The Anti-Bush Star Wars?

[UPDATE (5/16/05): I was surfing The Drudge Report this afternoon and came upon two articles similiar in context to the one below. One article is from Japan with the entertainment headline which reads, "Lucas jabs at 'Bush's empire'" and the other comes from a local newsstation in New Madrid, Missouri, entitled, "Cannes premiere of `Star Wars' raises questions of U.S. imperialism".]

When this little news item first appeared on a site I have frequented for the occasional oddball noteworthy story or two during the course of a relatively slow week in the field of politics, I was quite skeptical of its legitimacy and thought it may well be some ultra-conservative or extremist liberal movie critics reading far deeper into the meaning behind the nearly thirty year old Star Wars saga then actually existed. But now with Yahoo! News and other media outlets, including Fox News, having begun reporting on this particular item as well, I am more willing to take a leap of faith here then I was previously, though I remain adamant in my opinion that if this is true then it may well be so obscure that few, if any, audience members will pick up on it.

George Lucas confirmed at the world premiere of the final installment in his epic science-fiction series, Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, at the Cannes Film Festival, which for decades has been a haven for European elitists and left-wing Hollywood activists alike, the meaning behind the saga that fans have been waiting in eager anticipation for nearly thirty years – he doesn’t like war. Apparently European socialists have picked up on the Star Wars director’s message and made direct comparisons between the action in the series and the current events in the Middle East and the political spectrum in the United States, particular involving the current Bush Administration.

Apparently there at least two specific lines in the film which appear to be a direct reference to the current political environment of the United States, whether this was intentional or not on the part of director and writer George Lucas is unclear. One comes from Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) who bemoans, “This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause,” as the galactic-Senate applauds dictator-in-waiting Palpatine while he announces a crusade against the Jedi. But the real kicker is Anakin Skywalker’s line directed toward Obi-wan Kenobi in which he states, “If you’re not with me, then you’re my enemy”, supposedly echoing Bush’s post-9/11 ultimatum to the world that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”.

The sentiment seems to be shared with at least two other early film reviews of the film, including one from the conservative-oriented news magazine, The National Review.

From the National Review magazine group blog:

Warren, it's all there, but believe me, the movie's plot is so confused that it doesn't really matter. At one point, Natalie Portman complains that "this war happened because of a failure to listen." But the war she's talking about was started by the good guys! It was the Jedi who secretly built the Clone army that appeared in the movie before this upcoming one. And, of course, the Rebellion that Luke Skywalker joined in the first trilogy was conducting a war against the Evil Empire which included blowing up Death Stars and arming Teddy Bears. Evidently 25 years into the Star Wars empire, George Lucas decided he just doesn't like war. Now he tells us. The whole confusion is reminiscent of the last Matrix movie, which is all about a noble truce between our heroes and the computers that have been using all of humanity as batteries. So that a few people could survive to have orgies in the underground city of Zion, billions of people had to remain in the Matrix. Inadvertently, both Lucas and the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and directed the Matrix movies) reveal with their brainless anti-Bushism the essential cowardly vapidity of pacifism.

From a review in Slant magazine:

I imagine that Revenge of the Sith is very much the film Lucas's fans want to see, but are some of them ready for an anti-Bush diatribe?

Though every Star Wars film until now has existed in an insular comic-book world, a lot has happened since 1999 and 2002 in the real world and Lucas dares, for the first time, to address how the hollow political conflict in his franchise correlates with the reality outside its panels. (It would have been stupid not to strike a parallel.) Revenge of the Sith's two greatest moments tap into the uncertainty of our own political climate: the dazzling battle between Yoda and Darth Sidious (an outstanding Ian McDiarmid) inside the beautifully spiraling Senate hall evokes Democrats and Republicans scrambling for power and, during an obscenely over-the-top duel in Mustafar, Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) declares, "Only a Sith Lord deals in absolutes," after Anakin says, "If you're not with me, you're my enemy." Lucas's political gestures would be easier to appreciate if he himself didn't trade in absolutes and generalities (you know the drill: the darker the couture, the closer you are to the dark side), but it's still a welcome step forward. Pity we had to wait so long for it, but, as they say, better late than never.

Hard to think the "if you're not with me" line isn't intentional.

If that isn’t enough evidence for you then perhaps testimony from the cult-director himself, George Lucas, may convince you otherwise. While answering questions after the premiere of his latest film at the Cannes Film Festival, Lucas put on the line his views on the Iraq War and the current political spectrum of the United States, which the socialist European elites amply ate up. "When I wrote it, Iraq didn't exist," Lucas said, laughing. "We were just funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We didn't think of him as an enemy at that time. We were going after Iran and using him as our surrogate, just as we were doing in Vietnam. ... The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we're doing in Iraq now are unbelievable."

Lucas’ most insight commentary of the evening though appeared to be aimed directly at the bitterly partisan-divided Senate and House of Representatives rather then President Bush and his administration, which he never directly named during the question-and-answer session. In ancient Rome, "why did the senate after killing Caesar turn around and give the government to his nephew?" Lucas said. "Why did France after they got rid of the king and that whole system turn around and give it to Napoleon? It's the same thing with Germany and Hitler. You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues, and threats from the outside, needing more control. A democratic body, a senate, not being able to function properly because everybody's squabbling, there's corruption."

This, however, could easily be drunken left-wing Hollywood activists talking out of their asses and searching for evidence to support their cockamamie conspiracy theories, ones of which Michael Moore and his cult followers easily apply to, in which President Bush is using the war in Iraq to solidify Republican control of the country and eventually use that iron fist to rule the world. I honestly believe that the Star Wars fanatics, which are the main base of the box office coinage for this series, are too busy wetting their pants in eager the anticipation of witnessing the final transformation of Darth Vader to give a second thought as to the political allegory buried within.