The Empire’s Shadow

Star Wars made it too easy to be anti-fascist. In 1977, the film’s iconic opening crawl situated its viewers in a galaxy “far, far away,” one defined by the battle between a rebel alliance and an evil empire. Despite this backdrop for Luke Skywalker’s heroics, the original Star Wars boiled political ideology down to a battle of good versus evil. The bad guys were dressed in easy-to-spot uniforms, and the good guys just needed to search within themselves and trust their seemingly magical powers. And thanks to the original film’s many sequels, prequels, spin-offs, and expansions, galactic rebellion has now been subsumed into a personal hero’s journey that is practically synonymous with the franchise itself.