Posted on 05/17/2005 6:00:16 AM PDT by cweese
CANNES, France, (AP) Without Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the Cannes Film Festival this time, it was left to George Lucas and "Star Wars" to pique European ire over the state of world relations and the United States' role in it.
Lucas' themes of democracy on the skids and a ruler preaching war to preserve the peace predate "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" by almost 30 years. Yet viewers Sunday — and Lucas himself — noted similarities between the final chapter of his sci-fi saga and our own troubled times.
Cannes audiences made blunt comparisons between "Revenge of the Sith," the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side and the rise of an emperor through warmongering, to President Bush's war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq.
Two lines from the movie especially resonated:
"This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause," bemoans Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) as the galactic Senate cheers dictator-in-waiting Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) while he announces a crusade against the Jedi.
"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," Hayden Christensen's Anakin (soon to become villain Darth Vader) tells former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). The line echoes Mr. Bush's international ultimatum after the Sept. 11 attacks, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."
"That quote is almost a perfect citation of Bush," said Liam Engle, a 23-year-old French-American aspiring filmmaker. "Plus, you've got a politician trying to increase his power to wage a phony war."
Though the plot was written years ago, "the anti-Bush diatribe is clearly there," Engle said.
At the Cannes premiere on the night of May 15, actors in white stormtrooper costumes paraded up and down the red carpet as guests strolled in, while an orchestra played the "Star Wars" theme.
Lucas said he patterned his story after historical transformations from freedom to fascism, never figuring when he started his prequel trilogy in the late 1990s that current events might parallel his space fantasy.
"As you go through history, I didn't think it was going to get quite this close. So it's just one of those recurring things," Lucas said at a Cannes news conference. "I hope this doesn't come true in our country.
"Maybe the film will waken people to the situation," Lucas joked.
That comment echoes Moore's rhetoric at Cannes last year, when his anti-Bush documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" won the festival's top honor.
Unlike Moore, whose Cannes visit came off like an anybody-but-Bush campaign stop, Lucas never mentioned the president by name but was eager to speak his mind on U.S. policy in Iraq, careful again to note that he created the story long before the Bush-led occupation there.
"When I wrote it, Iraq didn't exist," Lucas said, laughing.
"We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam. ... The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."
The prequel trilogy is based on a back-story outline Lucas created in the mid-1970s for the original three "Star Wars" movies, so the themes percolated out of the Vietnam War and the Nixon-Watergate era, he said.
Lucas began researching how democracies can turn into dictatorships with full consent of the electorate.
In ancient Rome, "why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?" Lucas said. "Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler.
"You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."
Michael Moore, that name rings a bell. No, I thought I'd heard of him before. My bad!
He actually used a French character in "Return of the Jedi". It was sitting in the desert of Tatooine, near Jabba the Hutt's palace--eating bugs, and breaking wind.
This story will just not die.
Lucas has already said he wrote this right after Vietnam.
I wish George Lucas would run for president. Our country could use a man like him. (MAJOR SARCASM!!!)
I plan on seeing it. I'm not all that sensitive.
Did he go upriver into Cambodia with Kerry ?
Exactly. Lucas said the script was written years and years before Iraq was even in the news. I,ve never spent a dime in the theater to see his films and won't this time either.
You're probably like me and don't look for something to be offended by under every rock or in every written word. :-)
What liberal would be Yoda? Helen Thomas?
Or Barbara Mikulski. Too bad bsnn.net isn't still around. He'd probably have such a movie poster created.
Do these people OBSESS MUCH ?
My God, they don't have an overtly political movie that bashes G.W. so they have to hyper analyze a freekin sci- fi movie to bash him instead!
These guys really are pathetic. The Star Wars movies generally had a basic core theme. Good Vs. Evil. To the libs President Bush is evil so of course they will see the Empire and Darth comparable to him. To most people(at least those with at least one working brain cell)the Empire and Darth are comparable to people like Saddam or Osama.
It all depends on how you view the world. Everybody will see it in their own way, despite what George "my Mommie was a commie" Lucas tries to portray.
let's see. One large group is filled with hatred of all good things, wishes to kill, maim, and destroy all innocent people, and rule all with an iron fist.
Another large group wishes all to be free and for all not to live in fear so it sacrifices deeply to counter the aims of the first group.
Show of hands - which group is Evil and which is Righteous?
(Don't ask the Euros)
well, i won't be going to movies to see this then.!
If George W. Bush is being allegorically compared to the Emperor/Darth Vader, are we to assume that Lucas meant to allegorical compare the Saddams and Osamas of the world as the Jedi?
The fact is, this is just another case of liberal sour grapes. Thye lost the election in a big way, walked away with egg on their face and apparently their still sore about it. In reading the article, you'll note that the comparisons come not from Lucas, but from the mostly European/Hollywood audience that watched it. These people live their lives with their heads up their butts most of the time anyway.
If Lucas wants to draw comparisons between the Vietnam conflict and the War in Iraq, so be it, he's entitled to his opinion. If he wants to inject his pwn political/philosphical beliefs into his movies, then he cheapens the product, he dates it. It is no longer a piece of art, but a political statement that will be buried in history with other such statements.
What made the orginal trilogy so good was that it wasn't specific in it's allegory. Growing up, I always likened it to WWII-a group of freedom loving people fighting hard to over throw evil and tyranny. If Lucas' intent was meant to be Nixon was evil, not Hitler, well, I guess he is entitled to his opinion as I am to mine. But what made it good was it was non-specific.
Now, if Ep III is as specific as people say, and we are force fed this ideology, then Lucas has cheapened his art, sold out for fleeting feeling of sour grapes over an election. So be it. I'm still going to see this movie and draw my own conclusions. I won't let Euro trash or Hollywood liberals dictate to me what any movie is supposed to mean.
Look on the bright side, if Lucas does think this way, Star Wars is fake, it's fiction. George W. Bush won the election, the Iraqi people have found their freedom and democracy is spreading through a place in the world no one ever would have dared to dream it could. This is the reality. Liberals hate it and in order to make themselves feel better, see their point of view as being right in everything and anything. Including a sci-fi movie.
I think the story of star wars (and LOTR as well) parallels the struggle against radical islam taking over of the world (and the apologists, e.g. Europe, U.N., media that are helping to facilitate radical islam expansionism)
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