The Force Isn’t With Him: Watching My Sociopathic Friend Experience Star Wars
I hadn’t expected Star Wars to intrigue him. After all, X is not the type to be swept away by tales of good versus evil, where rebels clash with empires, and heroes discover the latent powers within. No, X lives for precision, logic, and control. And the idea of "The Force"? To him, it likely smacked of the mystical nonsense he held in such thinly veiled contempt. Still, I invited him over, set the scene—original 1977 cut, of course—and waited.
The familiar brass blare of John Williams' score kicked in, the yellow text scrolling up the screen, vanishing into the stars. X barely blinked. For most, this opening crawl was iconic, a taste of the grand adventure to come. To X, I could see it was already an inconvenience. Words floating off into a cosmic void, lacking context, immediate impact, or—God forbid—practical relevance.
“So, we’re already fighting?” he asked, eyes narrowing as the screen cut to the towering Star Destroyer chasing the Rebel ship. “Not much of a setup.” His tone was flat, a critique more than a question.
“Rebellion. Empire. Oppression.” I tried to fill in the emotional gaps.
He blinked, unimpressed. "Ah, morality."
X’s world has no room for this. Empires rise and fall, not because they’re evil, but because the players either miscalculated or lacked the ruthlessness to follow through. Morality is a construct, a weakness to be leveraged. He would’ve made a fantastic Sith Lord, had the Dark Side’s emotional indulgence not seemed so undisciplined to him.
He watched Darth Vader enter, a towering figure in black, voice rasping through a mechanical mask. X’s lip twitched, just slightly. “Now he understands control,” he muttered. “But... what’s with the cape?” The flourish seemed unnecessary to him, theatrics, a waste of movement. For X, control is not about intimidation—it’s about efficiency. Vader’s grasping choke on that poor rebel? Effective, yes, but too showy. X would’ve preferred something quieter, perhaps more subtle—a knife between the ribs, maybe, rather than telekinetic force strangulation.
The film continued, but X’s attention never strayed far from Vader. Luke Skywalker—our fresh-faced farm boy—was a nonstarter for him. Too idealistic. Too pure. “He’s naïve,” X said during Luke’s iconic twin suns moment. "Waiting for adventure? He’s begging to be used.”
X has no patience for idealism. Dreams, hope, that yearning for more... these were traits to exploit, not admire. It was Obi-Wan’s introduction that brought another raised brow. “A war hero in hiding? Hmph. That’s one way to survive. Smart.”
But the Force, of course, was the hardest sell.
“So, let me get this straight. They control things with... what, feelings?” His face contorted in disdain, bordering on offense. “That’s absurd. Power isn’t mystical. Power is about leverage, not... faith.”
He’d disconnected from the film now, his mind running ahead of the narrative, disassembling it piece by piece. The idea of the Force, of some unseen energy guiding the universe, was an affront to his understanding of the world. His was a place of logic, of numbers and control, where chance is minimized and chaos is subdued by intellect.
The cantina scene played, colorful aliens huddled over drinks, Han Solo smugly lounging in his booth. X’s interest piqued briefly. “He’s charming,” he said, almost begrudgingly, noting Han’s quick-thinking pragmatism. “But reckless.” I could see X’s internal gears whirring, already calculating how Solo’s self-serving ways could be exploited. To him, Han’s loyalty would be his downfall—a predictable flaw that could be manipulated.
When the Death Star plans came into play, X leaned forward slightly. Strategy, finally. “A moon-sized weapon,” he mused, “brilliant concept, but the design flaw? Idiocy. How do you overlook that?” X could not comprehend such an egregious oversight. He would have never allowed it. Control, in his world, was absolute. Precision—undeniable. He looked almost disappointed in the Empire. “Amateurs,” he scoffed.
By the time the film reached its climax—the Death Star trench run—X had mentally checked out. The space battle, while visually impressive, didn’t excite him. Dogfights in space were just chaos dressed up as heroism. When Luke switched off his targeting computer to “trust the Force,” X let out a noise somewhere between a laugh and a groan. “Great, so now we’re gambling with lives because he feels something?”
The Death Star exploded, the rebels celebrated, and X just sighed. “They got lucky.”
As the credits rolled, I finally dared to ask what he thought. X sat back, fingers steepled, his gaze not on me but somewhere far off, as if processing the galaxy he’d just witnessed through the cold, logical filter of his mind.
“The Jedi are fools,” he said finally. “They think they can maintain order through... philosophy. But real control is physical. Political. Not... metaphysical.”
“And the Empire?” I asked.
He smirked. “They lost because they were careless. Arrogance killed them. Not the Force.”
That was all the debrief I would get. X stood, his thoughts clearly moving on to something else, something more real, tangible—something within his control. As he left, I couldn’t help but wonder if X was right. Star Wars paints its battles in black and white, good and evil, but for him, these were just constructs—excuses people use to justify their actions. In X’s world, there are no rebels or empires, only those who seize control and those who let it slip through their fingers.
I sat there alone, the screen now blank, and realized that for X, Star Wars wasn’t a galaxy far, far away—it was a blueprint for the real world, stripped of emotion, leaving only power dynamics, leverage, and control. And he would’ve made an excellent Sith.