Zoe Williams, writing for The Guardian:
By Attack of the Clones, three years later in 2002, the Jedi have a kind of UN blue helmets mandate – “You must realise there aren’t enough Jedi to protect the Republic. We are keepers of the peace, not soldiers,” says Mace Windu, apropos some urgent battle or other. Now we’re in a postmodern, post-heroism landscape, where good and evil still exist, but good is on the clock and evil has all day.
It was noted in 1977 that A New Hope, both in its tone and in its reception, represented a kind of wish-fulfilment after Vietnam, the rebuilding of shared moral absolutes after a visceral pasting. Two decades on, a sad adaptation to a new reality had taken place, where the living incarnation of all that is noble – the Jedi – are critically limited by the rather limp and indecisive democracy that governs them. This is inevitable, if the highest beings are aristocrats but the highest stated value is democracy. The ideas that all citizens share the dignity of being born equal, and the best among them are more equal than the others, are simply incompatible. This explains why the goodies are suddenly so complicated while the baddies’ motivation is intact and as strong as ever.
Some really interesting insights into the pre-Empire Republic. I liked the UN analogy.