06/02/05

All of us cheered when medic robots snapped the shiny black mask on Anakin's burned, skinless face and he began to breathe in that characteristic, amplified way. Of course, we'd cheered for the wookiees too, but that isn't the point. It was Darth Vader! After enduring Episode I and Episode II, we'd come to know him in a whole new way. He wasn't just the evil guy in black with cool telekinetic strangle powers. Vader was sensitive, damaged by childhood trauma and an obsessive, secret love affair; he was a confused, up-and-coming military leader in the Republic whose loyalties were captured and twisted by a proto-dictator. Anakin's fall isn't just a nifty plot device, though. It represents no less than the fall of the United States. And director George Lucas knows that...

http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/22140/

from AlterNet, by Annalee Newitz


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp