’t think he’s saying that being “fascinated” with the Sith (and other bad guys) is unhealthy - merely that projecting righteousness or self-fulfilling escapism onto them is. They’re still escapist villains and fun antagonists with cool costumes and weapons, who can be dramatically fulfilling antagonists and opponents, or even (in the case of Darth Vader), tragically doomed and depressing fallen protagonists. They’re just not anti-heroes, and they’re more pitiable than sympathetic. Anti-heroes in Star Wars actually align with the “good guy” side, even the most angsty and sympathetically dark anti-heroes in SW are ultimately forced to choose to be anti-heroes or straight up villains.

Now, I do think that Star Wars’s tendency to give them cool iconography and costume designs is a key part of the successful formula for Star Wars… but it should continue to end up being applied to the heroes as well (thus part of the reason for The Mandalorian’s success as a concept, as with the Jedi in general.)

Still…in application, I think this is born out when one views Star Wars - more successful projects and stories embrace the “Being Evil Sucks One Way Or Another” motif, and makes sure to put the audience against the villain, where pity is the softest response and not actual sympathy. Vader, Maul, and Kylo in TFA are great examples of pitiable but still morally repugnant villains suffering even when they succeed. Kylo in TLJ is a horrible misfire because the audience is expected to sympathize and relate to him, which screws up the whole formula for the story, even in terms of basic function; you other learn to be prejudiced and favor Kylo at the expense of the rest of the story, or the story (rightly) falls apart.

It’s also why Thrawn, even though he’s not a Force user, is most likely going to be a Big Bad in Ahsoka and elsewhere, and not the anti-hero some novel readers expect; he’s aligned with, tolerates, and facilitates the dark side… so he’s not supposed to be adored, and it’s likely he’s going suffer for it.

[Frontier]

It’s also why Thrawn, even though he’s not a Force user, is most likely going to be a Big Bad in Ahsoka and elsewhere, and not the anti-hero some novel readers expect; he’s aligned with, tolerates, and facilitates the dark side… so he’s not supposed to be adored, and it’s likely he’s going suffer for it.

More like he's a neutral who uses the tools at his disposal and just happened to know how to work around the Sith who employed him!

[Starter Set]

Sith are so laughably over the top, it boggles my mind that anyone can take them seriously for being honest.

[godisawesome]

More like he's a neutral who uses the tools at his disposal and just happened to know how to work around the Sith who employed him!

I really hope not; I get the appeal of some of his archetype being applied to a morally ambiguous character, but I don’t think Star Wars works with “sometimes good people must collaborate with Nazis and it *won’t* either blow up in their faces RO damn them as villains.”

Plus… he’s a villain who just happens to have a book series where his author gets to remove him from his usual context and strain the premise a bit to try and avoid having him be a villainous protagonist … a book series that is comparatively obscure compared to what pop culture identifies the character as and wants him to be in the TV show.

And I still think the most poetic thing for his character would be for it turn out his fears of the Grysk are overblown, and he’s accidentally fed his entire species to the First Order in the Unknown Regions, so he can die knowing he really should have backed the Rebellion/Republic, and his tolerance for fascism/preference for authoritarianism was as impractical as it was immoral.

Sith are so laughably over the top, it boggles my mind that anyone can take them seriously for being honest.

They’re definitely escapist villains who don't do true moral ambiguity, and that’s part of the fun - Maul teaming up with then overthrowing Pre Viszla before fighting Palpatine may have him positioned as a protagonist who becomes an underdog, but there’s never any bones about him being *a monster*… simply one who can do the kind of exaggerated tragic monster story that escapism can do.

And I still say that the inherently obviously evil nature of dark siders is why TLJ’s treatment of him screwed up the rest of the story - he was still an over the top sociopath, and Dirver played him as such, so insisting the audience and Rey sympathize with him and treat him as an anti-hero just meant the film was wildly prejudiced and inconsistent, and therefore shallow and lame.

[Frontier]

I really hope not; I get the appeal of some of his archetype being applied to a morally ambiguous character, but I don’t think Star Wars works with “sometimes good people must collaborate with Nazis and it *won’t* either blow up in their faces RO damn them as villains.”

Plus… he’s a villain who just happens to have a book series where his author gets to remove him from his usual context and strain the premise a bit to try and avoid having him be a villainous protagonist … a book series that is comparatively obscure compared to what pop culture identifies the character as and wants him to be in the TV show.

And I still think the most poetic thing for his character would be for it turn out his fears of the Grysk are overblown, and he’s accidentally fed his entire species to the First Order in the Unknown Regions, so he can die knowing he really should have backed the Rebellion/Republic, and his tolerance for fascism/preference for authoritarianism was as impractical as it was immoral.

I think people just enjoy Thrawn as a character and that he's not necesarilly a binary good/evil guy in a franchise where that can be particularly clear cut (or not).

And a lot of people are a fan of the Thrawn novels particularly for how they've dived deeper into his character and his background, particularly the Ascendancy.

[Handsome men don't lose fights]

Said it better than I could.

FB_IMG_1659396390484.jpg

Ostensibly speaking, Vader isn't miserable because he chose the Dark Side. He's miserable because he failed to preserve the relationships he valued during the rise of the Empire. If Padme were alive and his children hadn't been kidnapped and conditioned to hate him, he could have had a very happy life as a Dark Sider.

It's just a general fact of life that genuinely evil people are happier than genuinely good ones. Being and doing good is a burdensome act that demands reflection and self-sacrifice. The evil don't care about any of that crap and just do whatsoever they please.

[Enterprise E]

Ostensibly speaking, Vader isn't miserable because he chose the Dark Side. He's miserable because he failed to preserve the relationships he valued during the rise of the Empire. If Padme were alive and his children hadn't been kidnapped and conditioned to hate him, he could have had a very happy life as a Dark Sider.

It's just a general fact of life that genuinely evil people are happier than genuinely good ones. Being and doing good is a burdensome act that demands reflection and self-sacrifice. The evil don't care about any of that crap and just do whatsoever they please.

But choosing the Dark Side is why he lost his wife and children and, thus, why he is so miserable. Even if he had beaten Obi Wan and had not lost his limbs and been reduced to a life support suit that kept him in constant pain, he would not have been happy, or even semi-conent. He could never be happy while in the Dark Side because his wife and children would reject him because they were good and he had chosen evil. Had he stayed good, Padme would still be alive. Luke and Leia would not have hated him for even a moment. They would have had no reason to. And that was the real thing. Luke and Leia had every reason to hate him, which is why it was so important that when Luke found out Vader was his father, he tried to save him and showed him that he still loved him, that there was still hope. And no, evil people are not happier than good people; not in Star Wars, and not in real life. Even the Emperor was not really happy. He may have disguised it well, but he was by no means happy at all, even in his darkest triumphs. To say nothing about real life evildoers, especially the more famous ones.

[chamber-music]

Sith are so laughably over the top, it boggles my mind that anyone can take them seriously for being honest.

Aren't the Sith constantly murdering each other in the Star Wars universe? Not sure what is cool about joining a group in which your likely to get murdered by your allies.

[David Walton]

It seems like JJ Abrams literalized the concept of a fan not realizing Darth Vader was the bad guy with Kylo Ren, though Rian Johnson pretty much tanked that direction by romanticizing the boy who wanted to be a space nazi.

[godisawesome]

It seems like JJ Abrams literalized the concept of a fan not realizing Darth Vader was the bad guy with Kylo Ren, though Rian Johnson pretty much tanked that direction by romanticizing the boy who wanted to be a space nazi.

Yeah, Kylo in TFA comes off as a Vader fanboy who doesn’t realize he shouldn’t emulate Vader and it drives him into self-harming insanity - and Abrams, even directed Driver to play his maskless persona as a more fragile, and grotesquely loathsome persona (and Driver did it well there.)

But in TLJ… you can tell that Johnson is at least treating Kylo like a “social” power fantasy - a sort of lonely introvert’s wish fulfillment story, where the hot chick is automatically attracted to someone who show’s no attractive personality traits and never actually invested time trying to befriend pr flirt with her, and where the cool teacher was the one who screwed up in teaching the introvert and now feels sorry about it.

It’s part of the reason why some of TLJ’s narrative, themes and messages are so unclear - it’s hard to see earth where Johnson may have consciously chosen to make a point, and where he subconsciously wanted to give lonely, nerdy but still privileged white kids a character they could empathize with.

On a better note, that Lost Stars book actually does a great job making the anti-villainous protagonist’s life suck as a consequence of her loyalty to the Empire, and it works great to flesh out both her flaws and virtues -arguably to the extent it shows how her “loyalty above all else” virtue could become a vice if not paired with critical wisdom and curiosity. She’s a faithful, obedient soldier to the Empire, as is her family - and in return, she loses most of her friends, witnesses her mother’s humiliation and imprisonment under false pretenses, and gets locked into a waking nightmare of being a cog of a monstrous machine….

…As does her Alderaanian friend, who instead embraces denial so hard he becomes one of the most disturbing Imperials in the franchise.

[Celgress]

Aren't the Sith constantly murdering each other in the Star Wars universe? Not sure what is cool about joining a group in which your likely to get murdered by your allies.

pretty much

Even pre-Rule of Two you advanced up the ranks by killing your superiors. If you're a Sith Master you best sleep with one eye open.