Elon Musk Officially Confirms He Doesn't Get Star Wars

Musk's latest shenanigans expose an odd nostalgia - for tyranny

Elon Musk, owner of Tesla and SpaceX, and an avid Grok advocate, has never been shy about expressing his opinion online. He had plenty to say about award-winning director Christopher Nolan's wildly successful adaptation of The Odyssey — including claiming an AI-influenced reimagining of the series would be "true to the art of Homer" — and even more on the finale of Amazon's gritty superhero series, The Boys.

More often than not, these opinions criticize something that isn't there or deliberately misunderstand the story’s point. It's not that Musk can’t have or share these thoughts; they just don't seem grounded in reality. Musk has recently turned his attention to yet another franchise he seems to fundamentally misunderstand: Star Wars.

Elon Musk’s Star Wars tweet makes zero sense

In a Nov. 1 post on X, Musk shared an AI-generated image of Anakin Skywalker, Padmé Amidala, and Luke and Leia as children, all dressed in black. Anakin, fresh from his bad-boy era in Revenge of the Sith, sits on a spiky throne, with the Emperor’s Royal Guards standing behind him. The characters also appear to be in some kind of hangar — which, if you ask us, isn’t the best place for a throne. But we digress.

The caption reads: “This is what they stole from us.” This refers to the “This is what they took from us” right-wing nostalgia memes, which kicked off in the early 2020s in response to social media posts lamenting the older, arguably more conservative days. As with all things on the internet, the meme has evolved over time, with people online using it to level more tongue-in-cheek criticism towards creators and franchises.

Regardless of its origins, what keeps the meme prominent in online circles is that — no matter how stupid or offensive the criticism is — it is based on something that does exist. For example, it can refer to a video game character’s design changing, or the fact that laptops used to have a bazillion different ports for us to use.

Musk’s use of the meme is almost certainly just the billionaire being absurd on purpose, but it makes zero sense in the context of Star Wars and betrays just how little Musk understands George Lucas’s space opera.

For one thing, no one can steal the idea of Anakin ruling the galaxy as an Imperial alongside his wife and children, because it was never in the cards. Even before the prequel films debuted, Lucas had established in the original trilogy that Anakin’s fall to Darth Vader stemmed from his trust in authoritarianism, which isolated him from the people who loved him — including his master, Obi-Wan Kenobi.

Secondly, it’s laughable to suggest that Padmé Amidala would accept her role as a figure of oppression. The prequel films establish her early on as a staunch believer in justice, and in Revenge of the Sith, after learning of Anakin’s atrocities, she tells him he’s going down a path she “can’t follow.”

Yet the clearest flaw in Musk’s woeful misunderstanding of Star Wars is the image’s very existence. Although the Empire has victories throughout the franchise, they are never presented as reasons to celebrate; instead, they are treated as atrocities of the highest order. When Anakin turns against the Jedi, the movies do not portray it as a triumph, but as the tragic fall of a once-heroic man into villainy.

By depicting Anakin and his family as happy rulers of the Empire, Musk expresses nostalgia for something that never existed — a mystifying misunderstanding of both the meme and Star Wars as a whole. It’s embarrassing, really, but we doubt this will be the last time Musk falls into the trap of his own misapprehension.