Thursday, May 19, 2005

Prescient George (Lucas)

Although I have not seen the movie yet, there is lots of talk that the new Star Wars movie contains many relevant political messages.

Best as I can gather, they have something to do with destroying a republic through empire building, and/or using ruthless means to achieve dubious ends.

Regardless of the exact nature of the message, it is clear that George Lucas understood the general dangers our country faces and that he tried to tell us about them in his blockbuster films.

For example, could the fact that this:



looks so much like this:



be anything but the result of careful planning? I think not. Many lives could have been saved if we understood his message earlier.

Of course, maybe the message was more along these lines:



I will investigate further this weekend.

UPDATE: Here are some quotes from George Lucas on the movie:

''In terms of evil, one of the original concepts was how does a democracy turn itself into a dictatorship,'' Lucas told a news conference at Cannes, where his final episode had its world premiere.


...

''On the personal level it was how does a good person turn into a bad person, and part of the observation of that is that most bad people think they are good people, they are doing it for the right reasons,'' he added.


While I wouldn't go so far as to say the parties who pushed us to invade Iraq were ever good, or had good intentions, I think the US as a whole was once good, but is slowly slipping into something not so good.

Link

UPDATE 2: Best quote on the movie and politics:

In other words, it is not George Lucas' fault that George W. Bush is acting just like the evil Sith Lords of the story, destroying forever what was once a limited republic in the name of protecting it. Perhaps Bush is a Star Wars fan, and truly believing that power denied is power wasted, he is deliberately following the example of the Sith.


See the rest here.

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

GIR/Brian

Would indeed like to hear more from your analysis whether Lucas is making his new Star Wars a satire on current politics in Washington

Interesting indeed if true !!!

5/20/2005 01:35:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I wouldn't consider Lucas capable of such depth.
The similarity between Lieberman and Palpatine is uncanny, although the actor playing Palpatine also played the same character over 20 years ago in Return Of The Jedi.

5/20/2005 05:07:00 AM  
Blogger Brian said...

Twenty Years! We are moving from political commentator to phrophet.

5/20/2005 05:57:00 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Whatever the case with the Star Wars movie, the USA is certainly repeating the experience of ancient Rome. With one big difference. Rome moved from Republic to glorious Empire to decaying Empire. The USA is simply moving from Republic to decaying Empire with nothing in between.
Let's face it, the second Iraq war (aka "the first Oil War") has, if anything, demonstrated the weakness of the emerging Empire - more than two years and it still hasn't secured the road from the Green Zone to the airport...
Simultaneous debut and swansong of the American Empire?

5/20/2005 07:01:00 AM  

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