There is still some Good in Lucas!
Posted by DLW in Uncategorized at 11:59 am | 
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Not all Gone over to the Dark Side has he!
But mainly because of cool Yoda fight scenes. My friend Matt has a far more favorable(and better written) review that reflects the extent he was immersed in the Star Wars phenomena when he was five years old in 1978(back when I was only two). ***spoilers****
I especially liked the scene in the Senate where the Yoda was fighting the Chancellor who was hurtling the senate seats at Yoda. It seemed a picturesque depiction of the failure of Democracy(or the consequences of when Democracy fails).
I, along with Ebert, couldn’t stand the dialogue between Anakin and Padme was terrible. I mean I don’t see why Lucas couldn’t have done better by taking a lesson from Spike Lee and let his more talented actors make up their own dialogue for these sorts of scenes. It was a pretty important dialogue, inasmuch as Anakin’s love for Padme was what led him to listen to and begin to repeat the Chancellor’s pop-pomo(post-modern) rhetoric. It was what led him to seek to become an Anti-Manicheist, neither of the Dark-Side nor Light-Side of the Force, but rather mainly committed to his wife. Lucas’s answer is that there is no middle ground. One must either be committed to being completely selfless or selfcentered, a position that is ironic given his reputation for using tricks to make more money off of his fans. And if only certain elites can transcend the interpersonal attachments that keep us from serving the public good, then democracy really is doomed to failure.
It is interesting that Anakin’s choice is quite similar to that of Neo’s in the Matrix Reloaded. Except that Neo’s decision to love Trinity more than anything else was what made it possible for him to escape the cycle that had led previous “ones” to perpetuate the system and Anakin’s choice led to many deaths, including that of his wife. Likewise with Selene in UnderWorld, where the startling revelation was that neither side was on the side of the angels and the only things really worth fighting for were peace and the safety of one’s friends. I guess that is a key difference between a manicheist and anti-manicheistic movie. And, of course, all of them have a strong existential element where what matters is really the choice made by the key figures.
I’m wondering whether there will be fewer or more Jedi warriors in Great Britain after this trilogy. It casts the Jedi philosophy/religion with a dark tone that is rather elitist and pessimistic about Democracy. I keep thinking that the middle three books were chosen for good reasons and wondering how the last three would continue the saga with the balancing of the force or what not.
dlw
The 24th of May, 2005 at 2:02 pm
Supposedly Lucas asked playwright Tom Stoppard to enhance the dialogue in “Revenge,” but I didn’t see any evidence of that. I agree with you that the actors could have been allowed some room to improvise, with Lucas’s guidance. Makes me wonder what kind of lover Lucas was, if that’s how he makes his lover’s talk in his fictions.
As for the manichean aspects, I did not see that as clearly as you. Obi-Wan’s statement “Only the Sith think in absolutes” seems to contradict that theme, though I admit there are probably unresolvable contradictions at the heart of the whole six film saga. Anyway, you are right that Anakin’s attachment to Padme is what brings about his downfall. But Yoda ll but admits, either in the film or the book I can’t remember just which, that it was the Jedi who failed as much as Anakin who failed. The jedi failed because they did not adapt or grow over time, while the Sith changed and grew more powerful. There is a suggestion moreso in the book than the film that because Anakin had to keep so many secrets from the Jedi, primarily his love, his conversion to the dark side was much easier than it should have been. Maybe the Jedi should have made allowance for such attachments, for love. By the time of “Jedi,” the fact that Luke is trained differently than the Jedi that Yoda trained in his youth at least hints that maybe the old rules of the Jedi Order have been replaced with a more flexible code.