With “Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith,” George Lucas’ epic science-fiction/fantasy series has come full circle — politically as well as storywise.
Lucas, you see, originally conceived “Star Wars” while many Americans were questioning leadership during Richard Nixon’s presidency.
“It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships?” Lucas said at his Skywalker Ranch earlier this month. “Because the democracies aren’t overthrown; they’re given away.”
Now the “Star Wars” series has wrapped up while George W. Bush’s presidency is triggering questions about America’s role in the world, its use of military might and the tolerance of political dissent.
In “Revenge of the Sith,” Chancellor Palpatine exploits war fears to turn the Republic into an Empire ruled by him alone. As Senator Padme, played by Natalie Portman, watches Palpatine consolidate his power amid a rapturous senate, she comments disgustedly, “This is how liberty dies: with thundering applause.”
“I didn’t expect that to be true,” Lucas said, then laughed. “It gets truer every day, unfortunately.”
Lucas said he wrote that line and the screenplay’s other politically pointed elements before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the subsequent war on terror. So when Palpatine announces that he intends to remain at war until a certain General Grievous is captured, no parallels to the hunt for Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein were intended.
“First of all we never thought of Bush ever becoming president,” “Star Wars” producer Rick McCallum said, “or then 9/11, the Patriot Act, war, weapons of mass destruction. Then suddenly you realize, `Oh, my God, there’s something happening that looks like we’re almost prescient.’ And then we thought, `Well, yeah, but he’ll never make it to the second term, so we’ll look like we just made some wacky political parody of a guy that everybody’s forgotten.'”
Instead, viewers may assume that when Anakin Skywalker threatens, “If you are not with us, you are my enemy,” he is intentionally echoing Bush’s repeated “with us or against us” declarations.
“I know that’s the line that George Bush said, but many other people who have run countries have said it before him,” said Ian McDiarmid, who plays Palpatine. “That really is a great Sith line.”
So is George Bush a Sith?
“You’d have to ask him,” McDiarmid said.
“I wouldn’t say,” Lucas laughed.
To Lucas the broader point is that politics, like the age-old myths that inform “Star Wars,” never really changes.
“No matter who you look at in history, the story is always the same,” Lucas said. “That’s what’s eerie. It was a little eerie that things have developed the way they have.”
McCallum was willing to make one prediction: “There’s no question that the French are going to love the movie. We are definitely going to get the Golden Freedom Fry Award for best movie of the year, because they’ll see it exactly the way they see their relationship with us now.”
