You are changing the topic from “Does the movie support equality” to “does every single aspect of the movie support equality in every single way”. All real categories of humans in the movie are equal, as illustrated by Princess Leia strangling Jabba the hut.
Jabba the Hutt is at least as fictional as the Force is, you know, and he’s not exactly a physically imposing presence; there’s no particular reason to conclude that that scene is physically improbable, and Leia takes a noncombatant role elsewhere by comparison with the men in the cast. But the weakness of that particular example aside, there’s very little in the films to support a reading as egalitarian.
To wit: the movie centers on a caste of magical warrior-monks whose powers are quite literally in the blood. There’s a titled princess (not an “elected queen” like Amidala, a bona fide hereditary ruler, albeit adopted) in the core cast, and that’s never presented as unwelcome or even remarkable. That princess, by the way, is the only woman in the original trilogy with more than a handful of lines, gets rescued twice, and otherwise mostly limits herself to providing guidance and moral support. There’s only one non-white guy in the original trilogy, and he’s painted as untrustworthy for a variety of reasons. Nonhuman characters are portrayed as stereotypical savages, Orientalist-style local color, or outright subservient: the only real exception is Yoda, and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to read him as a stereotypical shaman figure. Success is explicitly and repeatedly described as coming not from cleverness or effort, but by surrendering to the numinous forces of destiny.
The only thing that even approaches egalitarianism in the theme is the implicit preference for a republican form of government over an imperial, and I’m not inclined to give that much credit: the central conflict is at least as much about mysticism vs. modernism (in the guise of the regimented, technological Empire) as anything else, and that Empire’s pretty clearly a military dictatorship rather than a traditional aristocracy. You could read it as glorifying revolution, sure, but even that’s carefully constructed as a rebellion against new, illegitimate authority.
Jabba the Hutt is at least as fictional as the Force is, you know, and he’s not exactly a physically imposing presence; there’s no particular reason to conclude that that scene is physically improbable, and Leia takes a noncombatant role elsewhere by comparison with the men in the cast. But the weakness of that particular example aside, there’s very little in the films to support a reading as egalitarian.
To wit: the movie centers on a caste of magical warrior-monks whose powers are quite literally in the blood. There’s a titled princess (not an “elected queen” like Amidala, a bona fide hereditary ruler, albeit adopted) in the core cast, and that’s never presented as unwelcome or even remarkable. That princess, by the way, is the only woman in the original trilogy with more than a handful of lines, gets rescued twice, and otherwise mostly limits herself to providing guidance and moral support. There’s only one non-white guy in the original trilogy, and he’s painted as untrustworthy for a variety of reasons. Nonhuman characters are portrayed as stereotypical savages, Orientalist-style local color, or outright subservient: the only real exception is Yoda, and it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to read him as a stereotypical shaman figure. Success is explicitly and repeatedly described as coming not from cleverness or effort, but by surrendering to the numinous forces of destiny.
The only thing that even approaches egalitarianism in the theme is the implicit preference for a republican form of government over an imperial, and I’m not inclined to give that much credit: the central conflict is at least as much about mysticism vs. modernism (in the guise of the regimented, technological Empire) as anything else, and that Empire’s pretty clearly a military dictatorship rather than a traditional aristocracy. You could read it as glorifying revolution, sure, but even that’s carefully constructed as a rebellion against new, illegitimate authority.