It should come as not much of a shock when I tell you that I am a science fiction nerd. I am, by most accounts, a hard-core science fiction nerd. From the age of five, when Star Wars came out in the theaters, I was all-in. My school papers were about Buck Rogers. My doodles in class were of R2-D2. My dreams were filled with Battlestar Galactica and Star Trek.
I loved and continue to love the whole lore of it. Humanity, much like our own, facing problems that humans face, but in these spectacular galaxies in these wondrous scenarios. Galaxies far, far way, a long time ago, or well into the future.
I used to watch Star Wars and be absolutely enamored like most everyone else with the character of Darth Vader. I would buy his action figures. I bought his helmet which I have displayed in my apartment. Vader is THE villain of all villains in cinema or storytelling. Beyond Voldemort. Beyond Sauron. Beyond Jason Voorhees. An absolute iconic bad guy in American storytelling. But I never actually rooted for him. I wanted him to be cut down by Obi-Wan Kenobi. Or blow up in the Death Star.
It took a while as I went to other online areas where Star Wars was discussed for me to figure out that there were fans of Darth Vader. They were actually rooting for him to succeed and I just could never wrap my head around how someone could see that piece of fiction and come out thinking that Darth Vader was the one that should win. Modern storytelling has started to look at villains as sympathetic figures. The Joker from the Batman comics has his own series of movies looking at his genesis. People empathize with Thanos, who killed half of the population of the galaxy. And even the Wicked Witch of the West has an empathetic musical called Wicked in which she plays the heroine.
This month, Star Wars is coming out with a series called The Acolyte, it goes into the inner workings of the battle between Darth Vader’s sith and Luke Skywalker’s jedi. It is set well before the events of any of the movies and, as good storytelling normally does, flips the narrative on its head. The sith will be empathetic while the jedi will be the galaxy’s controllers. The “bad” guys, if you will. It will highlight a lot of the great Star Wars storytelling and the lightsaber fights along with the spaceship battles. But I can’t help but keep in the back of my mind that I’m made to root for the bad guy. Scar, from The Lion King is a bad guy. He killed Mufasa. I will never root for Scar. I can never root for Golum. I can never root for Thanos or The Joker or the Russians in Red Dawn.
And so, I go into this series (that I will still consume completely) with reservations. Maybe it will open my mind to the gray that is “good” and “bad.” Light and dark have always been heavy themes in Star Wars and it is likely to be the same here. And I know it’s meant to be an allegory to modern times. Science fiction has always been a metaphor for the challenges we face today. It’s meant to challenge our thought processes and our preconceived notions. Today’s society features true bad guys. Folks I could never get behind no matter the cause, but perhaps begin to understand their failings. Still, I’m not sure I could ever actively root for Darth Vader.
(Get more from Chris Kamler on Twitter, which some people call X, where you can find him as @TheFakeNed)
