Free Star Wars on Trial by Keith R. A. DeCandido, David Brin, Tanya Huff, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Matthew Woodring Stover Page A

might be forgiven for adding, that carries enough firepower (by no coincidence whatsoever) to vaporize a planet.

    This, Opposing Counsel freely admits, is his ideal.
    Does this remind the Court of anyone in particular?
    Not that I'm saying it should.
    And the filmmaker he holds up as the egalitarian opposite to George Lucas? Whose oeuvre extols the power of the "barely above average"? (In passing, on the subject of Saving Private Ryan-I would sincerely love to watch Opposing Counsel explain to a roomful of Army freakin' Rangers where he gets the balls to claim they're only "barely above average"... but that's just in passing, and we'll let it go.)
    This filmmaker would be none other than a certain Steven *coughIndianaJonescough* Spielberg, whose films are notable mostly for demonizing and dehumanizing the heroes' opponents, to make us all comfortable with cheering along as we watch them being eaten alive by, say, the Wrath of God.
    As opposed to George Lucas, who has spent half of his life's work putting a human face on what had been previously regarded as the icon of ultimate evil-who spent an entire trilogy of films reminding us that the potential for destruction rests beneath even the noblest motives, and that we should always turn a suspicious eye upon anyone who preaches that They Know Best.
    Even the Jedi Council.
    Because sometimes they're just plain wrong. And sometimes they're up to something....
    What I find so astonishing, in fact, in Opposing Counsel's indictment is that he seems to believe that the Saga endorses rule by a secretive unelected elite-and then spends much of his argument showing how the Saga itself explicitly rejects that very concept.
    Yes, Yoda is secretive, and often unhelpful. The Jedi themselvesSURPRISE!-aren't exactly good guys. Perhaps Opposing Counsel never noticed. Let me enlighten him, and the Court.
    If you take a close look at the Jedi Order, you find that-in Mr. Lucas's own words-they're a cross between the Texas Rangers and the Mafia. They are a vast organization of superheroes-real superheroes, with superpowers right out of Marvel or DC Comics-who wield near-absolute power in secret, without accountability to anyone but themselves and the Office of the Supreme Chancellor. They are the Justice League with interplanetary Licenses to Kill.

    And guess what?
    The Chosen One is chosen to destroy them.
    Does Opposing Counsel expect the Court to believe this is an accident?
    Everything Opposing Counsel has to say about Yoda actually undermines his own case!
    If Mr. Lucas were truly advocating rule by a benevolent despot, wouldn't Yoda have turned out to be always right? Wouldn't Luke's rebellion against him have become a disaster, from which Yoda would have had to rescue him, as a father rescues an errant child?
    In fact, at every turn in the Saga, when a Figure of Authority speaks out and gives strict orders ... they're wrong.
    Except when that order is to trust in the Force.
    In other words: trust the voice of the life within you. Trust yourself. Trust love. Trust faith.
    Don't trust people who claim they know what's best for you.
    The Opposing Counsel makes an eloquent argument on the virtues of questioning authority, calling its effects "inarguably spectacular, underlying most of the accomplishments of modern-enlightenment civilization."
    What Opposing Counsel doesn't seem to understand is that George Lucas shares this belief in questioning authority, and that the entire Star Wars saga is a brilliant lesson in the virtues of questioning authority.
    Lucas understands that once we start to question Authority, we might end up questioning all manner of authorities. We might start to wonder if they might have their own agenda, or simply be just plain wrong.
    Like, for example, our own Emperor, er, president.
    It's a terrible shame that our powerful myth of suspicion of authority made our Powerful Liberal Media Elite (another myth) ridicule our vice president's assertions about links between