Beyond Light and Darkness: A Generation Awakens

When George Lucas chose to declare the first ever installment of Star Wars “Episode IV,” he introduced viewers to a universe in motion, and already in the throes of conflict. In the original and prequel trilogies, conflict emerged from and challenged the galactic balance between the light and dark sides of the Force, the mystical energy field that connects all lifeforms. In the original and prequel trilogies, these are represented by factional ideologies. I argue that the first two installments of the 2010s sequel films subvert this light side-dark side balance of the force. Rather than a conflict between metaphysical ideologies, the sequel trilogy frames the most vital conflict in the Star Wars universe as generational. In my three parts, I argue first that the Star Wars sequels intentionally subvert the morality of the previous Star Wars films, leaving a thematic void; second, that this void is filled by a narrative that older generations have failed the younger; and third, examine Rey and Kylo Ren’s navigation of a status quo dominated by elders. 

 

Part I: The Subversion of the Sequels

In the original Star Wars trilogy, the conflict was between a dark side-aligned homogenous, uniformed, fascistic Galactic Empire and the centralized, liberal-democratic rebellion that ultimately defeated it. In the prequel trilogy, the established order favored the light side of the Force instead of the dark; a benign and participatory Galactic Republic contemplated whether the need to quash an uprising justified the means of militarization, only to find that they had created the conditions for dark side authoritarianism.

The first 2010s sequel film title, “The Force Awakens,” subtly but definitively shifted these thematic grounds. It introduced the idea that the Force itself could lie dormant, and could ebb and flow. Previously, the Force had been conceived by characters as something which required “balance.” The Force, or so the governments aligned with both its dark and light sides claimed, would ideally consist of a greater portion of the side they favored. As a voice in the first trailer for the film boldly proclaims that “there has been an awakening,” a helmetless, panicked FN-2187 bursts through the bottom of the frame (The Force Awakens Teaser, 0:05). That physical jumpscare heightens the drama and significance of this moment: it is the first cut showing a stormtrooper with helmet removed in a Star Wars film. A new generation of stormtroopers has been unmasked. It does not matter that, at this point in the film itself, Finn has abandoned the First Order and fallen in with the Resistance. What is more important is the fact that the first trailer’s opening shot humanized a stormtrooper. The moment raised questions about the stormtrooper’s identity. The process of posing these questions itself added shades of nuance to fans’ understanding of themes in Star Wars. Was this stormtrooper-man a double agent? A genuine stormtrooper or a Resistance operative? A man fully convinced of the First Order’s cause or a quiet saboteur? The ambiguity constructed around Finn itself catalyzed a discussion of the moral convictions of characters that were formerly regarded as blind servants of evil. Marketing for The Force Awakens intentionally made readers question moral dichotomies Star Wars once took for granted. It left a thematic vacuum that the sequel films, once released, would fill.

Part II: The Tragedy of the Boomers

The moral dichotomy that replaced it encouraged viewers to question the guidance of an older generation characterized as unimaginative, weak, and often inept. Though protagonists Rey and Luke’s starting circumstances in both trilogies are similar, their differences cement the failure of old ideas of leadership.

In the original trilogy, Luke’s aspirations to mastering the light side parallel contemporary American middle-class, meritocratic aspirations. The Binary Sunset scene in A New Hope vividly establishes Luke’s sense of his current station in the universe and his desire to become more. As Luke stands on a sand dune, his face washed in red, he forlornly stares at Tatooine’s twin suns setting. A horn blares forlornly. In the suns’ eerie light, the tiny Lars homestead seems miserly. This brief scene, as our first intimate moment with Luke, establishes the sincerity of his loneliness and longing. We empathize with Luke’s need to see the galaxy and gain a sense of purpose. The scene contextualizes his later eagerness to devote himself to the Jedi cause and his intense curiosity about the life of his father. They reflect his desire for meaning, direction, and perhaps greatness.

In generational terms: Luke Skywalker grew up orphaned, but in a stable and relatively comfortable home by adoptive parents who catered to his basic needs. As he grew stronger in the Force and found friends in the form of Han Solo and Leia Organa, he faced, and overcame, his own darker inclinations. After winning his father back and defeating the Empire, Luke founded a new Jedi Order and sought to restore its orthodoxy. By the end of Episode VI, Luke’s meritocratic journey had ended in glory. 

In a meritocratic context, much of Luke Skywalker’s rise to his station reflects his relatively middle-class, secure economic position. In turn, this journey instructs viewers to the general social state of the galaxy for the average person. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for young Luke’s birth station lies in his family’s patterns of consumption. Luke and his uncle Owen Lars are introduced to the audience as empowered consumers when they buy droids from the Jawas. They express preferences over which languages a protocol droid can speak and inspect astromech droids for defects (A New Hope, 17:25). The fact that the family is purchasing servant droids also reflects a stable class existence. In other words, the conventional, casual, nature of the droid purchase relays a message of character agency through a depiction of Tatooine’s economy. The everyday consumption patterns of Star Wars characters, especially in the first act of a Star Wars film, help to inform viewers on the state of galactic society. Most importantly, the film’s protagonist came from something, not nothing. 

In addition to contextualizing Luke’s journey to power with Rey’s story, who faced much greater adversity, the sequel trilogy upends the idea that Luke even succeeded in his life goals at all. In the process, doubt is cast on the validity of his, and the larger Rebellion’s, original aspirations. In this new trilogy, the younger generation encounters legendary heroes which have grown into flawed, ineffective adults. Han Solo is estranged from his wife; he and Chewbacca have reverted to their former morally grey smuggling lifestyle. Though a general in the unofficial Resistance to the First Order, Leia functions as little more than a remote supervisor of the film’s pivotal battle. She is barely, if ever, shown giving orders or making decisions; few in the command room seem to require her approval for action. Even C-3PO, the courteous protocol droid, calls her “Princess” by mistake (The Force Awakens, 1:20:10). The crucial order to scramble the fleet’s X-wings is issued by Poe Dameron (1:33:34). During the battle itself, she passively receives news of mounting casualties with a melancholy expression (1:42:35). She is no longer the firey figure who spearheaded the Rebellion against the Galactic Empire. 

Meanwhile, Luke’s new Jedi Order has collapsed, Luke himself having radicalized Kylo Ren by attacking him as he slept. Having failed to institutionalize the light side of the Force, Luke retreated in shame. Despite being cared for as a child, mentored by gentle experts, rising to a far higher station than his birth, and achieving harmony with the light side of the Force, Luke regards his life as a failure by the beginning of The Force Awakens. The fallen orthodoxy Luke chose to reestablish has not borne fruit.

The old guard, although the architects of the New Republic, have failed to anticipate the rise of the First Order and even fuelled its fire. Luke, Han, and Leia share responsibility for Ren’s betrayal. Ultimately, all have failed to create the galaxy they so boldly envisioned when they defeated the Galactic Empire together. 

The circumstances into which Rey is born reflect the failure of once-great heroes to create a better world. Rey’s life and arc, at least as established thus far in the sequel trilogy, parallel Luke’s in many ways. But there are important differences which signal a general decline in generational welfare. Like Luke, Rey grows up on an unstable desert world populated by a diverse group of sentient species; many of her skills derive from navigating such a dynamic environment (The Force Awakens, 15:03). In contrast to Luke, however, Rey was abandoned by the adults in her life. Both her livelihood and her living space are carved out of the crumbling ruins of imperial infrastructure; Luke was raised on a comfortable farmstead (The Force Awakens, 14:15). 

If Luke was coded with agency through his family’s station, Rey is deprived of such agency. She sells parts scavenged from the rubble of war machines, a skilled job which clearly requires agility, dexterity, and adaptive thinking. Her job seems to put Luke’s work as a moisture farmhand to shame in terms of difficulty. However, she is only paid for these services in flavorless food “portions,” never earning her keep beyond a basic sustenance. The value of these portions, too, appears to fluctuate dramatically— “Last week [these] were half a portion each” (The Force Awakens, 18:31). Luke and his uncle purchased droids as slaves; Rey is a wage slave. Luke’s experience of responsible adults, a stable economy, and a surprising degree of character agency have given way to a contemporary abandonment, exploitation, and hopelessness for Rey. Middle-class stagnation has given way to abject squalor on the galaxy’s volatile planets. Despite the triumph of the light side over the dark side—the evidence of which is abundant, as Jakku hosts the ruins of the climactic battle between the Empire and Rebellion—Rey’s circumstances are dismal compared to young Luke’s. 

In the absence of parents, Rey squanders time on Jakku, hoping they will return for her. She has few obvious aspirations. It is only when forced off Jakku by being implicated in a Resistance plot that she begins to attain a sense of direction that previously stemmed from the idea of her parents, not from herself. In this sense, Rey, deprived of parental love, craves it more intensely than Luke did. Her aspiration is not greatness, simply guidance.

 

Part III: What Became of Luke’s Lightsaber

Kylo Ren, thematically and relationally, is the foil to Rey and her desire for connection. Born into one of the galaxy’s most powerful families, with Han and Leia as his loving parents, he seemed destined to become a great Jedi. Schooled in the ways of the Force by Luke, he came to resent the moral norms his parents and uncle had instilled in him. In joining the First Order, Ren rejected all of the privilege Rey never had. 

Rey cannot understand why Kylo Ren, who was born into one of the most powerful families in the galaxy, raised by loving parents, would turn against them and attempt to kill them both. “Why did you hate your father? He loved you. He gave a damn about you” she asks, thoroughly infuriated but mesmerized (The Last Jedi, 1:12:02). Ren’s response is to recount the story of Luke’s unprovoked attack, and challenge Rey’s reliance on parental figures: “You can’t stop needing them. It’s your greatest weakness…Let the past die. Kill it if you have to” (The Last Jedi, 1:12:10). Having come away from his life of great privilege discontented, Kylo Ren vows to tear it down, and seeks other young people as allies. 

What message does Star Wars relay as its lower-status characters strive for noble greatness and its upper-class characters seek to destroy old dichotomies? In a galaxy of ineffectual leadership and contested authority, Rey’s desire to receive worth from the elders whose galactic project has failed her begins to feel tragic. 

In Episode VIII: The Last Jedi, Kylo Ren and Rey vow to convert one another. They hope to realign one another not to clean-cut ideological positions or even direct allegiances to the light or dark side. They fight, instead, because of their respective desires to oppose and uphold tradition. As the duo turn against Snoke and kill his guards, Rey’s traditionality and Ren’s rebelliousness briefly align. 

For Rey, opposing darkness aligns with her chosen, Jedi tradition. For Kylo Ren, opposing his tradition means, in this case, opposing darkness. But their priorities are reversed. Ren would clearly rather join the dark side than adhere to tradition, while Rey would rather keep faith than stray from the light. One of the most climactic, thematically significant moments of the sequel trilogy results from a fragmented morality. Hours later, Rey and Kylo Ren fight on opposite sides at the Battle of Crait.

 

Conclusion

There is something inherently generational to a phrase like “The Force Awakens.” Like some other Star Wars film titles, it creates a sense of deep intrigue and foreshadows the philosophical ground the film will occupy. In this case, an “awakening” implies a converse period of slumber, a dormancy embedded, perhaps, in the flow of time itself. As Rey, Kylo Ren, and other young people in the galaxy come to know the Force, then, its overall power— both light and dark —grows. When Rey and Kylo Ren simultaneously reach for Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber, their equal mastery of the Force splits it in two, causing an explosion. In this moment, the Force is equally strong in the light and the dark, and unbelievably intense. If there is any defining thematic image from the sequel trilogy, it should be this moment: two young, powerful Force-wielders, failed by their elders in ways both personal and systemic, destroying a symbol of how things once were.

In this American cultural moment, a message about the failure of elders resonates deeply. Young people lament the elderly’s incapacity to issue a proper response to climate change and mass shootings. The phrase “OK boomer” has gone viral as the desperation of the young reaches a fever pitch. 

There is abundant evidence to support the notion that the elderly are increasingly disconnected from reality, and thus unable to even conceptualize society’s contemporary challenges. In “Nostalgia and the Swamp: Aging Politics in the Age of Trump,” Robert Hudson describes a political reality which “clearly harks back to a golden age when life was presumptively better for Americans…this message clearly resonated with a large majority of older whites” (Hudson, 1). This golden age presumably featured financial stability and greater economic agency, a less pluralistic and secular culture, and a more secure state. Even the nostalgic emphasis on these issues detracts from attention to the present realities we face. Liberal moderatism, too, falls under a similar free-market, golden-age consensus that, as society shifts, acquires its own distinct nostalgia. The terrible uncertainty of our times, compounded by the invisibility of the most pressing problems to certain demographics, is a radicalizing force (Hogg, 2). Rey and Kylo Ren’s struggle to navigate a world without a clear sense of right or wrong reflects the struggle of young people across America today.

 

Bibliography

Hogg, M.A., Kruglanski, A. and van den, Bos, K. (2013), Uncertainty and the Roots of Extremism. Journal of Social Issues, 69: 407-418. doi:10.1111/josi.12021

Robert B. Hudson (2018) Draining the swamp while making America great again: senior dissonance in the age of Trump, Journal of Aging & Social Policy, 30:3-4, 357-371, DOI: 10.1080/08959420.2018.1462676

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Teaser Trailer. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLk59H86ww.