On December 22, as Israel flattened Gaza with powerful bombs, Netflix released the space opera Rebel Moon – Part One: A Child of Fire. Zack Snyder (300, Man of Steel, Justice League, and so on) directed this mostly entertaining studio movie, which cost $166 million to make and features Anthony Hopkins as the voice of a pacified robot, Jimmy the Robot, a 21st century C-3PO. (The golden Star Wars droid was voiced by another British actor, Anthony Daniels.) The connection between Jimmy the Robot and C-3PO is not singular. Rebel Moon has, structurally and thematically, a lot in common with the original Star Wars trilogy.
Both have an empire at war with rebels. In both, the empire’s army (Stormtroopers in the former; Imperium, in the latter) oppress powerless farmers and other ordinary space people. And, most telling of all, we find the racial composition of the empire to be homogenous (very white); and that of the rebels to be heterogeneous. Indeed, the leaders of the rebellion in Snyder’s epic are Black: Darrian Bloodaxe (Ray Fisher) and Devra (Cleopatra Coleman). Furthermore, the star of the film, and future leader of the rebellion, Kora is Algerian (Sofia Boutella).
True, Kora was once an Imperium soldier, but Snyder made the main villain and Imperium admiral, Atticus Noble (Ed Skrein), look like the pale commander of the Galactic Empire’s planet-destroying Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing). Skrein and Tarkin are, like Jimmy the Robot and C-3PO, played by Brits. But those who watched Star Wars in the 1970s found it hard to miss the connection between the Galactic Empire and American Empire, and particularly its failed war with the poor people of Vietnam. The latter clearly resembled the Rebel Alliance in that far, far away galaxy. But what to make of Rebel Moon? And, in general, Hollywood films that identify evil power with empire and good power with insurgents?
James Cameron: If you think about it. The good guys [in Star Wars] are the rebels. They’re using asymmetric warfare against a highly organized empire. I think we call those guys “terrorists” today. We call them “Mujahideen.” We call them “Al-Qaeda.”
George Lucas: “When I did it, they were ‘Viet Cong.'”
George Lucas was supposed to direct Apocalypse Now, which is based on Joseph Conrad’s novella Heart of Darkness. In the latter, empire is Belgium; in the former, it is the United States. And this connection between European imperialism and American Empire, as Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch called it in their masterful The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, is explicit in one of the most famous deleted scenes in the history of cinema, the French Plantation scene.
After World War II, America assumed the global-scale operations of empire. This fact is also explicit in a scene that was never shot but is in the screenplay for Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker. What we see in the film are a bunch of buffoons, led by Ralph Fiennes (the head of a private army), as what remains of Britain’s control of Iraq and its oil. But in the script, by Mark Boal, we see British imperialism as very much central to and continued by American militarism. There’s none of this buffoonery we see on the screen. There is instead the very serious business of state power and contracts.
INT. AMBASSADOR’S OFFICE AMBASSADOR SIR AUCKLAND GEDDES, the epitome of the old style of British foreign service: elegant, self assured, a
gentleman adventurer in Seville Row, hoping to improve the
world, certain he’ll profit in the attempt. He’s holding court with a group of EXECUTIVES. The executives are seated around a conference table under the Ambassador’s sway. There’s a model of a British Petroleum gas station/convenience store, in English and Arabic, in the center of the table.
In Rebel Moon, the Imperium occupies a rural area on the moon of Veldt. Empire wants all of the food the farmers, who have lived in peace and with the rhythms of nature, produce. The exploitation is that raw. What’s left to be done but revolt against the empire, which calls home the Motherworld (one of the few interesting twists to this form of Hollywood narrative)? Even more curious are the Imperium soldiers based on Veldt. They seem to speak Afrikaans English. Indeed, I heard one of them say “futseke.” Why is this connection interesting? One only has to watch Neill Blomkamp’s Elysium to hit upon a plausible answer. The high-tech mercenaries in that film are Afrikaaners. And what is their key gripe? Why do they hate America’s elite, represented by Defense Secretary Jessica Delacourt, so much? Because it’s never really done the dirty work of empire. The Boers had to oppress, punish, kill Black Africans to keep the system going, to keep the profits flowing upward to Elysium.
Nevertheless, when the basic structure of Rebel Moon is translated into the real world of our moment, it’s clear who in Gaza is continuous with empire and who with the rebels of empire. The same goes for Saudi Arabia’s bombing of Yemen, which was supported by Obama. We know exactly who is who in these Hollywood spectacles. We see the destruction of Palestinian olive trees in the same way as the devastating tree scene in Avatar.
newsflash – CM discovers that the underdog story is compelling and resonates with audiences. happy 2024!
The Empire in Star Wars was much more reminiscent of the British Empire and Nazi Germany than the contemporary American empire of the day. The Imperials were a combination of upper-class British types, like Grand Moff Tarkin, and militaristic Nazi-style uniforms and style. The Empire’s troops were even called Stormtroopers. The Rebel Alliance were stand-in Americans, and their struggle against the Empire evoked the American Revolution against the Brits and our victory in WWII against the Nazis. Lucas’s goal was to make a feel-good movie, in reaction to all the critical, downbeat movies of the 70’s like Apocalypse Now and Deerhunter.
Empire Strikes Back took a darker, more skeptical tone. Then in Return of the Jedi we see a more diverse Rebel Alliance–not just Lando but also many more non-humans among the rebels in Return, such as Admiral Ackbar. So you can read the arc of the three movies as “America is good, but to succeed it must do some internal struggle and become more diverse.” But the Empire in the original three movies is definitely an echo of America’s historic foes–the British Empire and the Nazis–not American itself.
@3 right because it was the British and/or the Nazis that used an obscene advanced weapon to destroy an entire planet (city) to bring its opposition to its knees. Not the Americans, we’re the scrappy underdogs and avenging heroes, always
@3 If the Empire was meant to be America, wouldn’t we see some signs of that? Like corporate/business interests, blustery macho generals, a pseudo-democracy talking about making the universe safe and bringing its way of life to the benighted natives, racial oppression, something? Instead we see disciplined military types in black and grey uniforms talking in upper-class British accents.
Movies sometimes reconfigure reality. For instance, there’s a famous image from the Vietnam war of a South Vietnamese officer executing a VC or NVA prisoner with a silver snub-nose revolver. But in The Deerhunter, we get American POWs forced to play Russian roulette with a similar revolver. The image of threatening a helpless man with a revolver is retained, but the revolver is put in the hands of a U.S. enemy, rather than an ally. Or take Rambo. In Vietnam we were the slow-footed conventional forces fighting clever guerrillas. But in First Blood part 2, Rambo is the clever guerrilla fighting the conventional Vietnamese forces. He even uses a bow and arrow, appropriating a native American weapon.
Star Wars is a feel-good movie about stand-in Americans fighting old-world oppressors. Charles is all wet here.
@5 you should really watch the embedded video
@7 What an artist says years later about his work isn’t definitive. Artists are as capable of revisionist history as anyone else. Look at his film American Graffiti–also a feel-good movie about American culture. My take on Star Wars as feel-good movie about stand-in Americans fighting oppression, symbolized by Nazi/British stand-ins, isn’t original. I have seen it many places (including Quentin Tarantino’s recent book on 70’s cinema) and I think more contemporary interviews with Lucas support it.
Also, just watch the movie. Then watch Apocalypse Now, The Deer Hunter, The Godfather, Taxi Driver…and tell me which ones are darkly cynical critiques of America and which ones are exciting feel-good mashups of Flash Gordon and the Battle of Midway.