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Star Wars: Resistance Is What You Get When You Treat Star Wars Like ‘Kids Stuff’
Asking who Star Wars is “for,” is often the start of a very unpleasant discussion. George Lucas, the man from whose mind sprang much of this galaxy so far away, has been inconsistent on this. He usually says that his films were fantasy pictures for kids with laser swords and a good message. However, other times, he compares the movies to heavy, anti-authoritarian science fiction, like 1984. And a warning about creeping fascism. What’s great about this, however, is that it’s both things at once. Kids of all ages can enjoy the story on a surface level. Then, when they are older, they can find deeper meanings in things that used to frustrate them, like the Ewoks’ victory over the Empire. The canon is full of stuff like this. However, the just-completed first season of Star Wars: Resistance is what this franchise looks like if you strip away everything but the stuff for the littlest kids.
Here’s the thing, I want nothing more than to like this show. It comes from people who honed their creative talents on gems like The Clone Wars and Rebels. Even though these shows are animation for children, they tell amazingly mature stories with a depth to them that rivals the best of the canon. The former is still one of the best fictional allegories to the early war on terror ever made. The latter is the story about the…
