When Luke Skywalker was looking at the duel moons of Tattooine and whining about how all of his friends had left to become pilots in the rebel army, Princess Leia Organa was getting stuff done. In A New Hope, when she ends up in a battle with the Galactic Empire’s mothership, after stealing plans for the brand new Death Star, she is barely nineteen years old.
At nineteen, she is a spy, an ambassador for the
planet Alderaan, a princess, a member of the Imperial Senate, and a rebel
leader. She uncovers information for the rebels to use against the empire via
her ambassadorial status, fights and kills who she must, and deliberately
pursues any mission that could lead them to victory. It would have been easy
for her ignore the Empire, live a semi-peaceful life on her home planet, have gotten
married, and had babies. That would have been the end of it. Because of her
bravery, sense of duty, compassion, and indomitable will to fix what was broken
with the galaxy and help the people in it, she started a series of events that ultimately
led to the downfall of the Empire.
Her ship is attacked by Darth Vader in the opening
scene of A New Hope, and her soldiers
desperately try to fight off the Stormtoopers who, well, storm inside. Leia
knows before the others do that the ship will fall. It’s possible she’s seen
her soldiers’ aim before. Knowing her fate is sealed, she thinks fast and
rationally, playing to her strengths and the weakness of others.
While the galaxy thinks of droids as nothing more than
a step above slave labor, Leia sees them as allies. She decides to place her trust
in one; her decision to believe in a tiny droid with spunk saves countless
lives. She downloads the blueprints of the Death Star to R2D2’s memory bank and
records a message, pleading with Obi Wan Kenobi to take the plans to her people
and help the alliance fight once more.
The audience is given a glimpse of Leia’s grit for the
first time as she records the message calmly and with dignity, even as her ship
is overrun by enemy forces. She is rushed and cornered, but she is still a
princess. Once recorded, she sends R2D2 on his way and prepares a distraction
to keep them from looking at the droids too hard. She fires on the Stormtoopers,
well aware that they could kill her for it.
She is subdued and taken to Darth Vader. He has
already snapped the neck of one man, but she does not back down when she faces
him. She is definitely afraid of him, but she keeps her chin lifted and her
spine straight. It is indicative of the Leia to come in the following fight
against the Empire.
The majority of hard choices in the Star Wars series fall on Leia. Though raised to lead, she doesn’t settle for peaceful complacency. She chooses
to fight. While Luke is depending on Han, Chewbacca, and Obi Wan to get him out
of the toughest jams, she’s figuring her own way to survive, sassing the leader
of the Imperial Army, defying expectations, and enduring torture and mind-altering
drugs. Even Darth Vader is surprised by her ability to resist his methods of
torture. Her grit means that he is forced into an alternative means of getting
information from her – such is the force of her mind.
Still feeling the effects of the torture, she is
pulled into the Death Star’s command center and shown the power of its weapons.
The capability is staggering, and she is given a choice: reveal the rebel base
or watch her people die.
Leia is met with an impossible choice. Revealing the
rebel base ends all hope, and will most likely result in double the casualties over
the years, or watch her planet burn. She is smart enough to know that the
commander of the ship, Tarkin, is not to be trusted. She gives him the location
of a long-abandoned base, and he taunts her with her trusting nature. He blows
up her planet as she is forced to watch in horror.
Watching your planet, your parents, your loved ones,
and your people disappear in a flash of light is enough to send anyone down
into madness. While her anguish is intense, the violence perpetuated against
her people only hardens her resolve. She knows that whenever she gets a chance,
she will return the favor.
And she does.
In perfect symmetry to what she lost at the beginning
of the movie, her blueprints of the Death Star, battle plan, and command of the
rebel army ensure that the Death Star, and everyone on it, blows up in much the
same way her planet did. This only happens after she actively takes part in her
own rescue, makes the call to flee down the garbage chute, and singlehandedly
assures that the group of would-be heroes doesn’t die trapped on the detention
level.
Every second of her prison escape, she maintains her
wit, fire, and driving will to accomplish the mission and end the empire. She
is the ultimate soldier and spy.
While the majority of the second movie focuses on her
budding love interest with Han Solo, Lucas never makes her into a true damsel
in distress. If Han is in trouble, so is she; if he has a pistol to fire or a
surge of anger, so does she. She is held by the empire yet again, after Lando
Calrissian's betrayal. She is forced to watch as the man she is falling in love
with is brutalized and tortured for no apparent reasons. She offers him all of
her strength and tenderness, knowing full well that there are not very many
options for escape. Her only hope is Luke, and Vader has set a trap for him.
Her lack of hope does not prevent her from putting on a brave face and consoling
Han.
To further her anguish, Han is used as a test subject
for the carbon freezing chamber. As she realizes her total love for him, he is
pulled away from her. They are separated by the war, by Vader’s evil, and the
betrayal of a friend, but they have finally found their way to one another. It
is an eye-opening moment for someone who has always depended on herself. She is
no longer scared by the prospect of loving a scoundrel - maybe because she
realizes that she’s a bit of a scoundrel as well. She makes hard calls, and she
makes them efficiently. Han is no different.
Leia is also blessed with compassion, heart, and love.
While steely on the outside, she loves completely. She sees to the heart of the
matter, and knows truths whether she should know them or not. She sees to the
heart of Han, and it makes an already strong woman stronger.
She can lead an army and love a man with equal
fortitude and heart.
While a big deal is made of Luke’s training, it is
Leia’s empathy and open mindedness that saves his life. She feels the threads
of the force without guidance or a tiny Yoda to give her vague advice and
impractical tasks to complete. Luke may have called to her, but Leia was the
one who had her ears open and mind willing. In the midst of her personal heartbreak,
she became a hero yet again and saved the life of a friend.
In Return of the
Jedi, it is Leia who first goes into Jabba the Hutt’s stronghold, posing as
a mercenary, and it is she who finds Han, alive and well, if not still frozen
in carbonite. Taking such a risk was surely advised against by her equals in
the rebel army, but she did it anyways. Leia loves with her whole being, and no
risk is too big to save the love of her life.
She’s captured, publicly humiliated, and further
tortured by having to sit at the tail of a creature, who potentially has some
of the galaxy’s most rank farts, in a metal bikini and a chain around her neck.
A princess has been turned into a slave, yet she endures the indignity and
waits for the right time to act.
When her moment comes, she strangles Jabba to death with
the very chain he sought to humiliate and shame her with. Her weakness becomes
her weapon, and she wields it wearing only a bikini. She is violent and
murderous, but she is also all woman. Nothing is done to hide either side of
her, and it is glorious.
Leia recovers from the chaffing caused by the bikini
and goes on to help organize an attack on the Empire. They are finally taking
the fight to them, to disable the newest Death Star being built and do as much
damage as they can against the empire’s armada. While the other heroes end up
captured, she manages to use her kindness and compassion to convince the Ewoks
that she is a friend. The others are brought into the camp in chains; she is
brought in and pampered as a princess.
When the bombshell that she’s Luke’s sister is
dropped, she does not freak out. Her instincts, her connection to the force,
and the fact that kissing him was probably a lot like kissing a brother, all
tell her the truth long before the words leave Luke’s mouth. She knows because
she listens, and she listens because she is a good leader.
Then, because there is no rest when staging an
uprising, she sets aside the personal revelation and goes to war. She fights
with Han and the Ewoks to defeat the Stormtoopers that have invaded the Ewoks’
ancestral home, preventing mass genocide, gentrification (probably), and the Empire from gaining a stronger foothold in the galaxy. Her victory is won in
the most primitive of places, without starships or a large army at their backs,
and it has a good deal to do with Leia’s bravery.
She takes part in the defeat of the Empire, undergoes a
full recovery from her injuries, and then immediately goes back to work
repairing the galaxy, helping her people, and leading as best she can.
All of this is done before she’s twenty-three.
Leia may not have been the main protagonist of the Star Wars series, but without her, Luke would still be whining about his fate on
Tattooine, Han would be dead ten times over, and the Death Star would be
keeping all the planets in the galaxy in a constant state of fear and
oppression.
She is a hero, and just the woman the galaxy needed.
0 comments:
Post a Comment