Star Wars on Trial (51 page)

GAINST A BACKGROUND of stars and X-wing fighters, Luke holds his lightsaber aloft while Leia crouches below him, brandishing a gun: two tough heroes ready to fight the evil Empire. In my love of Star Wars, I spent endless hours longing for "a galaxy far, far away," replaying the movie in my head, studying every detail of the poster on my wall. It seemed to embody the excitement of the movie and its strong heroes, Luke and Leia. But as the Star Wars saga unfolded, I became troubled. While George Lucas brilliantly combined diverse ideas and influences to create something startling and inspiring, one aspect of the movies didn't live up to the rest. I began to notice something new about the poster on my wall. Luke above, superior; Leia below, inferior. It seemed to reflect the treatment of the characters in the movies. The problem is not that the women are supporting characters, though they are. Even a supporting character can be striking and compelling. Han Solo is such a powerful, heroic figure, he nearly eclipses Luke. But the women in Star Wars are not the memorable figures they could be. Compared to their male counterparts, they are inconsistent and underdeveloped. There is a clear lack of focus on these characters on the part of George Lucas and the other writers, a tendency to sacrifice the female characters to make the males look better, and a decided inclination to reduce initially powerful women to inaction and irrelevance. Leia and Amidala, as the two most prominent female figures in the films, exemplify these weaknesses.

Both Leia and Amidala first appear to be strong, heroic women and striking characters. In Episode IV, Leia is a leader in the struggle against powerful, evil forces, a shrewd woman as fast with a gun as she is with a sharp retort. Leia's commitment is unmatched. When we first see her, she is risking her life for the Rebellion. Even when her entire planet is threatened, she refuses to betray the cause. Leia appears to be a key figure in the Rebellion. She is carrying the plans to the Death Star, the most important intelligence the Rebels could hope to have. Darth Vader, one of the top figures in the Empire, is pursuing her and seems to know her well. Leia is also a strong and intelligent leader. Her goal is to get the plans to her father and the Rebels. To do that, she cleverly hides the data in Artoo, directing him where to go, fights the stormtroopers, defies Vader, lies to Tarkin and resists torture. When Luke and Han rescue her from the Death Star, Leia saves them all by instantly coming up with a plan and leading them into the garbage chute. For Leia is not only a leader but a woman of action. She can shoot a blaster, and she's not hesitant to do so. But perhaps the most striking aspect of Leia's personality is her smart mouth: "When you came in here, didn't you have a plan for getting out?" When it comes to insults, Leia can give as good as she gets. She's an energetic and impressive presence, bold, brash, powerful and driven.

As we look more closely at the trilogy, though, we see hints of weaknesses in the character, weaknesses that increase until eventually they drain all strength, coherence and believability out of her. While a welldeveloped character can withstand some inconsistencies-it's human nature to be inconsistent, after all-the inconsistencies within Leia are so great, they destroy any sense of character cohesion.

Throughout Episode IV, Leia appears to be a committed freedom fighter with a clear goal: overthrowing the Empire. Yet in Episode V, Leia's personal determination to fight this fight is undermined at Cloud City. She should be desperately trying to re-join the Rebellion, help them reconstitute their crippled forces and find a new base. Yet she makes no attempt to contact the Rebels or to expedite work on the Falcon. She could have ordered Threepio, Chewie or Han to stay with the ship and oversee the repairs. Or she could have made an ally among the mechanics of Cloud City, offering triple pay for overtime. Instead, she leaves it to the men to work things out, while she changes clothes, fixes her hair, frets about the missing Threepio and paces back and forth in her room in the clouds, like an ill-tempered Rapunzel. She seems less interested in rejoining the Rebellion than in nitpicking and proving that Han's decision to bring them to Cloud City was a bad one.

We again see a lack of commitment to her goals when she encounters the Ewoks. When she wakes up in the forest and finds Wicket, she instantly gives up any hope of rejoining her team. Why doesn't she try to figure out the right direction and start walking? That's what Luke does. A dedicated fighter, in the critical moments before battle, should do anything to get where she needs to be. Instead, she follows Wicket, making no attempt to question him about the location of the Imperial shield generator. When Luke and Han at last find her, she appears to have been hanging out in comfort at the Ewok village, changing her clothes and combing her hair. What soldier lets down her hair before the big battle? What happened to the can-do, determined woman who yelled, "Into the garbage chute, flyboy"? Her actions and attitude are completely at odds with what they ought to be. It would have been simple enough for the writers to change these things, to keep Leia's commitment to her cause strong and consistent, but this clearly was not a priority.

In addition to her commitment, Leia's importance is also undermined. Leia initially appears to be a powerful figure, a princess and senator and the bearer of key Rebel intelligence. Over the course of the trilogy, though, her importance dwindles and her power evaporates before our eyes.