Star Words: Episode IV, Part 16

[matril]

It seems quite fitting that on the day that Americans celebrate their independence from tyrannical rule, we'll be looking at a confrontation between a freedom fighter and her tyrant captors. Okay, it's purely a coincidence, but anyway.

After Vader's conventional methods have failed to extract information from Princess Leia, Tarkin decides on a different, truly diabolical tactic. In his presence Leia remains defiant and unshaken, even snapping out a marvelous insult about Tarkin's "foul stench" and Vader being on a leash. Tarkin continues to boast about the power of fear and such, but Leia has a ready reply.

"The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

This is such a perfect image of the inevitable futility of power-mongering. Seeking for ultimate dominance and control is sheer folly. And it is Tarkin's determination to wipe out the Rebellion and his refusal to flee the Death Star, even when the danger becomes clear, that leads to his demise. Eventually it is the entire Empire's overreaching grasp that leads to its downfall. The more you try to crush an oppressed people, the more you strengthen their resolve to fight and resist that oppression.

Tarkin does deliver a heavy blow in this scene. His promise that Alderaan will be spared if Leia betrays the Rebellion is a flagrant lie, and she is forced to watch as the Death Star obliterates her home. However, Leia is just as devious in her own way, offering Dantooine as a false lead. Even in her anguish she continues to protect the Rebellion's secrets. And the power begins to slip from Tarkin's grasp.

I've often wondered how often Tarkin and Leia have encountered each other before, perhaps in the halls of the Senate. I suspect that they've had this battle of wills going on for some time. And in the end, it is Leia's cause that triumphs.

Next, the effects of Alderaan's destruction ripple throughout the Force....

Comments

[krpalmer]

"Things may get away from us" was also brought up during the Imperial conference earlier in the movie, where someone asks how to control the galaxy's star systems without the Senate (to which Tarkin's answer is "fear"). In contemplating this, though, I did get to thinking that while Leia is throwing "your fall is inevitable" at Tarkin in response to him preparing to execute her, there's still the question of whether she sees herself as "merely the inevitable product of historical forces," or whether she supposed she had to act because "if not me, then who?"... Maybe I'm forced to admit this because of my distaste for what can seem an occasional comment about the Disney Space Movies presenting good and evil rising in response to each other in a finally bleak roundabout. (I am conscious, too, that to bring this up too often might have the same effect on other hypothetical people as someone throwing smug "prequel put-downs" into "original trilogy" discussions would have on me...)

Anyway, it is interesting to consider previous run-ins between Leia and Tarkin; I suppose I hadn't really thought about them before (even with that old story by Fernwithy about early meetings between Leia and Vader, one of the first small points of hope towards a "saga viewpoint" I ran into.)

[matril]

I really don't mind the idea of history being a cycle of uprisings and downfalls -- my primary issue with the Disney films is how they don't allow the cycle to move fully back into the positive (at least a generation of peace and prosperity; is that so much to ask?) before shoving it back down to bleakness. It feels forced and unnatural. Not to mention that there's no significant variation in that bleakness, when variation is really the only thing that makes cyclical storytelling of any interest at all. But I'm probably getting way off track.

I'd really like to see more of Leia-as-Senator (apparently I'm in the minority of those who love the Senate scenes in the prequels), a young idealist struggling to make change through official channels before it became clearly futile and forced her entirely into the extremes of the Rebellion.