been thinking about this a lot lately. star wars right now loves a conflicted revolutionary. any character that is armed and dangerous and seeking change in the galaxy, they're never sure about it- whenever tension is needed they become unsure. or maybe it would be more accurate to say that star wars nowadays seems to value a conflicted revolutionary over any other kind. this inner hesitation, this lack of mind-body-soul devotion to a cause, renders them more measured and trustworthy to the audience. let's swing our cameras towards luthen rael, mon mothma, characters that have these Changes Of Heart, lightbulb moments, canon events. when they chose to act it is meaningful, it is more meaningful to choose conviction at the bottom of a long list than to seek it like air underwater from a young age. cassian andor can't have been a separatist, jyn erso cant have been truly dedicated since childhood, that would force them to join metatextual rank with the likes of saw gerrera, the classic unstable radical. self evident conviction is untrustworthy, anger straight from the source of oppression is untrustworthy, really I mean, ignoring all those other useless avenues for social change is suspicious... many people have made comments about the reflections of race and casting and I don't find those untrue or untethered, but there is a larger picture. a larger purpose for this box to keep protagonists in. comfort seems to take precedent in this period of american politics. the purpose of the box is to reassure the audience that everyone else is also having some kind of Awakening Process. googling what fascism is and making bluesky accounts and such- their faves in space included. in a weird way, this leaves the story of luke skywalker- which I can guess all these other characters' Awakenings were modeled after in some way- an odd relic of the 70s. of draft dodging and letters of solidarity from the soviets to the panthers. luke skywalker wastes no time in becoming absorbed into the rebel party, which I guess could be excused by the types of thinking I'm criticizing via the existing clear cut War against the empire for him to pick a side in. I wonder a lot about how many in the andor watching crowd are more scared of the saw gerrera's of the world than of who they see as the "empire". scared to exist in the same room and confront that they didnt get it first. putting revolutionary protagonists in the box creates a sense of spilling-everywhere urgency. if you see yourself in this person, then who will start the war? aren't we all waiting for someone else to do it?
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