It Takes a Village to Raise a Darth

In addition to providing a complex, multilayered story of political intrigue worthy of Shakespeare-or at least Syriana-what George Lucas did with the Star Wars prequels was to transform the focus of the franchise from the quest for truth undertaken by Luke Skywalker into the tragic rise and fall and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. The great irony is that while the collective consciousness of millions of filmgoers around the world was shaped and formed by the original trilogy, audiences for the most part rejected the Star Wars prequels in exchange first for the original Matrix (before the sequels utterly destroyed its legacy) and then for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The irony lies in the fact that while we are living in perhaps the most ambiguous and complex period in human history, moviegoers eschewed a complex and ambiguous movie series in favor of not one, but two incredibly simplistic morality tales.

It is not surprising that movie fans prefer Lord of the Rings and the original Star Wars trilogy. In a world in which we are daily promised peace through war, protection of rights through the violation of our rights, and draft dodgers strutting around like war heroes, the easy black and white answers afforded by LOTR is comforting. But, after all, Lord of the Rings is, like the original Star Wars trilogy, a quest movie and by definition a quest movie must be composed of polar opposites: white versus black, good versus evil, even small versus tall. There's simply no room for suggesting that just perhaps there may be such a thing as a propensity to commit evil acts by a hobbit or an orc who enjoys flowers and poetry.