Why do you DO this to me, George Lucas?
The trailer for the new Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith
looks fantastic. But so did the trailers for the last two Star
Wars movies and my God what a pair of snorefests those were.
They were like some intergalactic version of C-span, live
coverage of the Jedi council debates, Imperial senate
sub-commitees on trade and so on. It all looked so wonderful and
then ... nothing happened, or things happened and I did not care
at all. Watching the acting was like watching the Thunderbird
puppets. Did Lucas direct all of his actors to not move their
faces at all? It looked like every single one of them had their
faces shot full of Botox.
What kills me is that I'm going to see the next movie. I've got
to, just on the off chance that it'll actually be good, that
I'll actually want to see this. For a change.
There are some good signs. Lucas didn't write this one himself,
and that's a very good sign indeed. He's notorious for writing
dialog that actors can't actually speak. Apparently he got
somebody good to write this one.
The basic problem is that he now has no one to tell him when his
stuff is crap. Whatever he does he thinks is great so it's all
up on the screen -all four hours of a two hour movie.
Star Wars happens a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. But
where, I ask, is God? Any kind of God. Wouldn't you think the
supreme deity - however you call him(or her) - had as much to do
with the Star Wars universe as he(or she) does with ours but he
(or she) doesn't even get a mention. The movies clearly have
Good and they clearly have Evil but not God - TheForce is talked
about, of course, but in no ways does The Force seemto represent
an all powerful anthropomorphic deity of the kind we're used to.
And want. And need. Likewise we also don't have a Heaven or a
Hell and that just doesn't seem to be right. It really burned me
when at the very end of the third movie, Darth Vader chooses the
good side, finally, then dies. The next thing we see is his
ghost, laughing and smiling surrounded by a glowing blue aura
while he's with the ghosts of Obi Wan Kenobi and Yoda, who also
seem pretty happy.
Wait. This guy destroys billions of people. He's personally
responsible for suffering on an unimaginable scale. And there's
no reckoning for him? He just gets to party on in the Jedi
after-life for all of eternity, because - what? He made the
right decision at the very, very last possible moment? I've
never seen the movie 'Clerks' but I've been told that this exact
question is discussed with great insight.
Which bring me to the question of where is God in the rest of
the Universe? Most scientists acknowledge that there must be
life elsewhere in the Universe and NASA's strongly suggesting
that they've found it for sure on Mars. I believe they actually
found it there a long time ago, but that's another story. Some
of this life is going to be intelligent. Does that mean then
that Jesus's is going to have to go to each and every one of
those planets and get crucified so that he can sacrifice himself
for whatever intelligent species in on that planet? That would
explain why it's taking him so long to get back to Earth. He's
busy elsewhere and there are alot of places for him to get to
before he can get back to us.