George Lucas conceived Star Wars in part as a criticism of Nixonian America and the Vietnam War (the Endor battle scenes in Return of the Jedi are intended partly as a Vietnam sequence). Now, at the premier of Revenge of the Sith, he says “When I wrote it, Iraq (the U.S.-led war) didn’t exist… but the parallels of what we did in Vietnam and Iraq are unbelievable.”
Although shrewd businessman Lucas wants to downplay any overt political implications of his new movie, there is an obvious critique of Bush and the War on Terror. Near the end of the picture, after Anakin has embraced the Dark Side and become Darth Vader, he confronts his best friend Obi-Wan Kenobi. Vader says “You are either with me — or you are my enemy.” Bush said something very similar after 9/11: “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” In the novelization and I hope, the movie, Kenobi responds “Only Sith deal in absolutes, Anakin. The truth is never black and white.”
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