Obviously, both Night Watch and Star Wars portray the ideas of good vs evil. The films share many similarities in their presentations of good and evil as drawn from human experiences and emotions. For both the Siths and the Dark Others, the main source of power is raw negative emotions. Light Others and the Jedi draw their power from positive emotions. It seems that the "mission" of Light Others is to protect humans and make their lives better.
One of the major differences between the films is that the Light Others and Dark Others seem to be, for the most part, getting along. Gesser and Zavulon are seen together multiple times, not only in battle scenes, but just sort of hanging out and discussing the future of the world. Much of the events of Night Watch seem to be left up to some sort of ancient prophecy, whereas Star Wars seems to be more about choosing your own destiny. Well, to be fair, everyone has to choose Light Other vs Dark Other or Jedi vs Sith, but the actual conflicts in Night Watch seem to be following a pattern that the leaders are expecting.
The major difference is that in Star Wars, we are supposed to always be rooting for the "good" guys, who are of course the Light Side of the Force. Night Watch is more about examining the concepts of good and evil and calling into question whether they can ever truly be separate. Anton seems to be breaking the thousand-year-old Truce more than any Dark Other (at least in the first movie), so how can he even call himself a Light Other? He is challenged by a few Dark Others with this very question a couple of times. Star Wars is much more formulaic while Night Watch asks the viewer to question the Light side just as much as we are questioning the Dark side. After all, the Dark Others are technically more honest if they can admit that they each chose the Dark side because it is easier to destroy the lightness in the world than it is to destroy the darkness within yourself. Yegor's choice to be a Dark Other seems perfectly rational given the options, whereas Darth Vader is clearly looked down upon for having chosen the Dark Side after being on the Light Side and noticing that there might be corruption in the Jedi forces. No character in Night Watch could be described as fundamentally good or fundamentally evil--not even Gesser and Zavulon, who are supposed to be the leaders of each other their sides.
Your post is very interesting. Do you think the film might also be a commentary on post-Communist Russia itself? That the best political system is actually a truce between systems?
ReplyDeleteMaeve, I liked what you had to say but I disagree because Star Wars does also have some mixture of sides. This shows in the end when Darth Vader is dying and in the end actually helps Luke defeat the Siths. Darth Vader was not always evil just like the Light and Dark Others.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that Star Wars is more about "choosing your own destiny." First off, the events of Star Wars are all based around a prophecy: that a chosen one would bring balance to the force. Whether or not that chosen one is Anakin Skywalker/Vader as originally believed or Luke Skywalker is actually up for debate, but the event happened. While I do agree that there is a strong bias towards the light side, people do not simply choose dark or light. People who are on the light side of the force are mostly Jedi who were raised on those values since infancy, but the dark side joins through temptation. When Anakin joins the dark side and becomes Darth Vader, it is not just a simple decision, Palpatine had been tempting Anakin his entire life. While the Jedi order being "corrupted" might not necessarily be true as Anakin saw it, some of it's flaws were pointed out. Anakin's natural human emotions of love, passion, and desire which are stifled by the Jedi order are what directly cause him to turn to the dark side. This is one reason why the Star Wars universe (especially if only looking at the movies) is a lot more complex than people make it out to be.
ReplyDelete