Thought on Star Wars: the Force Awakens

[liliaeth]

One of the things I love so much about the new Star Wars movie, is that there are no assholes amongst the heroes.

I mean, Han is snarky, and defensive, but he’s never an asshole about it.

And all three of the new heroic characters are hopeful, kind and gentle at heart. None of them see the need to put others down to drag themselves up.

And that matters.

In fact the only assholes in the movie are the bad guys.

Kylo Ren, who’s self absorbed and thinks that he’s making himself stronger by embracing his inner assholeness. And all it does is make it so that even the evil people don’t really want to hang out with him, because well, why would you? It’s something that makes him a bit pathetic, rather than admirable.

Or that merchant guy who tries to steal BB8 from Rey and is an asshole about the parts he buys, because he knows he's the only one the scavengers can go to with what they manage to find.

Even Hux and Captain Phasma, who are evil, aren’t really assholes about it, just evil.

Hell, one of the reasons Finn is called a traitor, is because from their twisted perspective, he’s being an asshole by going against them. (he isn’t of course, because he just doesn’t want to be an asshole to innocent people, but it’s understandable that people conditioned from childhood to obey an ideology might be unable to overlook that)

If one thing gets pulled out of this movie, it should be that being an asshole isn’t cool, it isn’t funny and it

definitely doesn’t make characters more interesting.

And after years and years of the media telling us that assholes are somehow cool and to be admired, I really love how Star Wars: the Force Awakens, gives us, gives the children of this generation, the exact opposite message

Comments

[elisi]

Hear hear!

Well said.

[bogwitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Though I was disappointed that there was torture in it. Does every US production have to resort to torture?

At least in Star Wars, it's only the evil characters doing it.

[babettew54.livejournal.com]

Yass, I agree wholeheartedly! The heroes are just that heroes ! Whining and throwing tantrums does not make a villain with depth and they dropped the ball with Kylo.