Joshua Tyler | Published
Star Wars is located in the tail spin and there is only one bright spot.
That bright spot is two seasons of the series Andorand that’s why the best Star Wars has been such a simple reason for a long time.
This is the first Star Wars product since George Lucas’ departure.
The true villain in Star Wars, a consistent face of evil across the franchise, is not and should not be the dark side of Palpatine or the Force. It’s definitely not Anakin or Snoke or Adam Driver in Vader Tribute Mask.
Probably not Luke Skywalker, but you never know if he drinks too much blue milk and gets mad enough.
The true villain in Star Wars has always been and will always be the government bureaucracy.
Death Star is a DMV
The Death Star in the first film was the ultimate expression of bureaucracy as a true evil.
Its super weapon is the final form that occurs when a huge number of psychophonic bureaucrats strip the wealth of those under their control and use it to build a massive, unrealistic, completely flawed war weapon.
And it is run by many intermediate managers who are attracting attention and making jokes around tables in the meeting room.
When Death Star didn’t work, the same inflexible, highly incompetent bureaucratic structures didn’t admit that they were wrong, turned around and made the same thing again.
The Death Star is a California highway rail that was supposed to go all the way to San Francisco, but now it costs ten times more than you would expect, and only goes to Bakersfield.
Luke Skywalker was not fighting the troops
That clear real-world similarity makes Luke Skywalker’s journey so thrilling and easy to identify.
He was not fighting people or mysterious and evil forces. He was fighting a corrupt system of bureaucratic oppression.
When we have to get a new license plate for our truck, we are all tortured in the exact same oppressive system.
It’s the same thing we suffer when filling out the IRS form.
Luke was fighting lazy public school teachers and code violation inspectors on behalf of all the ordinary people who wanted to leave hell alone.
That trend continued in the previous prequel, when Naboo’s unbureaucratic monarchy was attacked and held hostage by a group of middle managers in the Trade Federation.
As the prequel continued, it escalated when the massive, bloated bureaucracy of the Old Republic empowered and hidden Palpatine.
In a way, Palpatine was the finest product of his bureaucracy. He was its greatest creation, the natural result of years of bloating and red tape strangled people of good intentions until no one was left to oppose it.
Andru puts bureaucrats in crosshairs
It brings us Andor.
As I mentioned at the beginning, the best of the recent Star Wars series is Andorand Andor This is especially the best Star Wars series these days. Because it makes that bloated bureaucracy the only villain on the show.
Andor It’s about the cubicle men and the meeting that plans the destruction of innocent people.
Not because they love evil, but because that’s how they are paid.
Andor Season 1 continued on multiple aspects of bureaucracy crushing.
The Multi-Episode Arc explores the Imperial Judicial System. This is a system owned by deficits and bureaucratic indifference, as it focuses on profiting from middle managers who have become prison guards who carry it out rather than doing something like real justice.
If you’re used to the judicial system in the real world, you probably spent those episodes screaming Jesus and pointing to TV.
Sympathy for the devil
Even the bad guys from the show, trapped in the Imperial bureaucratic nightmare, felt sympathetic in the face of bureaucratic challenges.
They too were lost in a series of cubicles and endless meetings. It’s a place where everyone is looking for themselves and not interested in doing the actual government work.
If you’ve ever tried to get health insurance or have helped an elderly parent deal with social security, everything you saw on screen was an accurate sci-fi representation of your reality.
Andor Season 2 is picked up from where Season 1 was cancelled, and plans to wipe out the planets in a meeting room to complete multiple bloated public works projects.
It continues by immersing in the topic of controversial immigration, introducing corrupt Imperial bureaucrats who appear on the planet to increase their head count and take what they can do under the table.
And that’s why Andor It’s the only new Star Wars that works.
Why isn’t Disney Star Wars working even to Andru?
The JJ Abrams movie failed because he was obsessed with Palpatine and Skywalker.
Shows like Acolite Get lost in the Jedi Backstab religion.
The Mandalorian It fell apart as she became obsessed with the fate of Katie Sackhoff’s royal family and instead of fighting it, she supported the corrupt Bourocracy of the New Republic.
Ahsoka He tried to create the villain of Sloan, a deficit who was iron-filled destroyer.
Skeleton Crew I thought that by focusing on adventures, I could fix it all. However, Star Wars was by no means a shallow adventure.
Palpatine represents the true villain of Star Wars
Star Wars needs to have only one focus and one true villain.
It wasn’t Palpatine and was never the case. The true villain in Star Wars is the massive bureaucracy represented by Palpatine.
Every character in the Star Wars universe fights under its weight.
That’s why you love it because there’s a lot of galaxies and smugglers.
Star Wars heroes don’t just take on the empire, so they take on the IRS, lawyers, metermaids, the health system, and all the annoying stuff that’s smoking your life moments.
Star Wars is in top condition with 1990s Dilbert along with the lightsaber.
When Star Wars deviates from this formula, it feels like Star Wars and starts to feel like something else.
And we already have a lot of something else.
