The political dimensions of "Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith," currently still breaking box office records, seemed to take many people by surprise.
However, if anyone had paid attention to what Lucas had been saying for several years now, the theme of this film and the prequel trilogy it completes is meant to be "...how a democratic society turns into a dictatorship, and how a good person turns into a bad person."
A pop culture phenomenon like "Star Wars" has an inevitable relationship to other cultural currents in the society of its time. This has been especially true of the Lucas films, since the story within their space opera adventure is partly political: the rise and fall of an Empire.
The Washington Post reported on a number of observations, some of them angry, that the transformation of the Republic into the Empire had certain clear similarities to U.S. actions and rhetoric in respect to Iraq. The article was entitled "The Empire Strikes Bush."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2005/05/16/BL2005051600615.html
Then the New York Times weighed in, with news of conservative blogs attacking Lucas for anti-Bush sentiments, quoting Anakin Skywalker who'd just been re-named Darth Vader as saying, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy,"
(a close echo of Bush's "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.")
The Times also reported that a conservative website it described as "little trafficked" had called for a boycott of Star Wars, along with films starring Jane Fonda, Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, and the music of the Dixie Chicks.
Cornered on the question in Cannes, where he opened "Sith," Lucas reinterated that his movie was devised in response to the Vietnam war, but he did allow that
"The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/19/movies/19star.html?hp&ex=1116561600&en=fa6d244b63b6cff3&am
p;ei=5094&partner=homepage
The first "Star Wars" burst onto screens in 1977 with a simple and revolutionary concept: to consciously inject heroic mythological themes into the fantasy world of the space opera serial: Joseph Campbell directs Flash Gordon.
"Star Wars" edged the old innocent virtues with contemporary knowingness in recognizable new heroes: Hans Solo, the swaggering mercenary with hidden heart, and Princess Leia, the damsel in distress who runs the war room and shoots the bad guys. Soulless technology became personable in the robots, C3po and R2D2. But the true classic hero was Luke Skywalker, all impulse and openness, with buried powers that could be used for anything, depending on who and what he trusted to bring them forth.
In the third film of this trilogy, "Return of the Jedi," the Empire is overthrown by Luke Skywalker and an underdog alliance with more virtue than technology, in a final battle fought partly in space, and partly on a green world that looks very much like Eureka, California. It was a satisfying ending, and everyone identified. Released in 1983, its message inspired New Age advocates and environmentalists, and also President Ronald Reagan, who began referring to the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire, and proposed a missile defense system that was quickly dubbed "Star Wars."
But Lucas had a larger, more complex and perhaps less comfortable story in mind. Darth Vader, the black-clad, half-machine villain skulking in the darkness, turned out to be the evil father of Luke Skywalker and his twin sister, Leia. Even though Vader turns away from the dark side of the Force before he dies, the question was raised: how does evil father good? The answer given in the new prequel trilogy is provided by the less literal reversal: how good fathers evil.
Commentary tracks on the DVDs of all 5 of the previous films include George Lucas talking in his low-key Modesto way about the arc of these two trilogies. In between chat on mechanics of filmmaking (the Bantha is really an elephant in costume) Lucas reveals how deliberate his thematic thinking has been. The evil Empire figures wear black and white, because they represent a black-and-white world view of self-righteous certainties. The rebels are clothed in earth-tones, representing the organic complexities. The same situations and motifs recur purposefully; the difference is in the choices characters make each time.
In "Jedi" we saw Luke reject the temptations of the dark side's power by restraining his anger and hate. The entire prequel trilogy may be seen as a demonstration of how someone makes the opposite choice, and Lucas has clearly tried to make Anakin Skywalker sympathetic as well as strong. To up the ante, Lucas even gives him the equivalent of a virgin birth, born of the mating of a woman and the Force itself. He is "the chosen one."
Anakin is hotblooded but his reactions seem reasonably provoked: he is taken from his mother as a child, and as a young man sees her killed by kidnappers. He is forbidden the woman he loves. His personal descent is mirrored in the politics Lucas spends a lot of time elaborately setting up, with the apparently reasonable and reactive, step-by-step transformation of the democratic Republic into the dictatorial Empire, though it is being manipulated by one of its own.
The society and the hero that think themselves good but transform themselves into evil is a bold theme that suggests post-9/11 America. Lucas says forthrightly that his point of view was formed during the Vietnam war. Though of course he could not have predicted that this film would open while the U.S. has an army of occupation in Iraq, it inevitably applies, especially considering how officials declared the preemptively virtuous right to attack those they define as the Axis of Evil.
Moreover, Lucas is clear about the paths to the dark side: The hunger for more and more power serving a possessiveness and greed that includes surrender to revenge, and to the emotional demands of what Buddhists call attachment. In other words, the current functional morality of our politics and society.
This prequel trilogy says that hot-blooded righteousness in a hero is not enough, for it is too easily turned. Like all cautionary tales, this is a call to consciousness. Like all tragedies, it tells us that even born heroes have human flaws that mirror their society's faults.
The film itself is packed with space battles and enough fast moving shots per minute to quench the quick image hunger of the youngest video game-raised fan, although it tends to bludgeon older viewers into sullen impatience. There is likely to be some discomfort with dialogue and the acting---more Anakin the manikin talk---though there were some effective moments. But the political applicability is inescapable and explicit in the dialogue. "Only the Sith see the universe in black and white." However it's more complex and subtle than an anti-Vietnam or anti-Iraq war screed.
As the chancellor is moving quickly towards becoming emperor, the capital city starts to look less cleanly futuristic and more garish, with lots of neon. Anakin talks to him at a Senate session during what appears to be some sort of stadium light show. It is the manipulation by means of imagery (also a Bush administration characteristic, thanks especially to a compliant media)which leads directly to one of the more quoted lines in the film, Queen Amidala as she observes Palpatine declare the Empire to a palpitating throng in the Senate: "This is how liberty dies---to thunderous applause."
Pretty nervy stuff for a film that is getting thunderous applause at the box office. The film is also likely to offend some self-described Christian fundamentalists, with lines like Yoda's, when he questions whether the prophesies of the Chosen One were misinterpreted. Though the basic moral message of what turns good into bad does jibe with much of what Jesus says in the gospels, and what early Christians believe, it is not the kind of doctrine today's so-called fundamentalists are likely to embrace. Especially when the people who talk like this today are mostly Buddhists. It is actually a pretty subtle philosophy (having really not much to do with religion) about how things work.
It also is conspicuously counter to the motivation of heroes in recent action films, who usually wind up blowing stuff up and killing a lot of people not for king or country or even their religion, but to save their family. That in essence is what Anakin wants to hold onto as his core value, and it leads to his downfall.
Beyond politics and religion as well is this film's function within the six-film cycle of the Star Wars saga. Located at dead center in the myth, this is an authentic tragedy. It concerns a great man with a fatal flaw: the classical Greek formula. We are meant to feel pity and terror, not only for Anakin but for ourselves.
The political complexities within the film will also likely have fans talking about what was really going on for some years more. Were the Jedi Knights just a little past their prime? Was Anakin rightly confused by the Jedi's bending their own rules, or was this a matter of thinking only in black and white?
It's fascinating that it will likely be the real fans who will engage in actual moral and political discussion, with this film as text.
A full illustrated version of this essay appears at http://soulofstartrek.blogspot.com