Posted on 05/11/2005 6:39:05 AM PDT by EarthStomper
BRUSSELS -- I just saw a press screening of the new Star Wars movie, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, and here's my capsule review: It's superb; the last 15 minutes are better than anything George Lucas has ever done; and as Yoda would say, "This film must you see; love it, you will."
However, I left the theater with something more than the feeling that after nearly 30 years as a Star Wars fan, a cinematic era of my life -- with plenty of ups and downs along the way -- had been closed on a thrilling and thoroughly satisfying note. I also wondered why George Lucas suddenly felt the need to add so much topicality into the story line.
Everyone knows what is going to happen in this movie -- where it starts and how it will end. Part of its brilliance is the way it turns a foregone conclusion into a kind of challenging plot puzzle. You know what the picture's going to look like at the end, but you want to see how all the pieces will fit together. And Lucas has fun with this game, throwing in a lot of cheeky references to other films -- from Frankenstein and Nosferatu to Commando Cody and Apocalypse Now and even, yes, to other Star Wars movies -- to lighten the otherwise darkening mood.
But something else is disturbingly -- and rather awkwardly - evident: a recurring anti-Bush, anti-Iraq war message. Forget about the merits of the argument in question. This stuff has no place in a Star Wars flick.
The dialogue in ROTS is rife with distinctly unsubtle references to the current political situation. "This war represents a failure to listen," Padme laments at one point, before declaring after a vote to give executive power to Chancellor Palpatine: "So this is how liberty dies -- to thunderous applause." The wicked Chancellor, played brilliantly by Ian McDiarmid, talks on and on about "security", giving it an evilly sibilant S, and about "peace". As he lures Anakin over to the dark side, telling him what to say in Jedi Council meetings, you wonder if he's supposed to be Karl Rove. He does, after all, appear to be the smartest man in the movie.
The ultimate reference comes in the climactic duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan Kenobi on the planet of Mustafar, which seems to have long ago failed in its struggle against global warming. "If you're not with me, you're my enemy," Anakin shouts to Obi-Wan, who responds: "Only a Sith lord deals in absolutes." Yes, and so, it would seem, do neo-cons.
Meanwhile, at that very instant in the Senate chamber, there is a cool fight scene between Yoda and Darth Sidious that, as one reviewer has already pointed out, evokes Democrats and Republicans in violent deadlock. (I was just glad there weren't any more endless Congressional debates like the ones that bogged down the previous two Star Wars chapters. Episode I: The Phantom Menace had more talk of trade pacts and intergalactic confederations than an EU summit.)
The internet has been rife with rumors that Lucas had some script-doctoring help from noted playwright Tom Stoppard. Given the greatly improved quality of much of this film's dialogue over its predecessors (Lucas has a brilliant imagination but he is terrible at scripting a believable conversation between two or more humanoids), I'm apt to believe them. Could Stoppard have injected a dose of left-wing sentiment into our beloved film franchise? It's tough to say. The Czechoslovakian-born British writer has long been a foe of communism and once had nice things to say about Margaret Thatcher. But he was a vocal opponent of the Iraq war and recently wrote a dramatic trilogy idealizing the roots of socialism.
Again, all of this shouldn't matter. The film is exciting enough that I overlooked the few annoying instances when it veered away from its fantasy world and towards today's front pages. The rest of the time, thankfully, this movie took place right where it is supposed to: in a galaxy far, far away.
> One must be sympathetic to a young director seeing his defining masterpiece used to promote something he finds abhorrent.
One must then wonder about the flimmakers behind "Deep Throat." Do they harbor ill will towards the Watergate source?
Canada has rape rooms and mass graves filled with their own citizens killed by chemical weapons? I guess I’d better rethink purchasing those Blue Jays season tickets next year, then.
That’s an interesting comparison. Weak, but interesting.
In any case, the point was to illustrate how laughable it is whenever people use the ‘rape rooms and mass graves’ as our reason to invade Iraq. By immersing ourselves in the affairs of the Middle East by taking sides in the Iran-Iraq war, and aligning with the “lesser of two evils”, we failed to pay attention to the words of our Founders when they warned us against entangling alliances with foreign nations. We are paying for that mistake still today.
I’m no liberal, but believe me, I gave up expecting anything CLOSE to Christ-like performances from George W. Bush long ago.
If you keep that up, somebody's gonna start calling you a Voice of Reason.
"So you want to compare our opposition to the Ayatollah in Iran with Hitler and Nazi Germany? That’s an interesting comparison. Weak, but interesting."
Unsupported claim...
"In any case, the point was to illustrate how laughable it is whenever people use the ‘rape rooms and mass graves’ as our reason to invade Iraq."
No one has done so. We went in because, of the nations that support terror, Iraq was the only one that could be taken down with force. Also b/c the Iraqi people are the most civilized in the region, the most fertile ground for an Arab Democracy that would create a SEA CHANGE in the ME. Or do you think Libya and Syria threw in the towel out of boredom?
"By immersing ourselves in the affairs of the Middle East by taking sides in the Iran-Iraq war, and aligning with the “lesser of two evils”, we failed to pay attention to the words of our Founders when they warned us against entangling alliances with foreign nations."
Naive. We were locked in a Cold War with the Soviets. We could not allow them to outflank the oil reserves of the ME.
And I doubt our founders would have kept us out of WWI and WWII. The world is just not that big anymore. A Fortress America mentality is a suicide pact.
The fact is it's true. Libs really do fear that Bush might be Hitleresque. Their fears are baseless and originate from partisanship more than anything, but the neo-cons haven't helped much by insisting that the neither the party nor Bush can be critizised. The Neos play right into the liberal demigogue's hands by rising to the bate. The truth is we don't need Bush necessarily, our ideology shouldn't be contingent on an individual, but the neos keep making it out like it should be.
This is because liberals are babies.
very good. I bet Lucas and friends never considered that.
>>"If you're not with me, you're my enemy," Anakin shouts to Obi-Wan, who responds: "Only a Sith lord deals in absolutes." Yes, and so, it would seem, do neo-cons.<<
...And Jesus
That said, the comments about "security" and "peace" go against libs and potential future leaders more than Bush. The securit one sort of fits, but Bush's message is one of freedom, which the leaders in this movie never discuss.
Liberals and socialists are notorious for talking about security and peace, so the movie really DOES warn against future leaders, while warning somewhat against the current administration.
In the future will be able to look at this example as much as they do the popular literature of old as a way to drive home political points.
IOW, the warning is against all leaders, existing and future, and should always be considered.
I must be getting tired. When I first read what you wrote, I saw "Nuking Hollywood might tick of the Liberals."
You said it. The Jedi are a bunch of reactive pansies to any threats. They have a debate as to whether they should go on the offensive against a terrible threat to the entire galaxy. What does Luke say? No, we shouldn't do that. It's too aggressive, and that's wrong. I read that and I thought that maybe the Jedi deserved extinction...
You can't defeat an Evil Empire with flowers. Ya gotta blow stuff up.
But then, there's always the question of just how evil the Empire really is. Let's face it: they have a better respect for the 2nd Ammendment than the US has...
This may have been cut out of the movie, but in a scene in the Revenge of the Sith movie Wayne Pygram played as Tarkin. Wayne Pygram is the actor who played Scorpius on Farscape (the villian that wear's black leather and is argueably badder than Darth Vader).
Yeah, I could tell he was supposed to be Tarkin, but it just didnt' look that good. Oh well.
Or maybe it's a reference to the basic concept of most Greek tragedies: attempts to devine the future in order to avoid the future do nothing but ensure the future. Every Greek tragedy that used the Oracle at Delphi (like Oedipus, and Paris and Troy) had this same basic plot structure, the attempts to make the Oracle wrong were what made the predictions come to pass.
Cool.
JFK was the last Dem to do that. Say what you will about his private life, the man was light years ahead of Clinton in terms of character.
The Tarkin character was never suppose to look that good (in facial features) in the first place.
I hope the scene is included in the DVD extras or cut back into the movie itself when the movie is released on DVD.
Funny, I thought it was sold as the spectre of a mushroom cloud hanging over lower Manhattan; funny how a couple of years (and no WMDs) re-defines a mission.
Syria hasn't thrown in anything BTW. They're still a constant thorn in the side as regards that Iraqi/Syria border.
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