Final Star Wars Bears Messege (By Charlotte Higgins)

Rating: 9/10 (20 May 2005)

The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.
It sounds more like a Michael Moore polemic than a Star Wars movie. But George Lucas, speaking as his latest epic was given its world premiere at Cannes yesterday, confirmed that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, could be read as a parable about American politics.
When he conceived his series of films in the 1970s, he says, he was thinking about Vietnam and Nixon, investigating "democracy, and how a senate could give itself over, could surrender itself to a dictator". He found historical echoes down the ages. "I looked at ancient Rome, and how, having got rid of kings, the Senate ended up with Caesar's nephew as emperor ... how democracy turns itself into a dictatorship. I also looked at revolutionary France ... and Hitler.
"It tends to follow similar patterns. Threats from outside leading to the need for more control; democracy not being able to function properly because of internal squabbling." "I hope that situation never arises in our country," he said. "Maybe the film will awaken people to this danger." Asked whether Star Wars Episode III openly alluded to the Iraq war, he said: "When I wrote it Iraq didn't exist. We were funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We were going after Iran. But the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing in Iraq are unbelievable." Lucas yesterday received, amid enormous hoopla, one of the highest honours Cannes can bestow: the Trophy of the Festival, which he was awarded on the world's largest ocean liner, the Queen Mary 2.