Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic Both Blurs And Upholds The Franchise’s Age-Old Binaries

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic turns 20 today on July 15, 2023. Below, we’ll see how the film challenges and subverts some of Star Wars’ most common tropes.

Star Wars is preoccupied with the blurry self at the intersection of machine and memory, metal and flesh. Darth Vader is the clearest example of this. Anakin’s descent into the Dark Side becomes real with his transformed body. Obi-Wan has stated that he is “more machine than human”, a fact that is exploited in his declared impossibility of salvation. Evil in Star Wars is associated with disabled bodies, especially bodies that were once flesh, muscle, and nerves, but are now wired with circuits.

Droids cannot bear the moral weight of metal because they cannot be “force sensitive” like humans. However, they are still seen as inferior. Droids provide slave labor and possess heroes and villains alike. In A New Hope, it is established within his first 20 minutes that the droid’s memories are periodically erased. Luke’s uncle Owen suggests it casually by asking Luke to take out the trash. There are entire classes in the Star Wars universe whose memory abilities are entirely dependent on the people who own those memories. Both inside and outside fiction, the perceived personality of an entity depends on whether you are made of metal.

Much of Knights of the Old Republic’s narrative engine revolves around the simple dichotomy between good and evil, machine and human, but at the same time confronts them. In retrospect, it may seem strange because KOTOR feels like it’s trying to return to the good old days of Star Wars. In that sense, it is clearly non-destructive. It offers many of the same thrills and plot points as the original film. An evil empire rises to threaten a group of resistance fighters on the run. Your hero picks up his two brave robots, an astromech and protocol his droid. The climax involves the destruction of a powerful space station. Most famously, of course, the plot relies on twists about identity.

Still, KOTOR makes use of established formulas. Han Solo in this game is a teenage girl, and C-3P0 isn’t a weirdly coded butler, but a murder-obsessed assassin robot, her fan-favorite HK-47. That identity twist isn’t about heritage, it’s about self. The player’s identity is revealed to be the Sith Lord Revan, who has had his memories erased. Previously thought dead, Revan was actually brainwashed by the Jedi, hoping they would be the key to overthrowing the Sith Empire.

This twist has a decidedly strange nature. Revan was the name chosen apart from both Jedi and Sith until he turned to the dark side. Consider Revan’s mask. This is the device that allows KOTOR’s twist, but it also renders the mask formless and cleanly unrecognizable until the Jedi removes it. The game cannot take that into account. ”weird horrorBorrow the phrase and framework “”. Revan on the light side has no room for feeling betrayed, and Revan on the dark side has no motives other than petty revenge. Revan’s choice is to re-integrate into the system that rejected them, or become the Viper chieftain of the Space Empire.

With the difference between light and dark in parody looming, this is not a compelling choice. Physically threaten shopkeepers to lower or quit prices, make peace treaties with Tusken Raiders or exterminate them, pledge allegiance to the Empire on Korriban, or pledge allegiance to a divided Republic. Buried in the game’s subtext, however, the difference between darkness and light can sometimes be felt slightly. In one of his many species of twists in the game, one of the party’s members he describes “Dark His Jedi Interrogation Techniques” that can “wipe memories and destroy identities themselves”. I’m here. However, only regular Jedi actually use these methods in the KOTOR stories. Later, when her companion Bastila was tortured and joined the Dark Side, her memories and self-consciousness remained intact. Yet neither side is afraid to brutally use power to reshape the other and to strengthen their position through coercion.

The equality of darkness and light is common with the first part. Stormtroopers (A New Hope) and Jedi (The Phantom Menace) both appear on Tatooine for their own esoteric purposes and then disappear. Neither intends to free slaves. Mace Windu claims that Jedi are not warriors. He leads the battalion an hour and a half after the movie’s run time. The dichotomy between flesh and metal is likewise questioned. Both clones and droids serve the same purpose. Both are manufactured and die for the manufacturer. Attack of the Clones offers him one of the series’ most memorable moments of visual poetry. While physical clones are created in completely cold and unnatural environments, battle droids are created on mountainsides covered in dirt.

Star Wars ruthlessly blurs machines and humans, even though it supports the best theories of human nature. In Return of the Jedi, Luke recognizes his father’s humanity in a severed, glowing hand, a robotic limb just like himself. In KOTOR, Revan restores HK-47’s memories, just as HK-47 later reconstructs their own, but does not fully regain them. Revan’s mind is as malleable as a droid. In a similar development, both endings of KOTOR are essentially the same, with Revan celebrating his victory in front of a crowd. The main differences are the colors of the flags being flown and the music being played.

Star Wars these days tends entirely towards the most conservative and restorative elements of fantasy. The Mandrorian and The Book of Boba Fett are guided by the same vacant mythologization and action-figure attitude. Even The Last Jedi provoked massive misguided outrage and received somewhat unusual acclaim for its overthrow, but ultimately the series’ mythical yet consumerist affirming power. The film ends with the children acting out a scene from the movie using their homemade Luke Skywalker toys.

It’s easy to think of Star Wars as a nice, glittery trap. The sheer size of its cultural imports, its frequent barren worlds, and its stubborn insistence on compromising but easy binaries can sometimes feel suffocating. It seems impossible to imagine popular sci-fi that actively questions and dismantles its assumptions, whether it bears the Star Wars name or not. Revan waits for me. I want a better world for them, and for all the Machine Men in Star Wars, where memory and ego are unconditional, they can’t be stolen. But like everyone else, Revan’s destiny is only his. It’s about fulfilling the roles given to you by others and doing what you have to do.