If you are the type of person to tell me to go read the novelizations or graphic novels or play the games or whatever for additional explanations, just stop right here. Because I will not do that. If you have chosen film as your primary mode of storytelling, then all the most important information should be in the films. I should not walk out of a film thinking “I sure hope there’s going to be a graphic novel to explain all that bullshit.” No.
Okay, moving on.
There are a lot of narrative problems in the Star Wars prequels.
Why is the Force suddenly a bacterial infection instead of an inherent and intangible connection between all living and nonliving things? If the galaxy is under democratic rule, what’s up with all the slave trade? What suffering, exactly, was being caused by the Trade Federation’s blockade of Naboo? What proof did we have of a symbiotic relationship between the Naboo and the Gungans? Was there a constitutional amendment approved by the Galactic Senate that established a representative role for the Gungans (and why was JarJar a representative instead of a senator? are his duties and responsibilities different? does he hold less power? are there other worlds with this kind of representation? does Lucas ever actually THINK about anything before writing it?)
But one problem has been stuck in my craw and I could never really figure out why until recently.
Order 66.
So, as we understand it, the original Stormtroopers were not people, but clones of bounty hunter Jango Fett, which were ordered by a Sith Lord for MYSTERIOUS PURPOSES. They are not individuals, but programmable fleshy robots, essentially. One of their programs is something called Order 66, which, spoiler alert, is an order for them to kill any Jedi in their immediate vicinity.
Devastating, right?
Well, no. Not really. And that’s the problem.
See, the Galactic Empire of the original movies was a pretty on-the-nose stand-in for Nazi Germany. Everything from their rise to power to their uniforms to their reliance on innovative battle technology was modeled after that regime. It stands to reason that Order 66 is, allegorically speaking, this universe’s Final Solution, right? So it should be this horrifying, visceral moment when the Stormtroopers turn their blasters on their allies and blow them away.
The thing is, the clones are not humans. They are literally programmed for Order 66, and that fundamentally changes the impact of Order 66, and even more disturbingly, allows for some pretty gross rationalizations.
“They didn’t know what they were doing.” “They didn’t know it was wrong.” “They thought the Jedi were dangerous.” “They were just following orders.”
If you are unfortunate enough to know Holocaust deniers, you have heard these excuses before, except they were given for real, actual human beings who knowingly took part in the slaughter of more than 6 million of their fellow humans. Men and women who woke up, kissed their spouses, sent their children off to school, and then went to work at concentration camps where they brutalized and killed political prisoners by the millions.
If Lucas was trying for a similar horror with Order 66, he missed the mark. The whole scene is dispassionate and mechanical. By making the Stormtroopers clones with an exterminate order programmed into their brains, he absolves them of responsibility. He also completely misunderstands what made the Holocaust so horrific. Yes, obviously, the deaths of 6 million people was horrific. The fact that these deaths were dealt by their fellow humans - their countrymen - their NEIGHBORS...that perfectly ordinary men and women accepted, endorsed and even applauded the extermination of their fellows...that these horrors were visited not by aliens, or by monsters, or by robotic clones, but by real, living, flesh-and-blood human beings who believed that what they were doing was RIGHT and NECESSARY...
THAT is true horror. And taken in that light, Order 66 becomes an insult. A joke.
Think about this: two months ago a group of white supremacist insurrectionists stormed the US Capitol to try to overturn a democratic election. At least one of them was wearing a Camp Auschwitz Staff sweatshirt, and at least one was wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with 6MWE (6 million wasn’t enough). “Well, there are still Jews around so they didn’t finish the job!” these disgusting turdwaffles chuckle to themselves around the dinner table.
Yesterday I watched a review of Jedi: Fallen Order in which one of the reviewers joked, “ANOTHER Jedi escaped Order 66? Guess it wasn’t much of a success, huh?”
Ew.
The thing is, I don’t think this was on purpose. I don’t think Lucasfilm set out to create a narrative in which the Jedi Holocaust was a) not really the Stormtroopers’ fault because they were just following orders and b) not actually all that bad because so many Jedi managed to escape. I honestly believe that he realized the “Clone Wars” had been mentioned way back in A New Hope and thought “that sounds cool we should do something with that” and then just...went with it without really thinking things through because George Lucas is, to put it mildly, a terrible writer.
The whole thing still makes me feel a bit icky though. And I thought I’d share some of that ick with the internet.
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