“Yeah, exactly,” Cy enthuses. “Like the rebels! His ministry and my political instincts fueled by enough money, can you imagine what we could do in Christ’s name?”
In this particular bit, Wake Up Dead Man reveals in the most humorous way how no matter how explicitly clear the letter of an allegedly sacred text might be, people will take from it what they will—especially if it fits their own personal bias or worldview. Which in this case is a failed politician who eagerly wants to build a career around hate and taking that thing everyone loved as a kid—be it God or Star Wars—and twisting it around in his head until he remembers one of Darth Vader’s most famous lines, “Join me, and together we can rule the galaxy as father and son!,” as something the rebels said. Because everyone thinks they’re the good guys.
Obviously, this is taken to a comedic and unlikely extreme where a doofus confuses Darth Vader with Luke Skywalker’s plucky band of heroes. But the human need to always rationalize their perspective, as well as the growing modern trend of general media illiteracy in the 21st century, has likely played a role in how legions of self-styled Star Wars fans can grow up idolizing the rebels, and yet support political policies, rhetoric, and iconography that better align with Darth Vader and the Empire.
In Johnson’s own personal experience, he can probably recall well how folks who referred to themselves as “the rebellion” online, took personal joy out of bullying an Asian woman they detested for being a supporting character in The Last Jedi off of social media. At the time in 2018, Johnson commented on Twitter, “On social media a few unhealthy people can cast a big shadow on the wall, but over the past 4 years I’ve met lots of real fellow SW fans. We like & dislike stuff but we do it with humor, love & respect.”
While I cannot ascertain if Johnson’s opinion has changed at all in the seven and a half years since he made that comment, my suspicion is he is aware that there are plenty of people who love Star Wars—whether or not that includes The Last Jedi—who do so with enthusiasm and goodwill. With grace. And then there are others who cast those big shadows which have only loomed larger over this past decade; the ones that willfully take things out of context and misinterpret even tenets they claim they cherish in order to “own” those they view as their tribal enemies.
Take Cy Draven and the rest of Wake Up Dead Man. In the climactic moment of the movie when Benoit Blanc is giving his delicious detective speech to reveal who’s, indeed, done it, he pauses. For reasons of tact and compassion, he does not immediately reveal who the killer is. To which, the always-video-recording Cy asks, “Is your conclusion, Benoit Blanc, that Monsignor Wicks rose from the dead? That it was a miracle?”
