I watched Revenge of the Sith today. And I was impressed at how it didn't suck too much. In fact, if you depixelized Anakin's face (or had Genndy Tartakovsky animate him, since Hayden looked lightyears better in the Clone Wars animated series), the movie would be quite palatable. Several things right off the bat that I should mention: it was a shame that the twi'lek jedi knight Aayla (i forget her last name), had to die without a chance to defend herself. And Mace Windu is the only
jeedai with enough balls and skills to actually carry a purple lightsaber.
The parallelism of the Force mysticism with the black and white dogma of most established religions - the ones with a deity at the head of their tennets - is portrayed quite stiffly in the entire Star Wars saga (in which, of course, I mean the films) where the good, a.k.a. the light side of the force is depicted best by a tearoom of old fogeys seated together whilst bandying words and ideas in which they hope to find a solution that would not involve outright combat, and the dark side is mostly shady-looking characters moving with avarice-inspired speed and impetuous, yet calculated, schemes (a feature in which the classic bad guy can never live without - long live the character of Superman's
Doomsday who wielded evil like a billyclub and lashed out at infrastructures and bystanders with wanton abandon and nary a thought). While we can, say, applaud George Lucas' attempt to depict such basic socio-humanist ideas of good and evil in what has been hailed as a magnificent space opera, it was unfortunate that Mr. Lucas opted to do things the easy way when he created the supposed prequel movies (which brought about the sudden interest in histories and other prologue stories and ruining the franchise more than it helped). He sacrificed a proper dialogue for overly stiff actions and pyrotechnical CGI. In the same way that it had ruined the Lord of the Rings movies for me, this reliance on CGI destroyed, in my opinon, the overall mojo the episodes
A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi had going for the StarWars franchise, which was the overall feel of the story. It went from an operatic tale to a hack-and-slash flick where the most anticipated climax of the movie is a fight scene where an esteemed Grover clone fought jedi-style, spinning around like a mostquito wielding a lightsaber. Anakin destroyed Darth Sidious in the midst of his gloating over Luke by picking him up bodily and tossing him into vaccum, whilst Luke, a movie earlier, had been defeated by Vader with five simple words:
Luke, I am your father.
I had this dream some time ago, about religion. Most of the memory is foggy now, but I know it was about religion, at least. I had with me several miscreants of literature - we were journeying through two mansions, de-evilifying the spirits that swarmed and festered therein. Some of the misfit spirits I faced in the first mansion were the likes of Frankenstein, the fully transformed Mr. Hyde, Vlad Tepes Dracula, and another one whom I do not recall - these joined me in my quest. The second house was more terrifying; it had books that peppered rooms with evil souls once opened. And the final encounter was, strangely, with my sister, who defended the unclean spirits under the name of Christianity.
Each of my companions then delivered a short speech, coming up with what I classify as the possible building blocks of a natural belief, be it religious or otherwise:
1. Society changes with each organism that is added to it. Religion is unclean because it attempts to attain a status quo, and to maintain its beliefs, changing some dogma here and there to prevent stagnation. Therefore, religion is a bane.
2. The way the world has evolved to the bustling ecosystem it has become now can be traced back to the first living organism, a paramecium or a similar single-celled creature. It was through this paramecium's drive to replicate itself, its want to become more than just one, that we have become what we are now. Therefore, improvement is only natural, and the thrust towards such should be condoned.
3. No matter how the paramecium divided itself, it was still physically limited to this planet. In this way is order established, evolution contained. Everything that evolved from this paramecium had the freedom to improve, and when it began to overstep its boundaries, a natural predator evolved to curb the organism's rise. This was not just limited to creatures, as is shown by the rise and fall of empires, republics, city-states, and dynasties. Disregarding time, the predator of the social norm is conscious thought, an inherent desire to forage further, improve the line. It is as natural as the paramecium's first attempt in cell division.
4. Change is destructive, yet it is only through change that improvement can be attained. Promote change. It used to be that the greatest fears of homonids and neanderthals were dinosaurs of bigger bulk, flesh eaters of greater strenght, heights, sensations. Then machines of killing were developed, parachutes created, paracetamol develomed. Then the change shifted from the big to the small; people feared malaria, bubonic plague, diabetes, cancer. Then penicillin and a whole new line of antibacterials were developed. Now, the most debilitating diseases are AIDS, Parkinson's disease, leukemia, asthma. Genetics. One day, after these gene- fears are conquered, we will start fearing planets, asteroids, supernovas, black holes. The list of fear is beyond comprehension. Change is but one of the many frightening things that we have to undergo everyday. If you cannot promote change, then you cannot promote living.
5. How to change a society: first, you destroy its foundations, then you let the remnants fight over the spoils among themselves. The natural course of evolution should then follow (for man has stopped evolving biologically; thus we play with technology, with science, with theory).
At least, that is how it should go. This was when I woke up.
Karol Wojtyla (did i get that right?) was a conundrum. Here was a leader who promoted inter-religious debate, worked for the dicta license of each and every living human being, toiled hard for the Catholic church's makeover, the shift from a stiff and uptight moralistic society to a retroactive and aggressive metaphysical force to reckon with. To date, a majority of Catholics tend to be labelled as agnostic, dormant, or nonpracticing Catholics due to this sudden interest in the dogmas and teachings of alternative religions. In return for his insightful stab at the murky waters of the Babel tower's remnants, John Paul the Wise suffered numerous assasination runs, suffered from a debilitating disease, underwent a traumatic era during his old age where death evolved to a wholesale deal that could be delivered with one significant drop of a "package," as military people say it. He also received a gift of a bulletproof papal vehicle. Had he lived to be strong up to his old age, had he lived longer, I do not doubt that the Wise pope would have seen it fit to suggest the dissolution of the Roman Catholic chruch. Why so? Because Hari Seldon knew just how powerful a society can get before it starts folding upon itself, and I'm willing to bet that old Pope John Paul II was an Isaac Asimov reader. He was a paradigm shift, and in this he was revered.
Luke Skywalker shared many qualities with Mr. Wojtyla. He was a strong, and able leader who lived his youth impetuously rebellious, somewhat leftist in his ideals, prone to temptation and suffering. He was a living testament to how good intentions can be utilized for evil ends, depicted perfectly by his downfall to the darkside of the force in an attempt to study its complexities under one of Emperor Palpatine's many clone bodies. Through his trials under the most dangerous dark Jedi, years after the second Death Star had been destroyed, Master Skywalker emerged tougher than most of the Jedi masters of the Old republic, possibly smarter, and built the new Jedi order under a revised dogma. Even during the Yuuzan Vhong invasion (a time of unbelievable strife during master Skywalker's old age that is similar to John Paul's own waning moon), he did not falter, although he was more permitting, if not open, to the dark-side tactics utilized by his jedi pupils (the likes of Kyp Durron and Jaina Solo). Luke Skywalker was the seed of the Jedi rebirth; true to tradition, they swore to be the upholders of justice and democracy, but they fostered a keener understanding and sympathy for the dark side, relenting even to the the force adepts who developed an interest for the force's nether regions.
In true George Lucas fashion, this was also a poetic ideal, this balance between black and white; it was an age-old cliche. However, the depiction of the StarWars universe in the New Jedi Order series is radically different from the movies; here, Lucas Arts has no other resource but the intelligence and creativity of their hired writers, the real-life "stuff of magic." The space opera gravitated between hardcore science fiction and soft conspiracy theory, which was a good mix. It provided material, which brought out the most powerful core of the entirety of StarWars; is it enough to survive through any means possible, or is there redemption in extinction while living up to an ideal?
The Jedi Vergere was right when she said that there was no dark and light in the Force. In some cases, ghosts are the figments of our imagination, a kind of self-hypnosis that we can't seem to wake up from. Anger leads to hate, hate to suffering, but the emotion of anger can teach you and the lust for power, if tempered to the right direction, can bring about improvement. We can't always be griping about our jobs, or our lovelives, our current situations. No living organism was ever evolved into such a state of self-imposed decay.
Here's a lesson Palpatine learned the hard way: force lightning is more dangerous to the caster than it is for the target.