'Star Wars' from the perspective of the Empire???

Each of the four (decent) films and the cartoons that comprise the 'Star Wars' story tell that story entirely from the perspective of the unified political/religious forces that is the Jedi/Rebel Alliance.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...iance_logo.svg


This is the effective equivalent of studying the 'War on Terror' by ONLY examining source material from Islam and Al Qaeda. In short, we have not received a balanced assessment of this (fictional) conflict.


However, now that movies like 'Rogue 1' are examining individual events outside the Anakin/Luke storyline, perhaps they could produce a movie showing what motivates non-clones to support and join the Empire.


One obvious motivation could stem from the heavy-handed tyrannical actions of the Jedi-Council during the 'Clone Wars' which could/would make them the enemy of any group that valued their individual freedom and autonomy.


As a matter of fact, there is already an animated movie named 'Tie Fighter' that shows a battle from the perspective of the Empire and introduces characters from the Empire whose stories would be worth exploring on the big screen;





For example;


What motivated the three central pilots to join the Empire?


How did the female pilot receive that scare (was it at the hand of a Jedi/Republic Soldier occupying her homeworld)?


Did the Empire provide opportunities for female pilots that the Rebel Alliance did not? (remember; So far we've only seen one female pilot in a Rebel action, namely Rey, and she pilots the Millennium Falcon, which is not a Rebel ship, but belongs to a smuggler).


What values does the Empire hold that made it appealing to these non-clone pilots?


etc.

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Sic semper evello mortem tyrannis!!! Si vis pacem, para bellum!!!

You seem to have this the wrong way round. The Empire is evil.
Making movies and stuff from the Empire's point of view, would be like following Al-Qackpants and the muppets who call themselves Muslims.


The reason the stories follow the Rebels and the Jedi, is because they're the good guys... and having the stories this way round is nothing like following an evil cult at all.




Also, did you just bring ISIS into a thread about Star Wars?



Anyway, having something based from the Empire's side of things is touched on with Finn in Episode VII.
He was taken as a baby from his family, and raised to be a soldier, and he still saw that the Empire was wrong and evil.
That's the beginning, middle and end of that story, so there's no need to make a whole movie about it.

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Rodent,


The Empire only appears to be 'evil' because, thus far, we have only been able to view the conflict from the perspective of their opponents.


Were someone to study WWII by solely reading/viewing information released by Joseph Goebbels, they would likely come away with the impression that;


1.) Sudeten Germans were horribly oppressed by the Czechs and required assistance from German 'peace keepers',


2.) Poland invaded Germany (Gleiwitz incident),


3.) The Jews were a violent/conniving '5th Column' inside Germany,


4.) The 'Allied Forces' were evil/greedy individuals motivated by their desire to extort money from Germany via the grossly unjust 'Treaty of Versailles (which the 'Allies' themselves weren't obeying),


5.) etc., etc., etc.


Were someone to study the American War for Independence/The War of 1812 by solely studying the writing of (Mad) Kind George III, they would likely come away with the impression that;


1.) King George III was a benevolent ruler who respected the rights of the English colonists living in the New World,


2.) All the taxes levied on England's New World Colonists were used to fund their defense and/or support and were therefore fully justified,


3.) The rebelling English Colonists are ungrateful, motivated by greed, and if not evil, severely misguided


4.) etc., etc., etc.


(In case any of you missed this, I am not asserting any of the 'alternative perspectives' I've stated above, but am merely using them to demonstrate that, from the other perspective, the "good guys" and "bad guys" can easily appear to occupy the opposite positions even in real-world conflicts, let alone fictional conflicts)


As I (hope) I've demonstrated above, 'good' and 'evil' are mostly a matter of perspective. As such, I would be interested to see the (fictional) war of 'Star Wars' from the opposing perspective since, unlike real wars, there are no victims to be offended/angered by presenting the opposing perspective and no final "truth" since it is, after all, fiction...

Once one side in a conflict gains complete control over the information being released about that conflict, in other words, when one side gains control of the 'media'/'propaganda', it is very easy to make themselves appear "good" and their opponents "evil".


Who is to say this is not what happened in the 'Star Wars' conflict???

That's exactly my point. Sure, I agree that evil is dependent on perspective, but in Star Wars, the Empire is evil.


The work of fiction here, states directly in the opening crawl of the original movie that the Empire is "the evil Galactic Empire".
Arguing that evil is a point of view, and using real world incidents and occurrences as examples when the Empire is written as being evil, then saying yourself that Star Wars is "after all, fiction..." you've defeated your own argument of the perspective of whether or not the Empire is evil or not.


Star Wars is written as a simple Good Vs Evil conflict.


Good being the Rebel Alliance, so called as they rebel against the Empire's dictatorship and was built from the remnants of the Galactic Senate. Backed up by the Jedi.


Bad being the Empire, who exist only to rule everything that they come across, and destroy all who stand in their way, and were built by dissolving the original Galactic Senate. Backed up by the Sith.

But who wrote the opening crawl????


Were we provided with an "opening crawl" of WWII, written by Joseph Goebbels, it would likely speak of the horrible oppression suffered by the Sudeten Germans at the hands of the Czechs, the need for German 'Peace Keepers' to intervene on the behalf of the Sudeten Germans, the invasion of Germany by the Poles, etc. and refer to the Poles, British, Russians, and the 'Allies' in general as "evil".


Of course, Goebbels "opening crawl" would be nothing more then (false) propaganda. Yet, how do we know that 'Star Wars' opening-crawl was not written by the Jedi/Rebel Alliance's 'Minister of Propaganda'/Goebbels-stand-in and is equally false????

Erm, it was written by Lucas.

What could be more evil than destroying a planet or in the case of TFA, multiple planets. It's pretty black and white who's evil. Literally black and white with Vader being dressed in black. As for the storm troopers this doesn't apply...but I see them more as pawns and I think there's some ww2 symbolism. There's an argument for everything but creating a movie sympathetic to the empire would be a hard task to fit in the universe.

WW 2 symbolism? Vader wears a helmet that is reminiscent of both a Japanese Samurai helmet and a German Stahlhelm (steel helmet) from WW 2 era. Combine his all black (SS?) uniform and he's pretty much the major Axis powers in one being.

Well there you go.

Das ist richig! Unsere Vaderland will never forgetten dich!

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Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

Yeah, I think when one side blows up an inhabited planet for no reason other than to punish a political prisoner who they had already tortured for information (which turned out to be wrong anyway, speaking to the inefficiency of their tactics), then it's hard to make a case for moral or political nuance on their behalf. At the start of Episode IV Moff Tarkin even says that they've dissolved the senate and plan to use fear to keep the local systems in line even without the threat of a Death Star, so I'm not sure what case you can really make for the Empire being a secretly benevolent form of government. The boss is a manipulative and power-hungry sorcerer, after all.

Besides, why are you trying to cite a fan-made piece of work in support of your pro-Empire rhetoric? The Rebels may not have any explicitly female pilots (in the OT, at least) but neither do the Empire, and if we're going to talk about gender representation then the fact that the Rebels have Leia and Mon Dodonna in high-ranking positions while the Empire has a veritable sausage-fest on their hands doesn't help your point either.

In other words...

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Thank you for reminding me to bring this up...

If 'Star Wars' is an allusion to WWII, the very fact that The Empire destroys an enemy planet from orbit suggests that The Empire may represent the Allied, rather then the Axis powers.


Evidence for this stems from the fact that, in Star Wars, the 'Death Star' destroys Alderaan from orbit. While none of the combatants in WWII employed 'orbital' weaponry, or possessed weapons with the power to destroy planets, the closest equivalent were the high altitude atomic bombings of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and to lesser degrees the fire-bombing of Dresden and Tokyo, all of which were carried out by the Allies using high altitude bombers. Of course, Axis forces also destroyed several cities and urban areas, with the Japanese destroying Nanking, the Germans "liquefying" several ghettos, and destroying Oradour-sur-Glane, but these atrocities were carried out by ground-forces with limited air support. Only the Allies destroyed urban population centers entirely from the air/from above, just as the Empire destroyed Alderaan from above/from orbit.


Of course, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki were all cities aiding the war effort of enemy nations, making them valid targets, but, for all we know, Alderaan could have been overtly or covertly aiding the Rebel Alliance, making it an equally valid target...

Touche'!

...how does that make it okay, though?

For the moment, let's leave aside how nobody else aside from you is trying to make Star Wars into an allegory for WWII (the most anyone has done is note a couple of superficial visual influences), which may just suggest that, you know, it's not supposed to be such an allegory (if anything, it might be more comparable to the Vietnam War). The United States was an Allied power put citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps in response to Pearl Harbour, but is that really much more justifiable than the Nazis carrying out the actual Holocaust because the U.S. wasn't exterminating people en masse? Trying to draw parallels between the Empire and the Allies doesn't make the Empire look better, it makes the Allies look worse.

In any case, it's a stretch to compare an actual world war between major nations with relatively equal capabilities to the much more uneven conflict between a large empire and a small rebellion in Star Wars. Planets wouldn't publicly ally themselves with the Rebels for fear of incurring the Empire's wrath, which is understandable if the Empire was putting together a planet-destroying weapon. The 'for all we know" is irrelevant because Moff Tarkin only has two established reasons for destroying Alderaan - to intimidate Leia into giving information about the Rebels (what with it being her home planet) and also to test out the Death Star's power. Destroying an entire planet simply because one of its highest-ranked diplomats has secret ties to the rebel alliance is a truly villainous level of overkill - the whole point is that Tarkin is grossly unjustified in doing so, especially when Leia gives up the information and even if Alderaan was secretly aiding the Rebels (which, let's be clear, is never actually established and does not play into Tarkin's decision).

They destroyed inhabited planets. They destroyed p-l-a-n-e-t-s. You dont need Judge Judy to figure that one out.

You want to watch Stormtroopers use blasters on helpless civilians?! (Ewoks dont count, Id like to see that actually, or the Jar Jar race.....actually yeah I would like to see an Empire movie where theyre killing Jar Jar & Ewoks, but other than that, youre completely wrong. )

Youd like Dune, they really get into the motivations of the bad guys.

But TONGO, Alderaan may have been helping out the Rebels so it was totally okay for the Empire to blow it all up.

Feel free not to disclose it Danconia, but from which country are you from?

In my opinion those meddling Alderaanians needed to be taught a lesson.

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