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I think Darth Vader is George Lucas. He thinks he's good, and what he's accomplishing is good, when in fact it is evil and harmful.

If you think about it, it's pretty self evident, he's working out his own faults on the screen.

He has had a problem with women in his personal life, and he does tend to seclude himself most of the time....

What I'm more curious about, is the impact that WWII has had on his life, i.e. his close relatives, how he was raised, what he was told, etc., for a couple of reasons.

The first would be the Indiana Jones trilogy - began and ended with Nazis.

The second would be the Star Wars trilogies. When my wife and I were in line last night, there was a young man in front of us who we were talking to about the movies. He rattled off all of the WWII influences on the SW trilogies, and while I was very aware of some of them, others caught me off guard (When I was his age, that was about the time the first movie came out in '77, and I was fanatical about the movie as well).
- Chancellor - Hitler and Palpatine both were, and both came to power in almost the same way.
- Hitler and Palpatine both portrayed themselves as victims in their early rise through the ranks.
- Other groups were blamed for their problems - Poles, Jews, etc. with Germany, Jedi, robots, independent planets, etc. in 'Sith.
- Reichstag Fire, Poland, etc. - paralleled "manufactured" events in 'Sith that were carried out to enable a justification for more power.
- The people voting the villains into office and giving them the powers they want - Happened in Germany, happened in the movies.
- The uniforms and aerial combat - Imperial uniforms in the movies were "inspired" by Japanese uniforms, as was the space combat inspired by some of the aerial battles of WWII.
- Both villains whipped the people up into a frenzy/hysteria, and got them to engage in things that they wouldn't have otherwise done.
- Both villians manipulated people whose intentions were good, and they didn't see it coming.

There was a lot more, and while it makes Lucas look like he ripped everything off from WWII (or Vietnam if he wants to say that), there really isn't all that much wrong with retelling history - it does repeat itself after all.

While the government (I'm going to lump all three branches together for the purpose of this little rant) has given itself some powers since 9/11 that make many of us here very uncomfortable, I think what scares us even worse, is the thought that liberals will be back in control of the Congress, the White House, etc., at some point in the future. I think that makes many uncomfortable, especially when they see something like Revenge of the Sith. It's fairly easy to ignore what happened with Nazi Germany - for most of us, it's something our parents participated in (or grandparents if your a young 'un), but when you see these kinds of things played out on the big screen in front of you, and you see just how easy it is to whip the people up into hysteria, it's hard to pretend it could never happen again.