‘I always wanted to join the Rebel Alliance and blow up the Death Star’: Aesthetic assemblages of terrorism and state terror in Star Wars

This article explores how terrorism and state terror are framed in Star Wars across the franchise’s evolving stewardship, from George Lucas’s original vision to Disney’s corporate authorship. By transposing the communicative notion of ‘terrorism as theatre’ to the cinematic realm of ‘terror on-screen’, it examines how, across these periods, both the Galactic Empire and the opposing rebels commit acts that are terroristic, but that these acts are contextualized and mediated on-screen by the particular aesthetic ascribed to each group. The author argues that the spectacular terrorist event intersects with the social milieu to create an aesthetic assemblage that performs ideological work, mediating the extent to which such groups may be seen as either ‘terrorists’ or ‘freedom fighters’. This dynamic of aesthetic and ideological framing is evident across the stewardship of both Lucas and Disney.