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Cinematic trailers for the next movies are often more revealing than the movie itself for the moral universe of Hollywood. Before the opening spaceship shot of Rogue One, we were treated to a jump-cut sequence of multiracial families and half Negroid kids yelling cheerfully in suburban houses, followed up by a mixed-race man waving a book and repeating “Love, love, love, love, love!” at the top of his lungs in complete tearful hysterics. Of course, it was a Google advert. Advertising what? Google. Google is Love, Google is Life. Bookmark Counter-Currents today because the search engine rankings are will be painfully full of liberal spam to “fake news” ham in a matter of months.
Following breathless mania for métissage, the next trailer for Hidden Figures explained in great detail that America’s space program would have failed utterly if it wasn’t for the civil rights struggle of Negro women mathematicians within NASA. Based on an “Untold” “True” Story that has only remained “Untold” because the Hollywood Truth of it hadn’t been invented yet. And then we had 1950s civil rights struggle Negroes retold by Denzel Washington as family drama. 94% on Rotten Tomatoes, goyim. To break the 95% ceiling you have to be a Holocaust movie or have a homosexual negro (Moonlight, 98%).
After the battering of grievance propaganda, the trailer for The Space Between Us unwound its light sci-fi, white boy on Mars falls for white girl on Earth narrative. While the past is full of bitter and entitled darkies, in the future, everyone in white, and life is easy. Donald Trump’s America has clearly made the first steps to becoming galactic after solving the civil rights issue by simply removing all the blacks. Nonthreatening indie rock music and teen romance blended subtly with imagery of clean spacesuits, bright classrooms, and the landscapes of a high-tech humanity living harmoniously with nature. I like to think that one day, that boy earned the honor of joining the Imperial Storm Troopers.
It is this thematic schizophrenia that characterizes Rogue One. It is the first ‘anthology’ film of the Star Wars franchise and the first to step away from the cartoonish moral universe that has framed the series until now. Throughout the movie, and unlike Star Wars before it, war and brutality is put front and center and devoid of romance or heroism that is not underscored by despair or futility. Unlike the meaningless mass death in Diversity Awakens of planets invented for the purposes of giving the computer graphics kids something to explode, the death in Rogue One is guerilla, unexpected, and visited upon (spoilers!) pretty much everyone. Rogue One is certainly not setting its characters up for any narrative sequels as those films already exist. By the quirk of choosing a narrative in orbit of the Death Star, the heroic death of all major characters is mandatory to avoid painful questions of “Hey, what happened to Mary Sue from Rogue One?”
The characters in Rogue One are Hollywood tropes I’ve come to loathe – the strong female lead, the non-white sidekicks with mystic powers that just so happen to trump whitey’s technological supremacy each and every martial arts scene, the new fashion for men of indeterminate race with dreadlocks as the Noble Savage slash thirdworld underclass, the permanent human dirt fighting for Equality, gibs and a fuzzily defined justice in a universe of being oppressed by “The Man.” It happened with Tom Cruise in the flopsy Oblivion, with Morgan Freeman playing a bedreadlocked “Resistance Fighter,” and it happens again here. At one point, the audience is invited to laugh along with the Oriental heavy weapons guy, who seems to be carrying an industrial vacuum cleaner on his back, as he shoots a helpless Stormtrooper in the head. It’s the same Jewish malevolence on display as was explicit in Inglorious Basterds as they battered a loyal Nazi to death.
The plot centers on the Rebellion becoming aware of the Death Star and unfolds with their panicked responses, culminating in a terrestrial and space battles to retrieve the blueprints. On the personal level it follows the exploits of Mary Sue in her childhood escape from the Empire, and her adult quest to find her father — the Death Star’s principal designer — and make good on his designed-in sabotage work by getting the blueprints for the Rebellion herself.
As her father is kidnapped in the opening, he reprimands his Imperial abductors for terrorism or microaggressing or something. “Well,” drily retorts the Imperial Director Krennic, “we have to start somewhere.” The mainstream cinematic crisis of conscience about multicultural lunacy, it could be said, starts with Rogue One. Right off the bat the Imperials are the force of Optimism if not necessarily Hope and Change, even if it means breaking a few eggs. I cringed as a Negroid face appeared on the telescreen to instruct the child protagonist to escape – the mandatory Positive Portrayal uses a painfully cliché line of “You know what to do.” I know it’s a big galaxy, but can we please dispense with crowbarring ‘groids into every male role model casting available? Hilariously, the same character turns up later as an addled resistance leader addicted to inhaling drugs.
As the setting lurches from planet to planet, so does the plot from Empire atrocity to Rebellion stupidity. The Rebels are half cutthroats by necessity, and half cutthroats by self-sabotaging paranoia; assassinating their own people from the start and torturing defectors who have opted to join them. In this case, it’s an Imperial pilot (Riz Ahmed) who has been radicalized away from the forces of autocratic law and order to join the Islamic Alliance in Space Aleppo, and is turned over by his captors to a tentacled alien mind-reader. Cue Ew, Gross! Shock scene. But it’s OK – Four Lions is restored to sanity by ways of the Force and journeys through the movie as the Jihadi component of the ragtag Third World rebellion.
Stormtroopers are massacred by the trainload throughout and exist, as per Star Wars formula, as an indefinite supply of Space Oppressors for the Rebellion to stage their heroism against. Naturally, all the Empire’s troops have crisp, Anglo-American or outright British accents, and their officer cadre is the whitest male space in the galaxy. Peter Cushing returns to screen as a reanimated corpse, a subtle computer graphics caricature of the real thing. Just like the rationale of the Rebel’s cause, Virtual Cushing is twitchy and lightweight, unconvincing and incomprehensible outside of Star Wars’ established logic. In fact, the most “horrific” Empire atrocities are options of last resort to Rebel aggression. The Empire functions similarly to the Judges in Mega City One and the United States Army in various foreign occupations — showing up in force to bully and intimidate the locals into not getting any funny ideas about getting their own sovereignty, and then disappearing again to patrol some more pressing parts of the galaxy. Twice the Death Star nukes a city, both times at huge cost to the themselves, as a means of preventing the Rebellion from getting out of hand. Civilian lives and the lives of Force disciples matter not to Rebels when a tactical advantage is at stake, and they will push the Empire to its most destructive in their desperation.
Concrete reasons to support rebellion are substituted with mystic mumbo-jumbo. Much like Google’s hysterical half-caste, the leading Third Worlders believe that the power of repetition compels you, and that we can all become one in the Force. The mercenaries of the Rebellion are mainly white, save for the Heavy Weapons Guy that accompanies blind martial arts man and Mary Sue. The multiracial Rebellion enlists African peacekeeping corps in the same way the U.N. does – they’re incompetent in both this galaxy and the one far, far away, but photogenic to white liberal sensibilities. The post-adolescent female lead enlists herself into the Rebellion by providing the emotional support to carry out their non-specific “Cause.” She jabbers excitedly about her father and Hope, and keeping on taking Chances, until the rebels win or they run out of Chances. It’s childish, and Felicity Jones’ wide, naïve eyes only serve to reinforce that she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. A petty criminal on the run from Imperial Justice, the “Hope” she appeals to is the hope of the delinquent trying to make a clean break; the same nihilistic desperation that fuels terror bombings.
In the end, that’s the moral crux of this movie. Sensible whites have built a militaristic, galactic Empire that provides some sort of law and order to enable trading, prosperity and relative stability, if not the terrorism-free calm of “Peace.” The Rebel Alliance by contrast have a core of idiotic, liberal whites who enlist and radicalize Jihadis, Negroids, and hapless Tibetan Jedi Monks to visit violence upon those who recognize the necessity of violence in policing these communities. Alone, these disparate elements lapse into their own Space Ghettos, but whites glue these elements together with the Hope for Equality and a universalism that these factions have never subscribed to. The hoax (((Hollywood))) wants to perpetuate is the morality of this crusade.
The Rebels in both Space Aleppo and Real Syria only achieve any decisive victories with the support of an overwhelmingly white Air Force keeping the skies clear above them, with the Royal Air Force and USAF creating Imperial and Russian no-fly zones respectively (no, I’m not kidding — these are literally British fighter pilots in X-Wings). The Empire and Russian Federation are non-specifically bad, while the Rebels are non-specifically good. As Rogue One embraces moral ambiguity through screening the brutal spectacle of war fought hard on both sides, the shallowness of the Rebel mentality is exposed. The Rebels have a Cause, even though they can’t describe it or tell you what it is. Like Clinton supporters, they’re with Her, because she offers the empty Hope that somehow, in some strange, emotionally tinged way, things can be different.
The Latest, Greatest, and Most Right-Wing character to enter this movie is Lord Vader. At this stage of the Star Wars narrative Vader is still an unapologetic jackboot and whilst Anakin may have been born on Tattoine, the character and motivations of Vader were born in the darkness, and molded by it. Resented by technocratic Empire officers for subscribing to the kooky Force religion, Vader is an Evolian amongst the bureaucrats, a pseudo-Knight of Europe set against the occupying Clintonites of the Rebellion. His swaggering robocrotch and slinky black wetsuit is “. . . a perfect expression of Fascist ideals, a glittering example of Aryan technological supremacy and aggressive masculinity.” Vader is a man of strong opinions and expresses them with clarity and vigor, smashing and smiting his way through Rebel Losers, red lightsaber swirling hypnotically in the darkness. And in a galaxy of empty spite and sarcastic robots, our man Vader is the most powerfully human. Part Cyborg, All Fascist: I’m with you, Lord Vader.
5 Comments
This film has engendered a bit of argument pro and con and I do appreciate being informed of the propaganda content by reviewers here at CC. I went and saw “Passengers” because of the review by T. Lynch and he was right – it is a good movie all around, full of love and sacrifice themes. I’m not sure the film would have had the same effect on me if Mr. Lynch had not pointed out the subtleties. The art of propaganda as Goebbels once observed and wrote is that it is done without the viewer’s awareness but “Passengers” is pretty simple and my wife and son loved it without benefit of review.
Much of what the reviewers point out on Rogue would go over the heads of most people not trained to see it.
Reviewers here at CC look at these films very deeply and see things I normally wouldn’t. I appreciate that. I’m not a big fan of the Star Wars series although “A New Hope” blew my socks off in 1977 when I was a kid. It was brand new and the special effects for it’s time were unbelievable. All white too ( that was before they injected the awful Lando )
Every Star Wars after that got a little less good until you just roll your eyes every time they crank out another one. My son wants to see it ( I’ll probably take him) but it’s an entertainment film and I think I can turn off my racial antennae for 2 hours to enjoy it. I don’t need to sit there and get steamed every time some non-white appears on the screen – it’s to be expected from that genre. I think I’ll view this one more simply as a “war film” as Trevor Lynch suggests and try to enjoy intergalactic partisan warfare on the big screen. He seemed to like it and he did write an entire book devoted to guiding white folks through the movies. If you want to boycott this film entirely go see “Passengers”.
Long long ago, in a galaxy far far away….there were Asian people and they knew martial arts!
I guess race, culture and identity still matter when you are trying to sell your wares to a new audience. I wonder how the Chinese state views the morality of the Star Wars narrative.
“..the shallowness of the Rebel mentality is exposed. The Rebels have a Cause, even though they can’t describe it or tell you what it is. Like Clinton supporters, they’re with Her, because she offers the empty Hope that somehow, in some strange, emotionally tinged way, things can be different.”
Well, they even admit towards the end, that because of all the awful things they have done for their cause, they need to double down on it now, lest they couldn’t live with the the things they’ve done if it turned out not to be for a just or meaningful purpose. Its like so many leftoids, who have invested too much identity and prestige for them to be able to admit to themselves, that they have all along been fighting on the wrong side. And so they therefore harden their own encirclement into their cause, and in more and more hysterical ways avoid real arguments, as to insulate themselves from realizations too painful to bare. The pain of realizing that you have been working tirelessly to destroy that which is the very purpose of life – keeping your lineage alive, and with the best prospect of survival.
“Hilariously, the same character turns up later as an addled resistance leader addicted to inhaling drugs.”
In other words Huey Newton.
Wow, I’m glad to see comments are still available for this review three years later. I watched Rogue One for Christmas yesterday with my Uncle, and I’d like to explain why I loved it.
Firstly, I must mention that I’m in agreement with Buttercup Dew about the moral validity of the Empire and Darth Vader. Two years ago when I watched the original 1977-1983 trilogy for the first time, it stood out to me immediately that George Lucas, while a visionary director, was a lousy writer. All three movies are laced with Slave Morality and the rhetoric of the Oppressed rising up against their Oppressors. Ben Kinobi in Ep 4 and Yoda in Ep 5 fill Luke Skywalker’s head with Leftist poison: Don’t ever get angry, don’t ever be aggressive, make yourself a guardian of peace and justice, etc. These are all mindtricks that Leftists and Jews have long used to get the White Race to refuse to defend itself, and Lucas pushes them hard in the original films.
As a result, I instinctively was opposed to the morality of the Jedi and found myself supporting the morality of the Sith, and by extension, supporting the Empire over the (((Rebellion))). It’s clear when you look into it that the Jedi are an allegory for Jewish-Christian/Leftist values, whereas the Sith are an allegory for Fascistic/Authoritarian values. The Sith embrace their passions and their emotions, whereas the Jedi suppress them because, you know, embracing natural emotions like anger and hate might lead to hate crimes and genocide. It’s painfully obvious that this is the message Lucas is pushing, whether he knows it or not.
My favorite of the original films was actually Return of the Jedi even though it was arguably the most liberal, because at least in that film, Luke Skywalker was the bad ass that I envisioned him to be as a kid, when I only ever watched the Prequels. New Hope and Empire were boring films by comparison, with the exception of the infamous “I’m Your Father” scene. Revenge of the Sith was by far my favorite film of the first six, because in that one, the real Good Guys win, and they crush and humiliate the Bad Guys in the process. Sure, Anakin loses his legs and gets deformed, but not before making Obi Wan cry out in despair over his failure to prevent Anakin from embracing his justified anger and his righteous hatred.
Introducing Jyn Erso.
The thing I liked so much about Rogue One is how there are no pretensions about the Absolute Good of the
Jews and BolsheviksRebellion vs. the Absolute Evil of theNazisEmpire. It’s truly the only Star Wars film that has moral nuance, particularly within the Rebellion, where a Black man is portrayed as an outright terrorist (albeit one who eventually redeems himself), where another warmongering faction becomes responsible for the death of Jyn’s father, and, most significantly, where Jyn is captured by the Rebellion and bought before their Council, which proceeds to subject her to a Stalinist show trial.Director Gareth Edwards didn’t have to include any of this in the film. He did it because he’s a competent director who is not interested in pushing an absolutist agenda, except insofar as showing a White woman leading a multiracial team is inherently an act of propaganda (which, okay, I get that, but nothing Jyn or her team did or said in the film was political or subversive, unlike the disgusting scenes with Vice Admiral Holdo and Poe Dameron in Ep 8).
But the best part of this film was the fact that Jyn wasn’t some ideologue but instead had healthy reasons for everything she believed in and stood for. First, she refuses to join the Rebellion because they objectively made her life harder, and when the Council tries to appeal to her sense of opposition to Oppressive Authority, she responds by basically telling them, life under the Empire is fine as long as you don’t antagonize them. I pumped my fist when she implied that, and my Uncle, who is a Cuckservative, just shook his head in dismay.
Then there was the showdown with Director Krennic, who killed her mother. Jyn was a little girl when that happened, and while it was her mother who pulled the trigger first, when you see your mom gunned down like that, you’re naturally going to be furious at the person who did it. So, when Krennic confronts her and asks her what she’s doing, Jyn gives him this wicked glare and tells him, with all the anger and hatred of a Sith, “this is my father’s revenge!”
Wonderful! Absolutely wonderful!
Rogue One thus became the first and only Star Wars film where the Good Guys won by killing those they hate, NOT by saving those they love. In order to defeat the Empire – or, more accurately, put the events in motion that led to the defeat of the Empire – the Rebels had to become like unto the Empire. That’s true subversion right there. Justified anger and righteous hatred will ALWAYS triumph over “Love” and “Compassion” and “Forgiveness,” which is the poison Lucas tried to sell us.
I thus strongly disagree with Buttercup Dew’s conclusions here. It’s not a coincidence that certain radical Leftists did not like this film even though it featured a multiracial uprising led by a woman, and even though the writers insisted it was an ode to diversity. In the end, it wasn’t actually a celebration of diversity. It was a classic war story where the side that had greater Will-To-Power was destined to win. It was too Authoritarian for the tastes of committed Egalitarians. My Uncle said that, knowing me, I would probably like this film. Boy was he right.