I don't think anybody really changes sides. Star Wars is binary...everything is good or evil. The Republic (good) gets transformed by Palpatine into the Empire (evil), which is opposed by the Rebellion (good), which in turn overthrows the Empire and form the New Republic (good) to replace the Empire. Then lingering forces from the Empire form the New Order (bad) and a relative peace exists until it doesn't. Are there a small number of people who do ethically questionable things? Yes, but for the most part everyone adheres to their good or evil classification.

Darth Vader did help commit genocide, but I don't know that you could pin the blame for anything the death star did on him. Tarkin was the commanding officer and gave the direct command to blow up Alderaan. Vader was merely an enforcer detaining Leia and ensuring things were going according to plan. He's certainly got blood on his hands, but I wouldn't say he destroyed planets. AFAIK, Alderaan is the only one that got destroyed anyway.

Part of being a Jedi is shedding attachment, which is all Anakin's mother ever was (as evidenced by their relationship essentially sending him off the deep end into a genocidal rampage). The Jedi would've had no way of knowing that his mother was in danger while it was happening. If Anakin couldn't feel it in the force, how could people with no attachment to her? Anakin is the only living Jedi to have even met Shmi Skywalker, after all (Qui Gon is dead, Obi Wan never left the ship).

In episode III, it's shown that the death star was originally a separatist weapon.

And I would argue that this is somewhat justified because societies of muggles have not developed any mechanisms (organizationally and morally) to deal with individuals that fall several orders of magnitude outside the normal skillset of their species.

Put differently: Considering that there would almost nothing mere mortals could do to stop superman from declaring himself emperor of mankind (several supervillains try to do just that after all) they are already showing remarkable self-restraint and ethical behavior simply by not ruling the planet through force.

Agreed. This is why deconstructions of the superhero genre, such as Watchmen (or even lesser ones, such as Superman: Red Son), are so appealing.

If anything, the main or even sole reason to want power over others is impotence and insecurity, and if you're immortal and can do whatever you want, there is really no use for that, only downsides. Unless one subscribes to the Dwight Schrute theory of super heroes of course, which says all super heroes are born out of childhood trauma.

Always funny to see phrases like that here, however if someone was force sensitive and had a zero midichlorian count they'd want them anyway, the order was never bred for their abilities, and with their vows of celibacy actively removed themselves from the gene pool. In regards to their use as a paramilitary, if a child was found to be able to read minds the CIA would be looking to kidnap them.

As a general rule, good guys have powers forced upon them. Bad guys have to work for them. This enforces the concept of an elite class of 'good' families and a dangerous group of upstart peasants. The theme has been with us since ancient times. Far too long imho.

(In fact, many critiques of anti-democratic regimes don't even accept that this is something over which there is even a debate to be had. As one author put it, men have a "self-evident" right to govern themselves within a framework respectful of human rights.)

The appearance of the force as a religion that people have faith in and are passionate about is a good way to do away with the dopey prequel stuff.

Compare this something like with actual moral issues like Schindler's List. The main character navigated a huge moral gray area. He couldn't make any proper kind of stand against the industrialization of evil in WWII Germany but he did what he to save what lives he could and that meant not saving some (to reduce suspicion). It also meant lying to all the people who accepted him as peers. He was a traitor all the Germans as he ran factories that hurt the war effort, He was an enemy of the allies because he ran a munitions factory. To the families of the people he saved he still might have been viewed poorly because his employees were functionally slaves. But the choice to enslave those people in safe working conditions and keep them alive and well fed saved them and to them he was a hero.

There are tons of other movies, books and stories where the good guys are not clearly good and the bad guys not clearly bad. Consider Worm (Web serial), the heroes are jerks who sacrifice the lives of others and the villains are often just looking out for their own. Who is really good and bad?

In any case, the site is called "Sci-Fi Policy" which leads me to believe this kind of exegesis is their bread and butter. Perhaps they aren't usually making airtight arguments in their posts but I think the discussion is still useful and fun.

It actually was. In the prequel trilogy, we see that the Separatists have plans for it, which are then acquired by the Empire at the end of the film.

> The first Death Star's schematics are visible in the scenes on Geonosis in Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones showcasing the early development of the Death Star prototype, the Death Star plans were designed by Geonosians led by Archduke Poggle the Lesser, a member of the Confederacy of Independent Systems, and is shown early in construction at the end of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Star

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars:_The_Old_Republic

The appearance of the Death Star plans in the prequel trilogy is not proof that development of the Death Star was started during 'the old republic'

The Republic obtained those Death Star plans from the Separatists after the Battle of Genonosis (i.e. Episode II). The Republic started building it during the Clone Wars, they hadn't even been rechristened as "The Empire" yet.

https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7330/13094455004_f54959dbb5_b....

(There's a lot of people trying to reinvent ethics and metaethics from the ground up in this thread, badly..)

I wish some of the movies would get stories inspired by Kotor series, where the author really wanted to make the wars in star wars resemble real ones, with no obvious good and evil sides.

Game of Thrones, for context of a series with both well known actors and amazing sets and effects, is about $10 million per episode. If we assume that a Star Wars series would cost about the same and it would take approximately a similar number of episodes to tell such a story, that would be $720 million. I might be wrong, but I don't think such an investment in film has never been done before.

I think it will depend greatly on both the continued success of the Marvel TV shows + how the remaining Star Wars films perform.

1: [Marvel’s Netflix Bound TV Shows To Cost A Whopping $200 Million](http://www.digitaltrends.com/movies/marvels-netflix-bound-tv...)

I'd really love SW movies to be more like that, less bland and mentally lazy (AND NO MORE DEATHSTARS FFS)

Oh God yes. I was so pissed when the Force Awakens culminated with yet another, bigger Death Star.

Even if you feel the need to stick with the super weapon trope, the Empire has PLENTY of other nasty machines sitting around.

I find it hard to buy the idea that the climax of RotJ supports this idea. At the end of RotJ all is portrayed as having worked out as well as they possibly could have, and all because Luke has made the extremely deontological choice to not fight his father.

Does Episode III contain the phrase "Only a Sith believes in absolutes"? Yes, and that's why everyone hates it.

The Prequel Trilogy is a ham-handed social critique that tries to show you "how democracy dies" and attacks rigid institutions for being inhumane. Any "imbalance" for the Light Side is not even a topic - after all, the Force is just a bunch of nano-organisms in your blood! The prequels don't bring any meaningful element to philosophical issues surrounding the Force, and they are such terrible movies that they should just be ignored; a lot of people now rightly hope they will be remade by Disney, which would be the right thing to do.

There is no balance at the end, only one side is winning.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_explosion

As an example, consider theft. As a society, we have a strong aversion to theft. This aversion is enshrined in our laws, our religions, and even our grammar (e.g. "my pen" as opposed to "your pen"). So, we would consider "Do not steal." as a general moral guideline, functional in all scenarios.

But we haven't tested it in all scenarios. Let's consider somebody who steals for the purpose of helping another, commits no other crimes, and dedicates his life to helping others, even when it harms himself. Would we still consider the theft to be immoral? I would say no, and showing such a case is the primary purpose of "Les Miserables". We have pushed our general "Do not steal." outside of usual usage, and have found that it does not apply at extreme cases.

Similarly, the author of the article is saying that Rogue One is a good test of the existing moral principle "Do not build intentionally flawed buildings." This moral principle works in most day-to-day cases. However, in the case of building a Death Star for an oppressive regime, this moral principle may not hold.

Buddha, Jesus, Plato/Socrates, Swift, Nietzsche - seriously, if you throw a dart at a random distribution of centuries, the greatest moral thinker from that century used fictional constructs of some kind to illustrate their point. The 21st century is not going to be any different.

But there's an even bigger problem here that borders on illiteracy. Believing that ideas fleshed out in fiction serve no practical purpose completely ignores the history of all ideas, not just moral ones. Great fiction thinks.

If you want to learn about love, read Shakespeare. Texts on the mating habits of higher primates are not going to help your romantic life. If you want to learn about friendship, The Lord of the Rings is going to offer better advice than anything Freud wrote. If you want to learn about government, Homer or Jonathan Swift can teach you more about the machinations of power than Machiavelli or John Locke.

I believe the reason is that fiction speaks to the whole mind, not just the part of the brain that parses language and performs algebra.

Well said.

You could replace that with "A Bucket of Clams" and the sentence is still true.

But seriously, if you can't make friends with a bucket of clams, you're just not trying.

And even if you take one or more of those documents to be literally true and a source of historical fact, even Jesus used parables--fiction--to explain moral principles.

This is really one of the strangest appeals to logic I've ever encountered.

There are so many fictional books which have so much to teach.

You can think of Star Wars how you like, but condemning fictional stories as bad only because they are no "true" stories -- is very short-sighted in my eyes. (and in my opinion a totally wrong understanding of the principles of logic).

There are also so many "true" stories, where you can draw the wrong ethics from!! (newest events included!)

And while 'real' stories might still be doctored by the writer to send a particular message and mislead you to a conclusion, at least they're constrained by the facts.

I very much doubt so.

There where to many people living, that brought suffering to others without ever been punished. Many people that slaughtered others, where living a wealthy life till their end. And others, that did good, ended in poverty.

No, "true" life sometimes teaches the wrong ethics. Or should we find our ethics in slaughtering each others?

Bad people get away with terrible things all the time. No amount of moralizing changes this true fact.

Just because it is possible to get away with bad things, doesn't mean you should do them.

A good ethics system should address this.

I am taken aback by the regular use of torture, specifically the depiction of how well it works.

Now if the actual intention of the wipes is to keep your droid in check and keep it subservient, yes that's absolutely slavery. But I've never seen it presented that way.

These kinds of things are difficult to discuss because they're not explored in the way they are in harder scifi like Star Trek. With Star Wars you're expected to take everything at face value and technology is hardly ever explained in-canon.

If you're OK owning and operating a robotic arm, and not OK with owning and operating a sentient AI, then what to do with robotic arms that develop sentience over time?

Relativistic morality? (Its ok to kill this race because we are better than them)

if you think of the self aware droids as cattle then its kind of a choie about what you like more. Cows are really nice animals in taste and temperament. Its about where you draw the line, and I guess in a way the jedi were being all realpolitik with how they deal with the galaxy.

In earth scale I would say they best examples is States Rights vs Human Rights. At what point do we get involved with a country for their human rights abuses? I'm Australian and I would happily see a few of my politicians dragged off to the Hague to be hung for their treatment of refugees. so what do we do with, American and its spying and DPRK, the philipines, burma, iran etc etc.

The interesting thing about the Star wars films is that the build up of arms by forces in the galaxy is allowed. I know in other series of sci fi (DUNE) there was a repression of technology past a point, if only to add some normal level to the battle field. If you start to develop capability eventually the end result is the use of it, Im supprised the empire could get away with the build up in secret.

Anyway. Rouge one was a lot like the thin red line. so tip of the hat to the star wars people for making a wholly depressing and sad war film.

-Also something i noticed, the UI and control systems engeneers in the empire a crap. its like a jobs for the boys kind of operation where everyone gets to do something. why is the antenna sighting control seperate from the transmission control. they are so tightly related. and also. The antenna is for space communications, visual sight of the dish isn't really needed as your not pointing at anything.

Other than that everything was super realistic with the fish people and faster that light travel etc. :P

Granted, the same effect could be achieved by having the storage system deposit the hard drive in a box, to be picked up by hand, but I can't come up with any explanation about that.

Watching the Death Star operating at low power was cool though, as well as knowing that it had undergone some "preliminary tests" before Episode IV.

Also, I had recently read this fanfiction [1] about a project manager working on the second Death Star, complaining about how much of the institutional knowledge from the first Death Star had been lost, making the second Death Star be quite rushed. The loss of the original plans made the fanfiction fit in even better.

[1] https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11685932/1/Instruments-of-Destr...

Oh yeah the slomo nuke that's literally outran by the characters. ಠ_ಠ

Clearly, the stronghold is not 600 miles from the city, as the shockwave was traveling faster than the rockwave, but it gives a good sense of timing. Note that the characters were not able to outrun the rockwave without the jump to hyperspace.

If I were retcon-ing the data silo design they're worried about a terror attack methodically destroying trillions of dollars of stored design data, or being too easy and fast to use, resulting in the wrong people putting together the wrong collection of ideas and figuring out the overall plan. You can do a lot of interesting compartmentalized grunt work engineering. So here's the static and dynamic loads gimmie a minimal mass truss design for those loads with a factor of safety of 9 but you don't have to be told thats the death star's laser cannon support thingy and it would be bad if enough people put 2 and 2 together.

Nitpick, but this isn't what relativistic morality means; it means that there's no One True morality. Racial supremacism doesn't really have anything to do with it.

It is like fighting for social justice, while your children are starving.

So their mission isn't to "do good", but more like "not let there be any bigger evil than what already existed" (that would break the equilibrium of forces). At least that seemed to be the theory. In practice, they were mostly law enforcement agents of the Republic, until the republic turned into an "evil empire".