So apparently, George "Evil Empire" Lucas falls in with Ted "Quagmire" Kennedy, comparing Iraq to Vietnam while at the Cannes film festival, recently a hotbed to anti-Bush films like Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the top award last year.
In his own words:

"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."

While Lucas himself may have drawn on history, citing Napoleonic France and Nazi Germany as places where democracy gave way to dictorships. Some in the audience were quick to compare the new Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith to current US foreign policy:

"This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause," bemoans Padme Amidala (Natalie Portman) as the galactic Senate cheers dictator-in-waiting Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) while he announces a crusade against the Jedi.

"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," Hayden Christensen's Anakin — soon to become villain Darth Vader — tells former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor). The line echoes Bush's international ultimatum after the Sept. 11 attacks, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"That quote is almost a perfect citation of Bush," said Liam Engle, a 23-year-old French-American aspiring filmmaker. "Plus, you've got a politician trying to increase his power to wage a phony war."

Stuff like this, combined with accusations that the prequel trilogy are an epic against capitalism really make me wonder about my love of that galaxy far, far away. And then I remember this: if it weren't for Star Wars, we may not have had SDI, and we never would have defeated the Soviet Union.
"If I may paraphrase a movie line...The Force is with us." - Ronald Reagan

Posted by Ryan S. on Sunday, May 15, 2005 at 6:19 PM | Permalink |