"Never make a lunch date with your 'evil overlord'"

[krpalmer]

In a recent discussion I noticed about an "evil overlord" declared less than overwhelming, there was a comment that, with the impressive variety, the heroes should spend most of their time either fleeing from or captured by them, that an "evil overlord" is most memorable when distant and somewhat enigmatic. That seemed quite fair and "useful" to me, and yet there was also a comment tossed in how one example of a significant "confrontation at last" was "Luke going to Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back"... The conversation continuing from that seemed at once to turn in a direction my usual self-preserving caution made me draw back from, anticipating yet very unwilling to smack into seemingly familiar complaints about "the diminishing of Darth Vader since then" and even thinking ungrateful thoughts about how there just might seem to be some similarities between thinking Darth Vader just the usual mistreated "evil overlord" and obsessing over Boba Fett because his costume looks interesting...

The simple and obvious rejoinder, though, seems to me to be "Darth Vader isn't 'the' evil overlord; the Emperor is..." It does seem to me that Palpatine remains quite enigmatic (and, perhaps, his two other apprentices as well); I could say "he does things because he can do them," but that's that. As well, I began to think back to a good point that matril once made. With that said, all the comments did seem to focus on The Empire Strikes Back itself, where Vader isn't reporting to anyone at least on a frequent basis. Even there, though, I found myself wondering if he offers not "power" to Luke but just the chance at it, and that aiming for his son among all the Rebels is a sort of "private" project... and then considering that if some of the adulation of The Empire Strikes Back is because "the good guys realise things are going to be tougher than they'd thought," then there might yet be something interesting about even its declared "evil overlord" having his own complications. Of course, if one thing's abundantly clear to me, it's that there are a good number of people who can't bear the thought of having to face "changes" to what they decided about Star Wars a long time ago.

Comments

[lazypadawan.livejournal.com]

I remember that evil overlord meme from the late '90s. Funny stuff.

Very interesting point about how both the good and bad guys find things complicated in TESB. Never really thought about that.

[krpalmer.livejournal.com]

I saw the first "Evil Overlord Lists" around that time too, although as the whole thing seemed to get an air of "directives" and "prescriptions" maybe I began to find it a little less fun. The point about "complications" came to me at the last moment, so to speak, and I'm not completely certain I understand just what it means, although maybe it does connect to those who were happy to think of Darth Vader as just "the heavy of heavies" and even have developed objections to him being presented as a "tragic figure."