By Joshua Tyler
| Revealed 8 seconds in the past
Star Wars has been in a tailspin, and there’s just one vibrant spot.
That vibrant spot is 2 seasons of the collection Andor, and it’s the very best Star Wars has been in a very long time, for one VERY easy purpose.
It’s the primary Star Wars product since George Lucas’s departure that is aware of who the galaxy far, distant’s true villain is.
The true villain of Star Wars, the one constant face of evil throughout your entire franchise, has not been, and will by no means be, Palpatine or the Darkish Aspect of the Power. It’s positively not Anakin or Snoke, or Adam Driver in a Vader tribute masks.
It’s in all probability not Luke Skywalker, although if he drinks an excessive amount of blue milk and will get cranky sufficient, then you definately by no means know.
The true villain of Star Wars is and at all times has been authorities forms.
The Dying Star Is The DMV
The Dying Star, within the first film, was the final word illustration of forms as true evil.
That tremendous weapon is the ultimate type of what occurs when huge numbers of sycophantic bureaucrats strip the wealth of these below their management and use it to assemble large, impractical, completely flawed weapons of warfare.
And it’s run by a bunch of center managers jockeying for consideration round a convention room desk.
When the Dying Star didn’t work, the identical rigid, massively incompetent bureaucratic construction, run by Imperial DMV staff who solely care about holding their jobs to allow them to’t admit they have been mistaken, rotated and made the identical factor over again.
The Dying Star is the California high-speed rail that was purported to go all the way in which to San Francisco, however now prices ten instances as a lot and solely goes to Bakersfield.
Luke Skywalker Wasn’t Combating The Power
That clear real-world similarity is what made Luke Skywalker’s journey so thrilling and straightforward to establish with.
He wasn’t combating an individual or a mystical and evil power; he was combating a system of corrupt bureaucratic oppression.
The very same oppressive system we’re all tortured by when we’ve got to go down and get new license plates for our truck.
The identical one we’re stricken by when filling out types for the IRS.
Luke was combating a legion of lazy public college lecturers and code violation inspectors on behalf of all the conventional individuals who need to be left the hell alone.
That development continued within the prequels, when the bureaucracy-free monarchy of Naboo was attacked and held hostage by a bunch of center managers from the Commerce Federation.
It escalated when, because the prequels continued, the huge bloated forms of the Previous Republic empowered and hid Palpatine, aiding him in his rise to management.
In a way, Palpatine was the supreme product of that forms; he was its biggest creation, the pure results of years of bloat and pink tape strangling well-meaning folks till nobody was left to oppose it.
Andor Places Forms In Its Crosshairs
That brings us to Andor.
As talked about on the outset, the very best of the latest Star Wars collection is Andor, and Andor is the very best latest Star Wars collection particularly as a result of it makes that bloated forms the present’s sole villain.
Andor is about guys in cubicles and conferences planning the destruction of innocents.
They do it not as a result of they love evil, however as a result of that’s how they receives a commission.
Andor Season 1 adopted a number of aspects of crushing forms.
In a multi-episode arc, it explores the Imperial justice system, a system so drowned in pink tape and bureaucratic disinterest that it’s extra targeted on making a revenue for the center managers turned judges and jail wardens who run it than on doing something like precise justice.
If you happen to’ve had any run-ins with the justice system in the actual world, you in all probability spent these episodes screaming sure and pointing on the tv, because it precisely portrayed the way in which it exists solely to service itself.
Sympathy For The Devils
Even the present’s dangerous guys, trapped within the Imperial bureaucratic nightmare, felt sympathetic within the face of bureaucratic challenges.
They too, have been misplaced in a collection of cubicles and countless conferences, locations the place everybody solely appears out for themselves and has little interest in doing the precise work of presidency.
If you happen to’re an grownup who has ever tried to get medical health insurance or helped an aged guardian cope with Social Safety, then every thing you noticed on display screen was an correct sci-fi illustration of your actuality.
Andor Season 2 picks up proper the place Season 1 left off, with a bunch of center managers in a convention room casually planning to wipe out a planet with the intention to full a bloated public works mission to allow them to earn promotions.
It continues by dipping into the controversial matter of immigration, by introducing corrupt Imperial bureaucrats who present up on a planet to do a head rely, and take what they will below the desk.
And that’s why Andor is the one new Star Wars that works.
Why Disney Star Wars Hasn’t Labored Till Andor
The JJ Abrams films failed as a result of they grew to become obsessive about Palpatine and the Skywalkers.
Reveals like The Acolyte get misplaced within the backstabbing faith of the Jedi.
The Mandalorian fell aside as a result of it grew to become obsessive about Katie Sackhoff’s royal future and supported the corrupt beaurocracy of the New Republic as a substitute of combating it.
Ahsoka tried to make a villain of Thrawn, an iron-fisted demolisher of pink tape.
Skeleton Crew thought it might repair all that by specializing in journey. However Star Wars has by no means been only a shallow journey.
Palpatine Represented The True Villain Of Star Wars
Star Wars ought to solely ever have one focus and one true villain.
It’s not Palpatine and by no means was. The true villain of Star Wars is the huge forms Palpatine represents.
Each character within the Star Wars universe struggles below its weight.
It’s why the galaxy is filled with black markets and smugglers, and it’s why you like it.
As a result of the heroes of Star Wars aren’t simply taking up the Empire, they’re taking up the IRS, and attorneys, the meter maids, the medical system, and each rattling annoying factor which is sucking away moments of your life.
Star Wars is at its greatest when it’s Nineteen Nineties Dilbert with a lightsaber.
When Star Wars deviates from this method, it stops feeling like Star Wars and begins feeling like one thing else.
And we’ve already received loads of one thing else.
