STAR WARS: REVERSING THE SIGNS
With each victory of the light, it is the dark that wins. - - Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover, based on Lucas's screenplay
As I drove by the Chinese Theatre last night, I saw an old sight: a little band of Star Wars fans already lining up for Revenge of the Sith -- even though Variety has reported that it will be opening this time at the Arclight, a new multiplex with fabulous digital projection and reserved seating. When I asked the manager at the Arclight if they were going to have their own line, he answered tersely: "We don't do lines." So for the next 43 days the action will be at the Chinese, where the fans persist in believing that George Lucas won't let them down.
Many feel that he already has. They've been highly critical of the first and second installments of the new trilogy, where political discussions and Byzantine plotting have replaced what made the first trilogy so engaging: friendships between loveable characters fighting evil. As dictated by the myth embodied in the films, the third episode will end with the triumph of evil and the transformation of the hero, Anakin Skywalker, into Darth Vader, the villain of the original trilogy. To make matters worse, the film is likely to garner a PG-13 rating for violence.
None of that will keep it from being a hit. Then speculation will begin about whether Lucas will make the third trilogy, while he continues rewriting the first two by releasing one Star Wars film a year, beginning with The Phantom Menace, in 3-D. In the process he will continue improving the special effects as he did when the original trilogy was re-released in the 90s. In theory he could also replace all the dialogue with new lines written by Quentin Tarantino and directed by Sydney Pollack, digitally altering the onscreen actors' lip movements to match.
That will never happen, of course, because all that flat, badly acted dialogue performs the same function as dialogue cards in silent films. After letting Ron Howard direct his fellow actors in American Graffiti, Lucas settled on this esthetic for the rest of his oeuvre, and it is consistent with his characterization of himself as a purely visual filmmaker - one whose eccentric Panavision style, stationed midway between Ford and Pasolini, hasn't changed since THX1133. Most of the bad reviews that have bounced off the Star Wars juggernaut through the years were written by critics who watch movies with their ears and are incapable of following the intricately edited action sequences that are the films' core, unlike the perpetually renewed fan-base of 12-year-olds, whose visual skills have been sharpened by playing Lucas-designed video games - the most popular of which all seem to star Darth Vader.
It scarcely matters whether Lucas is a liberal with roots in the 60s or the conservative he claims to be in interviews, because those shrinking political constituencies are at this point united in opposition to the policies of what is politely referred to as Republican "neo-conservatism." The gauntlet was hurled in Phantom Menace when Lucas named two evil fish-faced Senators Nute Raygun and Trout Lott, in honor of two leaders of the "neo-conservative" majority in the U.S. Congress. And in Attack of the Clones Anakin's massacre of an entire village of desert-dwelling Tusken Raiders in revenge for his mother's death - "even the women, even the children" - inevitably referred to the invasion of Afghanistan, whether it was originally written for that purpose or not.
When it came time to flesh out his plan for the new trilogy, Lucas studied history to understand what causes republics to turn into empires - the familiar scenario of a democracy ceding its liberties to an authoritarian leader in a time of crisis. That situation is already well advanced at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith, where Chancellor Palpatine has maneuvered the weak, corrupt Senate into revoking the Constitution and giving him war powers to defeat the Separatists headed by Count Dooku, with whom he is secretly in league. Dooku (an interstellar Charles Mauras) hopes to purge the Republic of the corruptions of democracy in order to forge an Empire where humans will rule over non-humans, but he is betrayed by Palpatine and killed by Anakin at the beginning of the film - the second murderous act by which Anakin gradually succumbs to the Dark Side of the Force. Many contemporary allusions are smuggled into the novelization of Revenge of the Sith. It remains to be seen if Palpatine's cry before a cheering Senate of "It is morning in the Republic!" (echoing a famous slogan of Ronald Reagan) makes it into the film.
By now it's no secret that Palpatine is Darth Sidius: a Sith Lord, a Jedi who has succumbed to the Dark Side. As an 18-year-old security guard once explained to me, Obi-Wan Kenobi made a big mistake when he killed Darth Sidius' colleague Darth Maul, because in the words of Yoda: "There can be only two Sith Lords - not more, not less." This means that in avenging the murder of his Master, Obi-Wan created an opening that must to be filled - by Anakin, when he becomes Darth Vader.
In fact, each of the heroes of Phantom Menace performs a good action that paves the way for the triumph of the Dark Side in Revenge of the Sith: Obi-Wan when he kills Darth Maul, Qui-Gon Jinn when he saves ten-year-old Anakin from slavery on Tatooine and Senator Padme Amadala when she forces the resignation of a weak Chancellor and the installation of Palpatine in order to enlist the Senate in the defense of her home planet against the Separatists.
Lucas loves repetitions, so Star Wars I has the same structure as Star Wars IV (the original Star Wars), but reverses the meaning of all its signs. Even Yoda collaborates in the birth of the Empire when he leads the Clone Army to the rescue at the end of Attack of the Clones -- the Clones will become Palpatine's pawns in Revenge of the Sith and his Imperial Storm Troopers in the second trilogy. The last shot of the heroes' triumph in Phantom Menace (still based on Triumph of the Will) is ironic in the light of what follows, and the lessons should be clear enough that the 12-year-olds who cheered when Obi-Wan dispatched Darth Maul will understand that when they revisit the film in 3-D in 2007. Maybe by 2012, when the 3-D Return of the Jedi is released, they will have helped us take our Republic back.
Bill Krohn
