So I've been getting back into Star Wars and one thing that's irked me about it is the way the Star Wars series describes balance in the Force. The Light side of the Force is balance whereas the Dark side is corruption.
This irritates me because, despite the fact they're using words like light, darkness, and balance, the concept of the force is basically a pretentious good vs. evil concept. While using light and darkness as substitutes or symbolism for good and evil is fairly common particularly in the West, even the most basic of good and evil stories will make a distinction on why good can and should exist without evil. However, when George Lucas threw in the word balance, he effectively made his concept pretentious by making it seem more profound than it actually is.
Much of the Legends continuity somewhat resolves this issue. Gray Jedi are a faction that have a middle ground philosophy between the Jedi and the Sith, some Force users like Mace Windu and Darth Revan can utilize the dark and light sides simultaneously, and there are some dark side factions outside the Sith that use the dark side of the Force without causing imbalances. However, much of the stuff I just listed didn't exist at the time of the original trilogy and at around the release of The Force Awakens, a lot of this continuity was rendered non-canon. The only aspects of what I just listed that are still canon are Mace Windu because of the prequel movies, Darth Revan just because while the Old Republic games may not be canon, the first Darth Bane book Path of Destruction most likely is, and some dark side factions appear in The Clone Wars 3D series and Rebels. However, even the stuff that's maintained in the actual canon is neutered quite a bit.
Mace Windu's usage of the Dark side through his Lightsaber Form VII Vaapad is not expounded in any material outside the Legends canon that I'm aware of, the Dark side factions that exist in the Star Wars universe become antagonists to the Jedi by allying with the Sith or other harmful factions, and Darth Bane is really only canon because he appears as a Force Ghost in the last episode of The Clone Wars, making it unclear how much of his backstory is canon, which makes Darth Revan's canonicity somewhat unclear since we don't know if Darth Bane's acquisition of Darth Revan's holocron actually happened in the current canon.
All this sounds relatively minor, I know. If the story is just good vs. evil, why is that a problem? A lot of stories have basic good vs. evil stories with very little if any nuance to the actual conflict, and Star Wars' original trilogy also suffered from this problem. The movies especially never actually had any nuance for the good and evil, Revenge of the Sith tried to make the Sith seem appealing to Anakin for the sake of protecting his loved ones but anyone watching who can understand the context of the events knows pretty well that even if Sidious' actual choice of words is not false, his actual intent was nonetheless manipulative.
The problem isn't with the movies themselves but rather the canon built around them. Bearing in mind, even before the prequel movies came out, there was still extended canon through novels, comics, and games. Over time, this extended universe was built by a large collective of crowd sourced ideas and authors adding context to some things that elevated the series from a niche trilogy backed by a terrible trilogy to a whole universe brimming with life that only required you to tolerate a few not so great inclusions.
Say what you will about a lot of the stuff in the extended universe but the PS2 Battlefront 2 video game, the Jedi Knight PC games, and the first Force Unleashed were all welcome inclusions from my perspective. They all added perspectives and origins for things that were previously unclear. Battlefront 2's story turned the Storm Troopers from a bunch of mooks that killed the Jedi to actual soldiers who did what they were ordered to, even if it killed them inside. The first Force Unleashed game gave a lot of context to the origin of the Rebellion, and while the 2nd one did ruin the ending of the first one entirely, taken on its own, it's a pretty novel thing. And the 2nd Jedi Knight game, Jedi Outcast is some of the only extended universe stuff I've had that takes place after Return of the Jedi.
Then, George Lucas sold LucasArts and the Star Wars license to Disney, which I think is the main issue with this occurrence. Disney, J.J. Abrams, and certain writers may be adding Legends ideas to the new canon in the form of Kylo Ren as a replacement for Jacen Solo, Rey as a substitute for Luke's daughter, and Ben Kenobi's fight with Darth Maul on Tattooin being re-contextualized in Rebels, the issue with adding Legends ideas to a new canon in a new way is that, if you process and alter a presentation too much, the core of what makes it what it is will be lost over time.
There is a possibility that Rey may turn out to be Luke's daughter. She's such an overly talented Force user and quickly adapted Lightsaber duelist that it makes sense if they do that. However, this raises a number of questions with the current format. Who is her mother? Was her mother a force user? Why was Rey on Jakku with no parents her entire life?
These questions are bad enough as is but what adds more is the existence of Snoke and the involvement of Jakku. In a Star Wars Revealed video about Snoke, it's explained that Darth Sidious sent an expedition to Jakku to find a temple that would lead to the origin of the Dark side of the Force, most likely Snoke himself, and it's also known in The Force Awakens that The First Order, led by Snoke and Kylo Ren has information from the Empire's destroyed servers.
With this in mind, did Luke send his daughter to Jakku for this or a similar reason? If he sent his daughter to Jakku knowingly, her mother must also be a Force user and that their presence on Jakku somehow ties into this. Did he do this intentionally or was it a complete mistake? If he did have a daughter on Jakku and there was even an inkling of a possibility that she was still alive, why did he decide to remain in isolation instead of going to get her? I get that the Knights of Ren destroyed his Jedi Order and he secluded himself out of shame for allowing one of his own students to sink to that level but surely that shame didn't ruin his compassion.
On top of this, Kylo Ren may end up serving the same purpose that Jacen Solo did by allowing himself to be killed at Rey's hands in order to balance the Force, the same way Jacen did. However, the problem with this is the drastic difference in motivations. Jacen Solo became a Sith lord for the purposes of dealing with opponents that were outside the Force, as far as I could tell from my cursory reading of the wikia page that is a literal wall of text. He became a Sith for noble purposes and then allowed himself to be killed once he outlived his purpose, or rather was put in a situation where his purpose could not be carried any further.
By comparison, Kylo Ren doesn't have any such motivations. While his current relationship to Snoke and reasons for joining the Dark side are thus far entirely unclear, if he joined the Dark side for noble purposes, he wouldn't have killed his own father. Even if Han didn't entirely understand the situation, the fact is Kylo Ren killed his father for unknown and potentially amoral reasons when his Legends counterpart, Darth Caedus never killed his family at all.
Granted, Kylo Ren may be much more Darth Vader 2.0 than Revised Darth Caedus but that doesn't change the fact that Kylo Ren doesn't have the redemption potential of either of them. Bearing in mind, Darth Caedus joined the Dark side for noble purposes and didn't take it any further than was necessary. Darth Vader was far less sympathetic but even if Vader saving Luke from Sidious doesn't necessarily justify the deaths of all the people he killed earlier in his life, at least he performed one good deed prior to his death, and we know that he only became a Sith to protect his wife, who died later in that movie anyway.
Kylo Ren, as far as I can tell doesn't have any noble motivations to speak of and his selfish motivation right now just seems to be power for the sake of it. I hope The Last Jedi unveils more of this character but, as far as I can see, he's much more irredeemable than either of those characters.
As for Ben Kenobi's battle with Darth Maul in Star Wars Rebels, this is one thing that I think is all around better than its corresponding Legends story, but even this didn't require the extended universe to become non-canon and the story it's revising wasn't really that good in the first place.
Now, to the credit of the staff at Disney, I don't really blame them for the decision to render it all non-canon. Even if the Legends continuity has a lot of good in it, there's far too much there to be able to sift through it all to state what is canon and what isn't on a case by case basis, and the only way to maintain Legends canon for the new Trilogy would be to just have the corresponding Legends information summarized and put together in a way that would make a decent set of 3 two hour films, something that just isn't reasonable. I can imagine this kind of problem would cause anyone to look at it, state "Holy shit no!" and just decide not to deal with it. But that doesn't mean I'm happy about it.
With the Legends canon, the concept of the force is much more nuanced and similar to the concept of Yin-Yang in Buddhism with a number of different interpretations. Without the Legends canon, it just becomes a glorified good vs. evil story that doesn't even warrant discussion. And this saddens me.
For as much as I railed against it today, I do want to say that I do enjoy Star Wars, the concept of the Force, and the Jedi vs. Sith battle. However, in the state it's currently in, these things don't really warrant much in the way of discussion or philosophy. I hope we can get more to chew on at a later date but, for the moment, I'm not all that excited.
Have a wonderful day.
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