Rogue One.

So I went to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, today.

Actually, this is the second time I've been to see it. I went to see it on its opening weekend, too. I've been going to do a blog post about it since then, and just hadn't got to it. So, I decided to go again, just for the hell of it, but also to give it a more critical look the second time around.

One of the things that struck me, about Rogue One during the run-up to its release and on its opening weekend was the sheer amount of hate that alt-right Nazis and Trump Supporters were putting out there because supposedly there was some kind of "Anti-Trump" message worked into the movie at the last minute. Now, the way movies are made these days means it doesn't work that way. Shooting this thing finished up months ago, by Election Night, distribution was likely being finalized and there was no way to add anything to it short of bonus features for the DVD release. The entire story was, basically, just made up by some idiot troll on the internet. I've also heard that these fucking people object to the diversity of the newer movies. Hello? Star Wars has been pretty diverse from the beginning and it got *More* that way with every film. Star Wars has *Always* had a strong female lead character, whether it was Princess Leia or her mother, Padme Amidala. So, Rey (from Episode VII: The Force Awakens) or Jyn from this one are par for the course. Not to mention Lando Calrissian, Mace Windu, and Ahmed Best, the guy that voiced Jar Jar Binks, who for bonus points has an Arabic given name.

If you don't like diversity, that's YOUR problem. The world is diverse, deal with it. The rest of the universe, once we put ourselves out there, will likely not be any different.

For the record, last I'd head Rogue One was doing extremely well and had made a pretty damned impressive amount of money. So either the alt-right Nazis don't have nearly the amount of pull they think they do, or their (and probably Trump's, also) levels of support aren't as high as they'd like to think. That said, this isn't so much a critique of the movie as a critique of our national audience vs. the themes of the film. So I'll try not to spoil anything for those who haven't seen it, but speaking as a Star Wars fan who's been there since the beginning (I was four, but I digress) I will say that I for one was pretty impressed. This is the first Star Wars film since the original trilogy that I've seen twice in theaters.

See...what we see here is what Obi-Wan Kenobi was talking about when he spoke of the Dark Times. This is the Empire at its full glory, and at the height of its power. You've got Stormtroopers arresting people in the streets, and while there seems to be resistance, in a lot of places it's pretty limited and nothing an extra squad of troopers can't be called in to handle. I can see why those who like the idea of dominance and hierarchy would be drawn to the image of such a time. I really can, and that just says to me that they need to be opposed all the more.

This is a situation where, even as a Star Destroyer is parked hovering over a city, there's still gritty, nasty street fighting between Stormtroopers and an extremist anti-Imperial insurgency. Not only was such well done, but I thought it had a very Iraq War-like feel to it. I have to wonder if the various scenes of the fighting in Jedha City were put together by a crew that had a couple of Veterans on it. In any case, it reinforces the idea that, even when all seems hopeless, it is a human tendency to resist. (Yes, even though there's plenty of resisters in these movies who aren't human.)

Hope, is definitely the central theme of the film. "Hope is what rebellions are built on." That line kept cropping up. Yeah, that right there and the fact that anyone would have a negative reaction to it (especially in the sense of this being a science fiction franchise that's been a thing for 40 years) tells you everything you need to know about anybody who does have a problem with it. Hope has been a theme of Star Wars since the original novelization of A New Hope was released in 1976. Deal with it. If you have a problem with hope, or with other people having hope, that says more about you than it does about them. In the last couple of days, Donald Trump simply Tweeted a two-word message "Happy Hanukkah" to Jewish people as a group, and the alt-right Nazis predictably went bananas. Of course, this says a lot more about them than it does anything else. It's a simple two words, and they can't handle it. What does it say about a person, when they can't handle a mere two words being given in acknowledgement of another?

Not good things, I think.

In doing some research loosely connected to this post, I looked up the resistance to the Nazi occupation in tiny Luxembourg during World War II. Now, because it was a small country with a small armed forces, weapons were hard to come by and much of the resistance was passive. But oh man, there sure as hell was a lot of it. A census, intended to legitimize the annexation of the country by Germany, which included three questions (of which the intended-correct answer to all three was "German") was scuttled when an overwhelming majority of the population answered "Luxembourgish" to all of them. People refused to speak to Germans or sit by them on the bus, and this annoyed the Germans so damned much that they made laws against it.

That's what we're up against. I'm sure these fucking people we're stuck with will try to make laws against them being made fun of on Twitter or against going to another business when theirs is resolved to provide shitty (or no) service to people that they don't like.

Now, like Nazi Germany, but greatly unlike our own present evils, The Empire has always been presented as a pretty generic, often deliberately faceless, impersonal evil of helmeted Stormtroopers and masked Sith Lords. If you see yourself in that when it's on the big screen that means you're the one who has the problem, not the people who made this movie. I'll admit that I liked how the lower-powered shots fired by the Death Star produced effects similar to nuclear weapons, and in that way yet again Star Wars is prescient in taking on something that's been made an issue in recent days (even though it shouldn't be.)

Honestly, my favorite part of the movie was at the very end, Darth Vader vs. Rebels on the flagship of the small Rebel fleet sent to attack Scarif in support of Cassian and Jyn's mission. These Rebel troops have the disk with the plans (the very one that ends up carried by R2-D2 in A New Hope) and the door is broken, so the Rebels stand and fight and Darth Vader chops his way through them, blocking and deflecting blaster bolts, Force choking one, ripping away the weapons of several with Move Object and, though the last one passes it to another Rebel crewman through a gap in the door, Vader just chops his way through it and continues on. Ultimately, several of the troops make it onto Leia's Corellian Corvette which drops out of the flagship's hangar bay and sprints away, only (as we know) to be eventually caught by Vader's flagship anyway.

The point is, even in the face of overwhelming odds, people keep fighting. In the end, this is one of those gritty, almost-everyone-dies war films. The thing to remember is, all those characters (just like people who serve in the military in real life) knew the risks, and went anyway, because that's who they were.

So that's our choice, Hope, or Power (and hoping you get some tiny piece of it.)

Choose, and choose well. Why? Because just like in Post-WWII Europe, when this is over Collaborator or Resister, Imperial or Rebel...those are the labels that will really matter, that might determine in whatever form(s) our country continues after this...whether or not you get the job, whether or not your neighbors simply tell their children that you were "Wrong" and don't talk to you or your kids. A lot of issues were created in Europe by this whole situation, and in some ways they are still being resolved...especially, believe it or not, in places like the Ukraine.

I choose hope, and the hell with the consequences. If that makes me a Rebel, so be it. I picked that side decades ago in the Star Wars universe. If anybody ever thought I'd choose differently in real life, you either don't know me or you never really did.

I choose Hope because I wonder how anybody who doesn't can even get out of bed in the morning.

...And hope is what rebellions are built on.