The Politics of the Star Wars Franchise - A Star Wars Special

A Storm of Spoilers

Dave Gonzales and Neil Miller

Tv & Film, After Shows, Tv Reviews

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 23 July 2025

⏱️ 102 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

It's A STORM OF SPOILERS: A STAR WARS SPECIAL!

This week, Dave and Neil take a moment to think about how George Lucas' Star Wars trilogies and the content produced by Disney after its acquisition are in discussion with the American political climate of the 1970s, 80s, 2000s, and mid-2010s. They end by speculating on what Star Wars character aligns with their political journeys and wondering if Grogu has any politics.

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*FORMAT*
00:00 - Welcome and Housekeeping
04:37 - Brought to you by Indivisible!
06:06 - When we say “Star Wars is political” what does that mean?
18:24 - In the Original Trilogy is America the Empire?
24:51 - Is Empire Strikes Back about your father's generation trying to get you to buy in?
30:34 - How much can we read the existence of the Jedi as a cautionary tale?
37:40 - What does Return of the Jedi say if Anakin can be "forgiven" by his son
44:06 - Was Naboo a false flag (yes)?
51:42 - How did Attack of the Clones become about The Iraq War despite being written in 2000?
1:01:18 - Is Darth Vader George Bush?
1:07:50 - The Fandom Menace/Gamergate/MAGA?
1:21:48 - Does Grogu have any politics?
1:29:43 - Which Star Wars character represents your political mindset?

(Please note some timecode might slightly change depending on the dynamic ads inserted)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Beware, spoilerphobes. You have stumbled into a storm of spoilers, a Star Wars special,
0:05.0	where we will join thousands of previously written think pieces and boldly suggest
0:10.0	that Star Wars is a story world full of politics. There are political metaphors all over the place,
0:16.0	even involving the Space Wizards. When did this all start? How did George Lucas accidentally write himself
0:21.4	into relevance with the prequel trilogy? We're going to answer those questions by asking some
0:25.9	different questions. Be aware that we're mostly focusing on the movies, but discussion can
0:29.7	rapidly expand to include any Star Wars media like interviews with George Lucas and Star Wars
0:34.8	the Clone Wars Season 3, Episode 10, Heroes on both sides.
0:37.7	We're not ruining, at least not with this podcast.
0:40.7	It's enrichment time.
0:42.4	Hello, I'm Dave Gonzalez, and I'm a Sith.
0:44.9	And I'm Neil Miller, and I'm a smuggler who doesn't want to be part of all this nonsense,
0:48.9	but I'm getting sucked in anyway.
0:51.4	And welcome back to a storm of spoilers before we get started today, just letting you know
0:58.0	what's going to happen on this feed, which you are hopefully subscribed to in your podcast
1:03.0	devices. We're going to take a break next week and then come back on the 6th of August with our
1:09.2	Alien Earth preview special. That's right. We are going
1:12.9	to be watching Alien Earth. It airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Hulu, starting on the 12th.
1:19.9	And our podcast will continue to come out, as you might have guessed, with the August 6th deadline
1:24.8	on Wednesdays. So we could give you that snap reaction to whatever Noah
1:30.4	Holly's cooking up over there in that franchise world.
1:33.6	The preview special and the Alien Earth episodes will see the return of the Calm and Storm
	...

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