Patriot Realm

“A Long Time Ago...” Still Echoes Now

On May 25, 1977, a strange little film with a golden robot, a grumpy trash can, and a farm boy from Tatooine lit up cinema screens -  and rewired our imaginations. Nearly five decades later, Star Wars remains more than a sci-fi epic.

It’s a prophetic glimpse into our algorithm-driven world, where machines talk back, surveillance looms, and rebels still dare to hope.

When Star Wars hit the theatres, it changed everything.

Forty-eight years later, Star Wars isn’t just a sci-fi classic. It’s a cultural landmark, a modern myth, and, strangely enough, a surprisingly accurate blueprint for our blinking, algorithm-powered present.

Because while we may not have landspeeders or lightsabers (yet), we do have intelligent machines that talk back, make decisions, and, just sometimes, seem to understand us.

Welcome to the age of AI… and the galaxy that saw it coming.

I remember going to see it. I was in Rotorua, New Zealand. It was a bitterly cold, rainy and windy afternoon. We queued up outside. Sat down. The theatre was packed. The lights dimmed. The music blared. And then...whoosh...that massive ship roared overhead.

I almost ducked.

It cemented my love affair with Science Fiction. 

Back in the early 1970s, George Lucas wasn’t trying to change the world: he just wanted to make a space adventure that felt like the old serials he loved as a kid. Think Flash Gordon, but bigger, better, and with real heart. Studios didn’t get it. The script was a jumble of aliens, droids, and laser swords. Fox reluctantly greenlit it, assuming it’d be a flop, or at best, a novelty.

Nobody expected packed theatres. Nobody predicted the cultural explosion. But there it was: a strange, swashbuckling epic with heroes as old as myth -  farm boys, princesses, rogues, wise old wizards - wrapped in the shiny skin of sci-fi. It was pulp fiction meets Joseph Campbell.

George Lucas didn’t invent the idea of the hero with a destiny. He borrowed it...  intentionally .... from Campbell, an American mythologist whose book The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) explored the timeless arc shared by myths from all over the world.

Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” shaped Luke Skywalker’s path: from a bored farm boy to a reluctant adventurer, a grieving student, a confident knight, and finally a symbol of hope.

Campbell gave Star Wars its mythic bones,  and helped it feel timeless.

But back to our tale today. Star Wars was a blockbuster with a soul.

Star Wars didn’t just surprise the studios. It blindsided them. It broke box office records, rewrote what a franchise could be, and gave birth to something brilliant. 

But underneath all the lightsabers and starships, it touched something deeper: the human desire to resist control, to fight for freedom, to believe in something bigger than ourselves.

Long before Siri, Alexa, or ChatGPT and Grok answered our questions, R2-D2 was beeping out war plans and cheeky one-liners. And C-3PO? He fretted his way into our hearts with impeccable manners and constant anxiety...like Marvin the forever-depressed robot from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

But these weren’t just machines. They had personality. They bickered like an old married couple. They showed fear, loyalty, wit… even something like love.

And we, the audience, fell for them completely.

Fast-forward to today: AI still can’t hold a lightsaber, but it can write your shopping list, book your holiday, and answer your 3 a.m. existential crisis. It can even joke with you, though sarcasm remains a work in progress.

But the real legacy of those droids? They made us want our machines to be kind. To be funny. To care. Maybe not like we do, but close enough to believe in. 

One of Star Wars’ most enduring ideas is the Force...ancient, invisible, intuitive. It binds the galaxy together.

Not unlike the way algorithms now bind us to our screens.

But let’s be honest: the Force is romantic. The algorithm is… efficient.

Where Jedi meditate, we optimise. Where Luke feels the Force and seeks balance, Big Tech delivers quarterly earnings.

Yet both forces, mystical or mathematical, shape destinies. And as AI grows more powerful, we need to ask: are we building tools to guide us, or engines to control us?

So called Smart meters, Smart TVs, Smart Phones, Smart Cars. Smart Cities... I have to wonder. 

Because a good algorithm helps you find a recipe. A bad one might decide if you get a job, a loan… or a knock on the door. 

Remember when C-3PO was told, “We don’t serve their kind here?” Harsh. But revealing.

Star Wars hinted at a deeper truth: droids had no rights. They were property, no matter how sentient they seemed. I often think that we are becoming drones as far as our " controllers " are concerned..... 

It’s a debate we’re edging toward now. As AI becomes more “real” in how it interacts, should it have rights? Protections? Limits? What if it creates something original? Or claims to be conscious?

Today’s AIs aren’t alive. But they mimic life with increasing fidelity. The line between simulation and sentience is getting blurrier...blurrier, even, than the rules of decency in Parliament House. 

The Galactic Empire had Star Destroyers, Death Stars, and endless bureaucracy. We get Covid and Lockdowns and Laws to silence us. 

But if Star Wars teaches us anything, it’s this: the bigger the system, the easier it is for a farm boy and a smuggler to blow it up.

In our world, AI is used by empires of a different kind - corporate giants, surveillance states, and sometimes your local council with a suspiciously overpowered parking sensor.

Predictive policing. Facial recognition. Deepfakes. Behavioural nudging. Digital ID. Cashless banking. 

Are we empowering the Rebellion… or building the Empire for the enemy?

Technology is a tool. But tools in the wrong hands don’t build - they destroy.

Clones weren’t just copies. They were programmed. Engineered to obey. Manufactured loyalty.

Sound familiar? Sound like us? 

Today, AI can generate your voice, your face, your writing style. It can fake a person, simulate a personality, and make it nearly impossible to tell what’s real.

Digital identity is the new battleground. Who owns your face, your voice, your digital shadow? The government? A corporation? Or someone worse?

In the age of AI, authenticity is no longer a guarantee. It’s a fight. How often these days do we see an image or a video and ask " Is this real? " It is becoming increasingly familiar. 

But Star Wars was never really about the tech.

It was about the people. The rebels. The heroes. The eternal struggle between power and purpose, fear and hope, control and freedom.

That’s what makes it timeless - and what makes it so relevant to AI.

Because beneath the circuits and sensors, beneath the code and convenience, the real question isn’t what AI can do.

It’s why they’re asking it to do it. Why are they building it? 

Are we so busy chasing convenience that we are surrendering our control? 

Or are we, like Luke staring out at those twin suns, still searching for something greater than ourselves?

Perhaps Star Wars didn’t just predict the future, it inspired it. From C-3PO’s fretful charm to R2-D2’s beeping brilliance, we dreamed up machines with heart before we ever coded them. Today, we stand where myth and reality meet: lightsabers swapped for algorithms, droids for data, and the Force for the great unknown of artificial intelligence.

The question isn’t whether the Empire is coming ... it’s whether we’re quietly building it ourselves, one smart device at a time. But amid the code and control, hope still flickers. Because Star Wars reminds us that rebellions are built on belief, that humanity matters more than hardware, and that the future,  like the Force,  will always be shaped by the choices we make. In the age of AI, as in that galaxy far, far away, our only hope is still us.

Because consider this: Star Wars warned us about AI, we just didn’t listen. Obi-Wan was right: The algorithms are controlling everything.