In Billy Budd, Claggart is the one pushing Billy and trying to get a rise out of him. Now, in the Throne Room, the roles of the Captain and Taskmaster (Claggart) are reversed with the Emperor and Vader. I have cut down the Throne Room to the relevant snippets because the Throne room takes the set up that's in Billy Budd and expands it into a much deeper narrative, but we don't need the whole thing for comparing. With the above in mind, it becomes more clear what the inspired similarities between Billy Budd and Return of the Jedi are in the following clips. He believes Claggart is not happy with himself.Ĭlaggart, then, focuses every ounce of his efforts to undo Billy - to cause him to turn away from his goodness, and toward the darkness of hate and malice that fits within Claggarts world view. Instead, he wants to befriend Claggart and thinks Claggart is good inside because no man can enjoy doing cruel things. Billy threatens this belief because Billy is not only purely good, but regardless of what the taskmaster does to him, Billy doesn't hate him.

This is how he justifies his horrible actions (the air implies his past actions have been terrible) and refrains from being haunted by them. He believes harsh action is the only action worth taking, and that all seek to gain power over others to take it. The taskmaster, Claggart (the tall man in black with the remarkable black hat), is a callus man who sees the world as violent, ruthless, cold, and unforgiving. To appreciate the comparison, some context is in order.īilly Budd is a film about a purely good natured character, Billy, who is something akin to a sailing Forest Gump - dim witted, or simple, would be the in-world's era's way of putting it.

And later I saw a snippet of Lucas passing mention of Billy Budd (I can't for the life of me recall what the interview was - I've tried to locate it, but I've so far been unsuccessful in digging it up.unfortunately, I don't recall anything about the interview other than Lucas was rattling off some inspirations). I came across this film back in high school during a film appreciation course, which was an extension of the English course at the time. The reason I think it's worth sharing is that Billy Budd is a pretty obscure film, and it's very rare to find it discussed in Star Wars. I've written about this a few times in other threads, so I figured I should share this interesting link between the old film (1962) Billy Budd, and Return of the Jedi.

Return of the jedi throne room