The politics of the original trilogy Star Wars was essentially “dictators and fascists with big armies are bad”. It was naïve and simplistic; a simple storytelling device, nothing more. There was no conscious choice behind it. If it had been made 40 years earlier, the enemies would have been savage indigenous people, as was the style at the time. The politics of modern Star Wars are… specific. Pointed. Winking at the camera. I suspect they may not age well.

▲

hobofan 6 hours ago | parent [-]

The Viet Cong parallels in the original Star Wars about as much "winking at the camera" as current Star Wars is to current politics.

▲

teddyh 5 hours ago | parent [-]

What Viet Cong parallels? Whatever you mean, it can’t have been very visible to the audience, since clear Viet Cong sympathies would not have gone over well (at least not universally) in 1977-1983.

▲

slg 4 hours ago | parent [-]

This 3 minute clip of a conversation between George Lucas and James Cameron might help.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=fv9Jq_mCJEo

▲

teddyh 3 hours ago | parent [-]

“Not available in your country.”

But what George Lucas claims to have thought (now many years later), is essentially irrelevant. What matters is how audiences interpret the movies when watching them, both at the time and now. If, as I strongly suspect, essentially nobody saw clear Viet Cong sympathies in the original trilogy, then the modern Star Wars differs significantly.

And this is my point. The politics of the original trilogy was cookie-cutter, incidental, and unimportant, whereas much of the modern Star Wars has political creeds, obvious symbolism and grandstanding all over the place, front and center. You may (or may not) agree with the politics of the new Star Wars, but you can’t deny that they are different.

	▲	slg 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You said “There was no conscious choice behind it” and here is the creator telling you the choice was intentional from the start. Some people simply can’t admit they are wrong.