I really enjoyed watching this in theatres. However, is this not yet another movie that glorifies Dominator culture? Of course, our protagonists are the benevolent, principled patriarchs. They seduce us into staying within a framework of brutal hierarchy by promising that it can be done righteously. When the empire betrays them it’s not a wake-up call, but an invitation to rise up and take control of it.

I’m even suspicious of the father’s warm message to his son. Is it really true that the son can choose not to succeed him as the next patriarch?

As bell hooks writes in The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love:

Many of the New Age models created by men reconfigure old sexist paradigms while making it seem as though they are offering a different script for gender relations. Often the men’s movement resisted macho patriarchal models while upholding a vision of a benevolent patriarch, one in which the father is the ruler who rules with tenderness and kindness, but he is still in control.