I never would have thought that shades of gray was a Star Wars thing until recent times.

When I was in college and playing the West End Games version of Star Wars (it was a lot of fun), I would explain to the uninitiated a few ingredients that are essential to any Star Wars tale. The first of these is that it is a story of good versus evil. I'd reiterate that there are "no shades of gray" in Star Wars. You are either just really good or you are the most evil thing that has ever existed. The second thing that I would tell people is that, in Star Wars, things like capital ships are enormous. Scale is exceptionally important. So you want things to be so big that when they are in orbit around a planet, they create an eclipse. That's just a "rule of thumb."

So here I am in 2024, and none of those things I used to tell players in my Star Wars games make any sense anymore. Star Wars now is about moral and ethical discussions. It's an infatuation with "the gray" in everything. On one hand, I think that it is good for Jedi characters to be fully realized people and not just cookie cutter good guys. It's also excellent for the Sith to have motivations for what leads them down that path or to point out things that they care about that drive their actions.

However, at the end of the day, I have a difficult time reconciling modern Star Wars with what I used to believe about it. I used to believe that Star Wars existed in a universe in which there is a Light Side of the Force and a Dark Side of the Force. The Dark Side was spoken of in terms of aggression, selfishness, hatred, a thirst for power, and general bad feelings. A fall to the Dark Side was considered a tragedy and a fallen Sith finding their way to the Light Side was called a "redemption arc."

But in 2024? Things are a lot different. In 2024, Jedi can be complete and utter assholes. A Dark Side user can be a hero because they are an assassin that gets rid of problematic Force users who profess outward virtue but did a lot of terrible things that they kept secret. There's lots of projection that the characters who are (by definition) good are actually very bad and do terrible things. And now we have a group of characters who are by definition bad (they are literally villains) who have really good points and are actually good?

Anyway, all of these complaints about the latest iteration of Star Wars, which is called The Acolyte, don't make me want to stop watching. It's a gorgeous show, and I think I just like watching Star Wars characters interact on screen. It's also interesting to see Jedi as galactic peacekeepers who are so overpowered relative to the average person that they rarely ever need to use their weapons. Instead they all seem to know kung-fu. Maybe this is a nod to the "style" over "blunt tools" that Obi-Wan once spoke about to Luke Skywalker regarding the elegance of the lightsaber. In any event, its entertaining. I just am continuously surprised by what I'm seeing and wonder how I could have gotten the "Star Wars formula" so wrong.

In the Acolyte it apparently isn't Palpatine who makes the Republic crumble this time around.

Yesterday, Disney+ dropped the trailer for "The Acolyte," which is their latest story that the Star Wars universe wants to give to us. Yes, it appears to take place in a crucial and unexplored period of Star Wars, mainly that the story is set 100 years after the High Republic's zenith and taking a look at how the Republic and the Jedi start to crumble. In other words, it's a story about how darkness rises in an age of light. However, I feel that I've trod down these paths before, and I'm not certain why no one else feels this way.

Let me say this another way: haven't we already seen the republic crumble? I mean...sure...it's a different era, but I think what I'm getting at is that democracy and a grand republic falling down doesn't feel like it is breaking any new territory. Admittedly, maybe no one including myself comes to Star Wars seeking anything other than lightsabers, Sith, and bad people doing isolated acts of destruction in an otherwise well-functioning system. Maybe the point of the series is for these bad actors to act freely until so much bad stuff has happened that it pulls down civilization itself.

Is that the only interesting story that there is to be mined from Star Wars? Maybe I should just be taking the title literally. It's telling us that there is a "war" in the "stars" so...I guess...everything must be about that war or more wars or different versions of a war. The war (in fact) may never end. If it does, it's time for another war. I guess that's the part that ruins my suspension of disbelief. But as a caveat, what do I know? Maybe war and conflict are the only stories worth showing, and all we need for the other bit is to say "there was a thousand years of peace," and then get back to the war.

Has anyone ever bothered to ask why the Republic in Star Wars is always crumbling? Is my age showing? Do I appear jaded? I'm still going to watch "The Acolyte." I guess I'm just complaining. Here's the trailer if you haven't seen it yet.