You were the chosen one!!

I saw Revenge of the Sith, and I found it to be a very upsetting movie. I thought it was quite good and very adequate to the task of linking the two triologies, but I was also really, well, upset by it! (I was also floored at how attractive Hayden Christensen has become. When did that happen? Are all evil guys so hot?)

I'll try not to "spoil," but I'm pretty sure I'm the last one on the planet to have seen it. Go read my rant about education if you want to stay clean of this mess.

Any movie considering the nature of evil should be disconcerting. I expected that. What I didn't expect was to be so sad and uncomfortable with the nature and facility of evil in this movie. I didn't buy how fast Anakin turned, but I also was really thrown by how Lucas exactly captured what makes us totalitarian: fear.

Many of you have written far more clearly about the political allegories in the film - "only sith deal in absolutes," etc., - but it was the larger consideration of how quickly we embrace what we perceive as safety that got me. There's some cheesy line when Padme responds to the Chancellor's (who is a fantastic actor and quite fun and evil) grab for power by saying, "so this is how liberty dies, to thunderous applause." It might have been moving delivered by someone other than Bland-ette Extraordinaire Natalie Portman, but I doubt it.

This is what the movie's about, I think. How good people can become "bad" in others' eyes by simply trying to keep safe the things they love. The dichotomy appears almost totally subjective. The movie then hastens away that conclusion by making Darth a killing machine, but in his mind he's completely justified. So those sensibilities and the truly horrifying visuals at the end did me in. Bad dreams all night and a sick feeling this morning when I remember it. I'm impressed that a Lucas film can stay in my head for more than an hour. Who knew?