STAR WARS

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

things were... complicated

We commence with the first movie, Star Wars (or A New Hope, as it has been re-named).
At the risk of tedium the opening scrolls of these movies deserve examination.
from the very first words our impressions and expectations are being molded:

It is a period of civil war.
Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won
their first victory against
the evil Galactic Empire.

During the battle, Rebel
spies managed to steal secret
plans to the Empire's
ultimate weapon, the Death
Star, an armored space
station with enough power to
destroy an entire planet.

Pursued by the Empire's
sinister agents, Princess
Leia races home aboard her
starship, custodian of the
stolen plans that can save
her people and restore
freedom to the galaxy...

Strong term, 'evil'.
The Rebels don't seem to be called 'good' except by implication or comparison.
The use of the socio-political term 'Rebel' and the moral qualifier 'evil' is a textbook propagandist technique, a mixing of terms.
As well, playing on our emotions with words like 'sinister' and 'evil' should not, I think, be viewed kindly.

We also get the impression that the Empire is a long-engrained social structure that is only now being torn down by a civil war.
We find out later from Kenobi that in fact the Empire is quite new, while the Old Republic lasted for "a thousand generations".
I have no idea who is supposed to be responsible for editing together the footage that comes to us in the form of this 'movie'.
Possibly it's Luke's propaganda corps after he takes power - if so, I have no idea why the opening scrolls of the movies contain such twistings of the truth and outright lies.
There can be no question that whoever the responsible party, they were sympathetic to the Jedi.

This is not a rebellion.
The rebellion already happened; the Jedi stranglehold on the galaxy was ended twenty years prior.
The war-lust of those despotic samurai thugs was ended by the royal house of Naboo who then siezed the tiller of the galaxy to bring about a new age for all, freed from the shackles of the Jedi.

This is a Counter-Rebellion; very different indeed.

Finally we're told that by saving 'her people', freedom will be restored to the entire galaxy.
This bit makes me a bit uneasy because I really don't know who Leia's 'people' are (we're never shown what the peoples of the galaxy really feel about all this).
This may be referring to her royal house.
That would be in keeping with what we see of her family's struggles and interactions throughout the movies

I can't help but wonder about the line "Princess Leia races home".
Where is 'home' for the dear little Princess? Because, as it turns out, this movie opens above her father's homeworld...