Why the Prequel Trilogy’s Politics are the Most Underrated Part of Star Wars
Politics give Star Wars its stakes, and they are an essential and unjustly maligned part of the prequels.
It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
When Star Wars premiered in 1977, before any character even appeared on the screen, it took the iconic opening crawl just seven words to place audiences in the midst of political upheaval.
Twenty two years later Episode I, The Phantom Menace, cut that down to six:
Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.
The prequel trilogy would be subject to much criticism for its focus on galactic politics, from the trade war at the heart of its first installment through the plodding and plotting in the Senate in the following two films, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith.
Despite its flaws, the political milieu of the prequels should not be seen as incidental to the Star Wars story or, worse yet, as a distraction. Instead, it highlights the dynamics that are at the core of this space opera and provides the context and moral dilemmas that continue to make the series one of the most engrossing works of science fiction ever. It might even show the way for the future of Star Wars media to regain its original allure.
The prequels are accused of many faults, from the acting to divisive characters to over-explaining things that audiences took for granted in the original trilogy. Another line of criticism has focused on some of the driving forces of the story: the mind-numbingness of trade wars as a plot device, the confusion behind why and how Jedi Master Sifo-Dyas commissions the clone army, and the entirety of senatorial subterfuges from the removal of Chancellor Valorum in Episode I to Jar Jar Binks’s representation of Naboo in Episodes II and III. Paraphrasing Yoda, it was as if the shroud of the dark side had fallen, obscuring our ability to see the themes concealed within all these events. For many viewers and critics, poor execution led to another conclusion: that because these plots were dull, they were therefore extraneous to Star Wars, an epic universe that the original trilogy had made wildly exciting. George Lucas had become a Sith, and made Darth Tedious his apprentice.
That’s bantha fodder. Politics — how a society decides to administer itself — is what gives Star Wars its stakes. Why should we care about ancient orders of warrior-scholars or space battles? Lucas tells us from the very beginning of each movie that we should pay attention to the bigger picture. Star Wars is not (only) cool spaceships sailing through a starry black sky between exotic planets. It is a struggle for control and over the values that organize this galaxy far, far away.
To be fair, this component of the story is much more muted in the original trilogy. This is a Manichean fight between good (the Rebel Alliance) and evil (the Empire). Yet politics remain a theme throughout. Early in A New Hope, Grand Moff Tarkin informs his staff that “The Imperial Senate will no longer be of any concern to us. I’ve just received word that the Emperor has dissolved the council permanently. The last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away.” Lando Calrissian’s machinations in The Empire Strikes Back are similarly political as he tries to avoid Imperial interference in Cloud City, helping to set a trap for our heroes. Even the Hutt crime syndicate’s collaboration with the Empire is a form of politics. And when the climax arrives in The Return of the Jedi, it is in the form of a three-way struggle for power as Darth Vader seeks Luke Skywalker’s allegiance for a palace coup, the Emperor wants to convert the young Jedi to solidify his power, and Luke seeks to topple both and the institution they represent.
The prequel’s politics are much grander, contain many more gray areas, and thus are harder to navigate. There is intra-planetary diplomacy between the Naboo and the indigenous Gungan. There is the Senate, an ineffective representative body, and the Jedi, who provide it both diplomatic and law-and-order functions. There are powerful corporations, like the Trade Federation, and the separatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. And there is slavery — a political-economic institution — on Tattooine, a planet controlled by criminal syndicates. (Interestingly, Star Wars as science fiction charts no new ground in envisioning novel forms of social organization.)
Though the fight remains between good and evil, the prequels’ context introduces many more questions. What is the value of a democracy that can’t protect its constituents, or that can only do so by force? What if the secessionists were right, and the Republic does need to change? (Is a secession the right way to achieve that change?) Are the Jedi really the right institution to safeguard peace? Is a mysterious army of clones the right alternative?
There is no more symbolic conclusion to the trilogy than Palpatine and Yoda’s duel destroying the Senate chamber and Darth Vader assaulting and killing an elected official (and his wife), Padmé Amidala. Among other things, these tensions lead to some of the prequels’ most iconic lines, from Chancellor Palpatine’s “I am the Senate” to Senator Amidala’s “So this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause.”
All of these threads are a deliberate connection between Star Wars and our own reality. The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones, and Revenge of the Sith opened in 1999, 2002, and 2005, respectively. Lucas used these movies — as he previously used the original trilogy — to send a message about our own society. In the years since 1999, on every re-watch, political life continues to echo what we see on the screen: another elected government overthrown, another country invaded, another corporation that wields power to promote its antisocial interests. The prequels remain relevant not because we have built the society of the future, but because we keep making the mistakes of the past.
Then, in the last decade, Disney acquired Star Wars and began churning out content like a Geonosian droid assembly line. Although the lazy exploitation of intellectual property has dominated this era — “Somehow, Palpatine returned” — the franchise has occasionally managed to tell genuinely intriguing stories. The concept of Andor aroused ridicule among critics: could anything be less interesting than an entire series about a dull supporting character from a spinoff movie? Yet it delivered the most granular view yet of galactic politics, following a regular individual trying to get by and becoming radicalized, plotting politicians, relatable bureaucrats in the security apparatus, and a delightfully thick web of rebel leaders and financiers with intricate motives. This was capital-P and small-P politics together, an interpretation of Star Wars that we had never seen before and that lent new depth to the galaxy we thought we knew.
The prequels’ political plots were by no means perfectly executed. However, they remain essential to establishing the trilogy’s central moral dilemmas and in continuing Star Wars’ real-world relevance. A quarter century ago, Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi landed on a starship to end a trade dispute. The negotiations may have been short — but the story they began continues to reverberate in ways that we can appreciate still. As the saga continues to move forward, its authors would do well to remember that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, complex politics matters just as much as it does on Earth today.
