As you know, this blog is inspired by the amazingly mythic saga of Star Wars. I thought it would be a good idea to look a that the three best characters to come from this franchise.
1. Admiral Holdo
The Last Jedi is the most influential of the Star Wars movies for a number of reasons. But the best thing to come out of that film is the character of Admiral Holdo. In fact, you could say that the entire Star Wars saga was building up to Holdo.
From her first moments on the screen, she presents herself boldly. Rather than dress in patriarchal military garb and sacrifice her femininity, she wears a long flowing dress with a shock of purple hair. Her entire strategy stands in stark opposition to Poe Damaron, who clearly the main villain of the film. Poe's failed mutiny and his interference with Finn highlight the genius of Holdo in keeping this hot-head out of the loop. She needed to play things close to the chest or Poe's immaturity would have doomed them all.
All of this culimates in the most spectacular visual moment of the film: The Holdo Maneuver. But selflessless and smartly turning her ship into a kamikaze-style weapon, she changes Star Wars space battles forever. It is a shame that JJ Abrams took this bag with a throwaway line in The Rise of Skywalker, because this evolution of combat would open up all new vistas of possibilities for combat. And it gave Holdo a chance to ride out in a blaze of glory. Holdo is only in one Star Wars film, but her impact lasts forever.
2. Jar Jar Binks
I think people forget what it was like in 1999 when The Phantom Menace came out. There was so much hype for this movie, but it was the most intense for this new character: Jar Jar Binks. "Jar Jar Fever" was everywhere. One need only look at the numerous products and magazine covers to see the popularity of the character.
Jar Jar's presence in the series elevated it to a whole new comedic level. There had never been a character nearly as funny as Jar Jar, with his hysterical cadence and incredibly funny visual gags. He has some of the best, most profound lines of the entire series: "Yud-Say Boom Da Gassar, Den Crashin Der Boss' Heyblibber, Den Banished!" That one line encapsulates the fight against injustice that is at the heart of Star Wars.
3. DJ
The biggest flaw of the Star Wars saga is its lack of moral complexity. Most of the George Lucas part of the story carries with it a very black and white view of ethics. You can see it in labeling the Force as the Light Side and the Dark Side. That is why a character like DJ is so important to the story.
DJ introduces real-world moral relativism. By doing so, Star Wars becomes much more relatable than it ever had been. Human beings are messy and our ethics are situational. The most unrealistic thing about Star Wars wasn't the Jedis or space bears. It was the simplistic portrayal of virtue and vice.
In DJ, we have a character who surpasses characters like Luke Skywalker, who try to sell unattainable ideals of love and heroism. And while Rian Johnson did a good job of making Luke more realistic, the ultimate expression of this new realism is DJ. And this moral ambiguity is driven home by his final line, "Maybe." Will he ever receive a karmic punishment for his betrayal? Who knows? And that's the point! The world is unfair and unjust and that is something that Star Wars finally accepts with the character of DJ.
(And as with my article on Godzilla, and since we live in an age that cannot tell satire from reality, everything above is satire)
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