Star Wars as Metaphor

Too many people to mention (read: I'm too lazy to look up links at the moment) have noticed that Star Wars VI: Episode III--The Revenge of the Sith seems to parallel the Bush administration a bit too closely. But that's not what George Lucas had in mind at all. And courtesy of the Chicago Tribune, he's happy to let you know.

"It was really about the Vietnam War, and that was the period where Nixon was trying to run for a [second] term, which got me to thinking historically about how do democracies get turned into dictatorships?" Lucas said at his Skywalker Ranch earlier this month. "Because the democracies aren't overthrown; they're given away."

It's just coincidental that the same situation (or worse) is echoing again.

"First of all we never thought of Bush ever becoming president," "Star Wars" producer Rick McCallum said, "or then 9/11, the Patriot Act, war, weapons of mass destruction. Then suddenly you realize, `Oh, my God, there's something happening that looks like we're almost prescient.' And then we thought, `Well, yeah, but he'll never make it to the second term, so we'll look like we just made some wacky political parody of a guy that everybody's forgotten.'"

But then, says Lucas, maybe you just can't escape the echoes.

"No matter who you look at in history, the story is always the same," Lucas said. "That's what's eerie. It was a little eerie that things have developed the way they have."

Of course, to push the metaphor farther, does this mean Jenna and Barbara will grow up to be Leia and Luke?