LinLog

Earlier this year, before the entire world caught fire, I posted a review of Solo: A Star Wars Story.  (Spoiler: it stinks.)  In that post, I mentioned that Solo raised the topic of droid slavery (which, if droids are actually sentient, is the only word for it) but failed to do anything substantive with it.  Well, it turns out somebody made a video on that very topic.

The video is quite interesting and well argued.  It gets into a bit of the sci-fi history of using robots as an allegory for various sorts of social oppression and digs deep into the specifics of how droids are depicted in Start Wars.  Its a very good analysis with lots of examples drawn from the various films, including Solo.

The narrator makes an interesting point that the Star Wars franchise in general has tried to have it both ways on droids.  On the one hand, the heroic droids like R2-D2 and C-3PO are clearly intended to be fully sentient characters, with feelings, desires, and distinct personalities.  But on the other hand, all those expendable droids, like the battle droids from the prequel trilogy, seem intended to be viewed as "just machines".  That allows the Jedi and Naboo to slaughter bad guys by the thousands without any blood or mess moral consequences.

I'd often been confused by that.  Given the various depictions, it wasn't always clear how droid sentience was supposed to be viewed.  It's nice to know that, apparently, it's not just me being thick - its equivocation in the stories themselves.