Fascism is Heroarchy

[Madner Kami]

That's just retroactive overinterpretation in my book.

[CmdrKing]

It’s George so that’s certainly a thing for him. But these interpretations definitely were things he was talking about before the prequels, and the fact the parallels are clearer and more direct in the prequels is certainly gonna make people inclined to believe his later claims.

But honestly this just gets into authorial intent in a very hair-splitting way. Mostly I think that for George Lucas he’s such a blunt storyteller that the distinction between “drew inspiration/iconography from” and “was creating a deliberate allegory” is kinda moot, he lays the former on thickly enough that nobody can really disprove it if he claims the latter.

[TGLS]

I can believe it's a thing, but to me it's a shitty allegory

[Madner Kami]

It’s George so that’s certainly a thing for him. But these interpretations definitely were things he was talking about before the prequels, and the fact the parallels are clearer and more direct in the prequels is certainly gonna make people inclined to believe his later claims.

But honestly this just gets into authorial intent in a very hair-splitting way. Mostly I think that for George Lucas he’s such a blunt storyteller that the distinction between “drew inspiration/iconography from” and “was creating a deliberate allegory” is kinda moot, he lays the former on thickly enough that nobody can really disprove it if he claims the latter.

Many authors do it. They have some vague idea in their mind, execute it and then have the rest of their life to figure out what they actually wanted to say/meant/intended. Memories don't work in the most obvious way, we don't actually "save a file" so to say. What we do is relive a situation in our head and our perception of that scene is influenced by our current biases and perceptions and the memory drifts a bit every time we relive it in our head. A brunette, becomes a redhead and so on.

A civil war supported by imperialistic outside forces on both sides, where one side wins practically every single military engagement and factually wins the war and yet retreats and lets the already beaten opposition win, just because the civilian population back home was fatigued and protested against the war? Yeahno, that's not Star Wars' rebellion by a long shot. And neither is Verhoeven's Starship Troopers an allegory for fascist tendencies in the US at the time. It's just Verhoeven making a movie in his style that is based off a book that features fascist themes without making an explicit moral statement about said themes.

[MithrandirOlorin]

It’s George so that’s certainly a thing for him. But these interpretations definitely were things he was talking about before the prequels, and the fact the parallels are clearer and more direct in the prequels is certainly gonna make people inclined to believe his later claims.

But honestly this just gets into authorial intent in a very hair-splitting way. Mostly I think that for George Lucas he’s such a blunt storyteller that the distinction between “drew inspiration/iconography from” and “was creating a deliberate allegory” is kinda moot, he lays the former on thickly enough that nobody can really disprove it if he claims the latter.

Many authors do it. They have some vague idea in their mind, execute it and then have the rest of their life to figure out what they actually wanted to say/meant/intended. Memories don't work in the most obvious way, we don't actually "save a file" so to say. What we do is relive a situation in our head and our perception of that scene is influenced by our current biases and perceptions and the memory drifts a bit every time we relive it in our head. A brunette, becomes a redhead and so on.

A civil war supported by imperialistic outside forces on both sides, where one side wins practically every single military engagement and factually wins the war and yet retreats and lets the already beaten opposition win, just because the civilian population back home was fatigued and protested against the war? Yeahno, that's not Star Wars' rebellion by a long shot. And neither is Verhoeven's Starship Troopers an allegory for fascist tendencies in the US at the time. It's just Verhoeven making a movie in his style that is based off a book that features fascist themes without making an explicit moral statement about said themes.

The Ewoks being the Vietcong was definitely intended at the time.

And the Conservative perspective on Vietnam you just expressed I find really bothersome. Number of Battle won means nothing, there is more to War then Hit Points. We failed our objective there plain and simple.

[CmdrKing]

Put another way I think George Lucas would disagree with you about the nature and outcome of the Vietnam War (although I dunno that he’s looking at it complexly enough to be a very good allegory himself of course)

But flipping the script a bit, we could also look at the Rebellion as a force that was highly successful at raids and guerrilla warfare, but on the few occasions they engaged in direct combat lost and badly. Which is certainly closer to how Vietnam played out.

[Madner Kami]

The Ewoks being the Vietcong was definitely intended at the time.

What he was looking for was a guerrilla force fighting a technologically and industrially vastely superior foe. He wasn't looking for a communist insurgency as inspiration for a political opinion-piece.

A civil war supported by imperialistic outside forces on both sides, where one side wins practically every single military engagement and factually wins the war and yet retreats and lets the already beaten opposition win, just because the civilian population back home was fatigued and protested against the war? Yeahno, that's not Star Wars' rebellion by a long shot. And neither is Verhoeven's Starship Troopers an allegory for fascist tendencies in the US at the time. It's just Verhoeven making a movie in his style that is based off a book that features fascist themes without making an explicit moral statement about said themes.

And the Conservative perspective on Vietnam you just expressed I find really bothersome. Number of Battle won means nothing, there is more to War then Hit Points. We failed our objective there plain and simple.

This is not a conservative perspective on Vietnam, that is my perspective and I didn't dispute that the political objectives were failed. The US won the ground-war unquestionably and pulled out of the conflict before the political objectives could be achieved. It took another two years, the VietCong rebuilding and preparing undisturbed and the South to collapse in an economic crisis at the same time, induced by the world-wide oil crisis, to lead the Vietnam Civil War to it's known ending. Things are complex, you know?

Put another way I think George Lucas would disagree with you about the nature and outcome of the Vietnam War (although I dunno that he’s looking at it complexly enough to be a very good allegory himself of course)

George Lucas comes from a generation that had a certain political view on things. We're far enough removed from the happenings, to have a more complex view on the matter.

But flipping the script a bit, we could also look at the Rebellion as a force that was highly successful at raids and guerrilla warfare, but on the few occasions they engaged in direct combat lost and badly. Which is certainly closer to how Vietnam played out.

How do you define "successful at raids and guerilla warfare"? Because militarilly, those engagements cost North Vietnam a lot more than the US or the South. The effect was, for the vast majority, the drain on US morale, both with the troops and the US citizens at home, plus the degenerating effect it had on the troops' behaviour and all the wonderful mutual drain of morale between troops and citizens. In that sense, it was successfull for North Vietnam, yes. But then again, that is not how the Battle on Endor works out, because the rebel victory there is a military one, which is distinctly not how the guerilla-actions worked out in Vietnam. The Empire didn't collapse because of public opinion or because the Storm Troopers didn't want to fight anymore, it collapsed because the Emperor died.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

What he was looking for was a guerrilla force fighting a technologically and industrially vastely superior foe. He wasn't looking for a communist insurgency as inspiration for a political opinion-piece.

To be fair, he started to try to do that with episode 1 and the trade federation probably.

[MithrandirOlorin]

The Ewoks being the Vietcong was definitely intended at the time.

What he was looking for was a guerrilla force fighting a technologically and industrially vastely superior foe. He wasn't looking for a communist insurgency as inspiration for a political opinion-piece.

A civil war supported by imperialistic outside forces on both sides, where one side wins practically every single military engagement and factually wins the war and yet retreats and lets the already beaten opposition win, just because the civilian population back home was fatigued and protested against the war? Yeahno, that's not Star Wars' rebellion by a long shot. And neither is Verhoeven's Starship Troopers an allegory for fascist tendencies in the US at the time. It's just Verhoeven making a movie in his style that is based off a book that features fascist themes without making an explicit moral statement about said themes.

And the Conservative perspective on Vietnam you just expressed I find really bothersome. Number of Battle won means nothing, there is more to War then Hit Points. We failed our objective there plain and simple.

This is not a conservative perspective on Vietnam, that is my perspective and I didn't dispute that the political objectives were failed. The US won the ground-war unquestionably and pulled out of the conflict before the political objectives could be achieved. It took another two years, the VietCong rebuilding and preparing undisturbed and the South to collapse in an economic crisis at the same time, induced by the world-wide oil crisis, to lead the Vietnam Civil War to it's known ending. Things are complex, you know?

Put another way I think George Lucas would disagree with you about the nature and outcome of the Vietnam War (although I dunno that he’s looking at it complexly enough to be a very good allegory himself of course)

George Lucas comes from a generation that had a certain political view on things. We're far enough removed from the happenings, to have a more complex view on the matter.

But flipping the script a bit, we could also look at the Rebellion as a force that was highly successful at raids and guerrilla warfare, but on the few occasions they engaged in direct combat lost and badly. Which is certainly closer to how Vietnam played out.

How do you define "successful at raids and guerilla warfare"? Because militarilly, those engagements cost North Vietnam a lot more than the US or the South. The effect was, for the vast majority, the drain on US morale, both with the troops and the US citizens at home, plus the degenerating effect it had on the troops' behaviour and all the wonderful mutual drain of morale between troops and citizens. In that sense, it was successfull for North Vietnam, yes. But then again, that is not how the Battle on Endor works out, because the rebel victory there is a military one, which is distinctly not how the guerilla-actions worked out in Vietnam. The Empire didn't collapse because of public opinion or because the Storm Troopers didn't want to fight anymore, it collapsed because the Emperor died.

That last quote you accidentally when it was actually someone else.

[TGLS]

But flipping the script a bit, we could also look at the Rebellion as a force that was highly successful at raids and guerrilla warfare, but on the few occasions they engaged in direct combat lost and badly.

I wouldn't call blowing up two death stars "losing badly".

For that matter, I don't think we see the Rebellion do anything resembling most guerilla campaigns throughout the movies, unless you count running away an awful lot. They:
1) Blow up a base with weapons broadly comparable to the Empire's
2) Get ambushed by the Empire and forced to retreat
3) Blow up a base while it's under construction.

We don't see, for example:
1) The Rebellion produce propaganda (hell, I don't think we actually get much of an explanation as to why they think the empire is bad at all)
2) The Rebellion punish collaborators
3) The Rebellion conduct terror attacks to demonstrate the Empire's impotence
4) Hide in plain sight with the cooperation of locals who resist the Empire (unless you believe the Empire was telling the truth about Alderaan)