I married a gigantic nerd and am raising a bunch more, despite all of my good intentions. I have tried to climb on board: I enjoy Doctor Who a good bit, I can get down with an RPG, and even watched that one really really really long hobbit movie. I can pass. I know key phrases and can get obscure IT Crowd references, but there is one fandom I cannot abide: Star Wars.
I hate Star Wars. Even as a kid. Even when they added adorable ewoks. EVEN WITH BILLY DEE WILLIAMS. I hate Star Wars. One day I was thinking about how much money I had spent on various Stars and their various Wars and I suddenly realized that, not only do I know far too much for someone who actively loathes and avoids these movies, but that the solution to all of my problems was patently obvious: Open adoption could have prevented every Star War from Star Warring! Intrigued? Here are my theories:
1. Lord Vader
Apparently Darth (I call him Darth, because he is the only character I enjoy) was somehow virgin-birthed by The Force and raised as a Spunky Street Rat, a la Aladdin. If he had been raised by a family committed to discussing his origin story, showing him how to handle the trauma that must inevitably come from being created out of Jedi Dust and being unceremoniously dumped into a sand pit or something, and giving him a safe place to explore his feelings, he may have never felt the need to steal flying sand rocket things and join the dark side. (Which he should have called The Darth Side (TM) because that would have been an amazing licensing opportunity for him.)
This happier, calmer scenario would have made a much less compelling movie, one that probably never would have gotten made, ensuring I never had to watch it thirty-eleven-million times. THIS IS A WIN FOR ME. (Also, no Jar Jar, which I am told is a win for nerds.)
2. Luke
Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen hid the truth from Luke, which is a super shady move, especially in light of all of the studies which have been done regarding openness in adoption. Maybe his incessant need to whine about everything would have been assuaged when he realized that, truly, there was some trauma in his backstory that he couldn’t pinpoint. Less whining Luke=WIN FOR EVERYONE.
Old Crazy Hermit Meth Lab Cooking Ben Kenobi knew the truth. While it certainly is unethical to out an adoptee, he could have acted as a mentor, maybe intervened, and convinced the family to understand that every child deserves to know their heritage. At the very least, Luke would have known that his genetic history was most likely allllll types of wonky from virgin force birthing. (These things are important for the future. I mean, that’s got to affect his prostate, and he has NO idea, all holed up in the wilderness or whatever.)
Luke’s guardians, for all intents and purposes his adoptive parents, kept him in the dark about his birth parents (I mean he called his folks Aunt and Uncle, so already there is a disconnect in basic parenting) and actively tried to prevent him from finding them. This directly caused Aunt Beru (Short for Beruvian?) and Uncle Owen to get killed by Stormtroopers and Luke to run away from his education at the Imperial Military Academy, join an insurgency, kill millions of people, lose a hand, depose a government, and then bail out on the shambles of society left in its wake. Furthermore, the search for Luke caused another war against the reorganized government and ecological, economic, and social disaster on a epic scale.
OPEN ADOPTION WOULD HAVE PREVENTED ALL THAT AND AT LEAST THREE HOURS AND ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS OF MY LIFE. And we haven’t even gotten to the incest.
TL:DR: Open adoption would have either saved the galaxy or caused Luke to have a massive interest in his father early on. This would have led to him joining the Dark Side and blowing everything up. Either way, no movies=WIN FOR ME.
3. Princess Leia and Creepy Making Outs
I fully believe that Leia, who suffers no fools, if she had been given full disclosure and knew who her birth parents were, would have channeled allllll the daddy issues in the world into one big blaster, hidden it in her buns, and shot Vader when he came in to taunt her that time she was a prisoner in the Death Star. Also she would have shaken Luke by his karate uniform, told him to stop whining, and they never would have made out like Flowers in the Attic. Once again, boring story, never gets made=WIN FOR ME.
So there you have it. Mathematical proof that open adoption improves everything. Send your hate mail to George Lucas. As for me, I’m off to make sure my daughter doesn’t cut her father’s hand off with some light saber, and that my sons don’t sneak off to the Tosche Station to get power converters. And cry silently until May fifth when this long national nightmare is over.
