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Something smells like Sith in here…
Maddox has a hilariously on-target thrashing of Revenge of the Sith. And if you don’t know who Maddox is, then you suck.
I also have a couple articles about it, in case you’ve been in a coma - though neither is really funny, if that’s what you’re after.
Articles With Similar Themes:
- Why do you smell?
- “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
- How you smell out in the sun
- The Death of Sci-Fi
- Bad breath phone
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- Next: Manson vs. Jesus
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:02 pm
Ugh, that’s the type of ignorant crap that I’m sick of. Now granted, Maddox usually is pretty damn good at pulling stuff apart, but his whole take on Revenge of the Sith smells of ignorance.
Of course the Jedi couldn’t detect anything from the Clones because the clones are little more than robotic flesh. They have the body of a human, but their entire brain has been programmed. They will never think for themselves beyond tactical awareness (i.e. the ability to adapt in battle), and since they have no real concept of self, they have no fear. THEY HAVE NO EMOTION. How can you detect emotion when there is none?
Next, Anakin has been tutored by Palpatine for as long as he’s been trained as a Jedi. As soon as Phantom Menace is over, and Anakin goes back to Coruscant to begin his training, Palpatine begins to sow the seeds within Anakin’s mind. So, thus, Anakin has three devotions, one to Palpatine, one to Padme, and one to the Jedi (that is, after he fails in his devotion to his mother). When he senses that he is losing control in his devotion to Padme (her eminent death), he turns to both the Jedi (Yoda in the meditation chamber) and Palpatine for help. The Jedi don’t offer him help (or at least, not the answer he wants), so he turns to Palpatine, and eventually the Sith.
Making the connection that the Sith are related to monotheism (if someone wants me to explain that in greater depth, I will), it becomes obvious why Anakin chokes Padme: he’s punishing her, putting her in her place. He doesn’t want to kill her, just subject her to his power. Padme doesn’t die from asphixiation, she dies from a broken heart (something Anakin can’t predict now because he doesn’t have much of one left). Just like Yahweh punishing the Jews (creating a beaten wife syndrome), but still “loving” them, Anakin is punishing Padme, but still “loves” her.
As for the dialogue and cheesy characters, Lucas succeeded in his intentions. Star Wars was originally made as an ode to Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon. It was supposed to be cheesy. The dialogue was supposed to be bad. It was supposed to be a space (soap) opera. Yet at the same time, the story arch (the hero myth to the dot, preceeded by the fall of the hero) was meant to grapple you into the movie. Lucas suceeded in doing what he set out to do, for all 6 movies. People don’t like the prequels because it is a metaphorical history of our past (and if you want me to expound on that too, I will later), and the past sucks, our current Black Iron situation sucks, and thus the original trilogy provides the hope that the hero will return and save us from the Black Iron prison (or that we may discover the key to saving ourselves).
So there, the prequels, especially Revenge of the Sith, aren’t trash, you just already knew what was going to happen (both literally and metaphorically). There are no plot twists because it is a metaphorical story of our past, and the original trilogy is a potential future. Our current situation lies between the two trilogies.
June 2nd, 2005 at 1:27 pm
jon, i think youre taking all this a little too personally. i dont think maddox is writing “ignorant crap” by any means. just because you dont agree with him doesnt mean hes wrong. i dont necessarily agree with all your interpretations of star wars, but i think they are interesting and worthwhile.
and anyway, if we dont like something then we dont like it. it doesnt matter what it “means”. intellectual meaning is only one of many joys and values that can be derived from a story
June 2nd, 2005 at 2:43 pm
Haha… I mean, no, Star Wars sucks. Really.
Sans Empire. And The Empire Strikes Back had different writers and director.
He should’ve gotten BioWare to write the new trilogy. They did a better job with SW: KotOR, and Lucas has an army of some of the world’s best writers working for him, yet he still had do it himself.
He managed to ruin my childhood. And I will refuse to let me children grow up on such. They will know Vader for who he was, not the whiny piece of hooker afterbirth that he is. WHY WOULD YOU MAKE DARTH VADER WHINY?! It truly boggles my freakin’ mind.
I fucking hate you, George Lucas.
June 2nd, 2005 at 3:51 pm
hilarious
June 2nd, 2005 at 6:00 pm
I think that Lucas really knows what’s going on. There is a great interview with him in the current issue of Rolling Stone.
He says: “There are a lot of Greek gods who came down (and impregnated mortal women) and the the heroes didn’t have fathers. Whether its Hindu, Chinese or Middle Eastern, all the mythological heroes didn’t have faters. The fathers were the gods.
Now in this particular case, the gods happened to be a life-form that allows a cell to divide. So it’s a meaphor: that which brings life. I don’t want to get too controversial about this–some people believe it happend in other ways, over seven days, but if you listen to biology, there’s another theroy, which begins with an e. If you study microbiology, you come to the realization that this alien-life form, which has a competely different DNA, helped create life on earth and within the galaxy. It’s a simplified version of relationsips–that symbiotic being goes through everything. That’s why Han Solo joins the Rebellion, thats why Luke saves his father. In Star Wars land, all these relationships are necessary to bring forth a greater good–and evil.
Now there’s a hint in the movie that there ws a Sith lord who had the power to create life. But it’s left unsaid: Is Anakin a product of a super-Sith who infuleneced the midichlorrians to create him,or is he simply created by the midichlorians to bring forth a prophecy, or was he created the the Force through the midichlorians. It’s left up to the audience to decide…in the end the propheciy is true: Balance comes back to the force.”
Lucas is on to game. He’s just like David Icke. David Icke says the “Source”, what Lucas calls the “Force” has become deeply unbalanced by a “Luciferic consciousness”,,Lucas’ “Dark Side”.
And like Icke, who by the way is on Coast to Coast AM tonight, he realizes that there has been human/alien interbreeding, including the creation of of superior beings like Anakin who can be taken over by the “Dark Side” through the use of occult practices and ritual.
David Foster, the prominet cyberneticain, contends that an “information wave” exists that imparts information throughout the universe in the form of cosmic radiation. So does the late Sir Fred Hoyle, the prominent and world famous British astrophysicist. This “information wave” is the “Force” that Lucas speaks of and the “Source” that Icke mentions There is a dark side to the “Force” as well as a light side. Both can be accessed. Over time, however, as Icke argues, the Dark side has grown in power to the point that it is deeply unbalancing the universe. He says that the Star Wars films are symbolic of this struggle. He’s right, of course. One can see this with the secret society network–groups like Skull and Bones (real name the Brotherhood of Death) the Masons, the OTO, the Rosicrucians, the Hermetic Order of the Goden Dawn the Synarchists and the like who largely control governments and are working for the Dark Side.
Lucas knows the score. His movies are fantastic revelations.
June 2nd, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I was just venting a little because there were a few things Maddox said/interpreted that were just flat-out wrong or poorly conceived. That’s why I said “ignorant crap”. But alas, it’s just a movie.
June 2nd, 2005 at 6:40 pm
avatar, while some of that’s interesting, i have to repeat some argument i saw on another site… i forget where. you wrote:
i personally couldnt care less about deciding something like this as an audience member. to me it just seems completely trivial. why should i sit there and be like, “hm, i wonder which of the three midichlorian scenarios are true?” meanwhile i’m being BOMBARDED with some of the worst writing ive seen in a long time… to me, good writing doesnt confound me with trivial interpretations of midichlorians, it invites you to participate in a story, and ask what YOU would do in the situation and how the whole thing makes you feel and adds to your life. midichlorians don’t add ANYTHING to my life even remotely
jon: i dont think you can say maddox’s interpretation was “flat out wrong” since it was just an interpretation
June 2nd, 2005 at 7:23 pm
But I think you miss the point of film. The film is brilliant in that it tells in symbolic or allegorical form what is really happening in the universe at the present time. We are facing a life and death struggle with the forces of darkness.
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:05 pm
Maddox rules. Those images he put together made me laugh so hard.
I just watched episode iii and it did indeed suck hard. Back to reading PKD (real sci-fi).
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:09 pm
I wonder if the heavy criticism of Revenge of the Sith it due to the fact that the occult world doesn’t like the fact that it tells the truth about the galactic struggle that is really underway at the present time.
Could the evil world of the occult be out to derail this film?
June 2nd, 2005 at 8:52 pm
NOOOOOOO!
Each letter is a link. Sound on your computer will be needed.
June 2nd, 2005 at 9:02 pm
Oh yeah. Stole it from metafilter.
June 2nd, 2005 at 9:18 pm
avatar:
just because i dont agree with you doesnt mean i missed the point. and guess what, telling a universal truth in symbolic or allegorical form is what EVERY STORY DOES. period. this movie is no different in that regard. thats why we have stories in the first place. that doesnt mean i need to like each one of them though.
i hope this is a joke comment, because its one of the dumbest things i’ve seen in a while. me not liking this movie has nothing to do with “the occult”. it has everything to do with this movie completely sucking.
June 2nd, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Avatar:
Keep in mind Star Wars fans (self included) have apprehended the “truth” to the space opera in question ever since on that day in late May 1981, Vader declared: I AM YOUR FATHER.
It’s not like we didn’t know what was going to happen in this one. Some just don’t like the treatment Lucas gave it.
Myself, I enjoyed it and even find myself kinda sniffly at the fact of what a loser Vader is (see my NOOOOO! comment above). I’m a romantic. I can’t turn my back on what Star Wars meant to me growing up. Luke’s theme still gets me misty.
Maybe, if anything, Lucas is showing us hyper, meta allegorically, that evil is for losers. In which case, he has made a profound point with ep III.
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:05 pm
Come to think of it, the “NOOOOOOOO!” line didn’t bother me at all. In fact, I think I fully went along emotionally with it. I think I must have been fully integrated somewhere along the line.
As fully heinously Hayden Christiansen played the part (not like the part would be that hard, given the dialogue), I was attached to the broader story of Darth Vader — the approved narrative I already knew. I was transfixed by the mythology played out, once again, for the sixth and last time coming from it’s official source. I was moved by repeated and albeit lackluster Williamsian cues found in the fanfare (John Williams has got to be old!). Hell, the entire official and unofficial Star Wars Universe itself, I actually adore. And I have, all my livelong life.
I wonder, and it’s the first time this has occurred to me. But is George Lucas not a modern archetype for an ancient god? Look at his creative empire. His creation’s hold over tens of millions of people is voluntary and singularly unprecedented by its eagerness. It spans the world over and is completely free of jingoism. In fact, he portrays only the pallid white dudes as evil!
Does Lucas “hold the code” to unleashing a “cloned” force that could counter the black iron prison myths of old? A clone that will always pick up a Jedi’s lightsaber, no matter how brainwashed? Could there be such a bridge between people, built up by the Lucas ILM empire, its survival depending solely upon its admittedly corporate seeming idealists and dreamers it employs, that can span the gap of empire?
If there is such a thing, I think we’ve got ourselves a greyrobed Christian.
I dunno. But can you think of another human being who has been able to create something that means so much, and so differently, to so many people? If there is evil in this world, I have the feeling that the Lucas empire shall be behind its antidote.
Nobody ever said the prophets of old weren’t just peering in on inscrutable future summer blockbusters.
June 2nd, 2005 at 11:47 pm
man, this line is just brilliant:
and makes me think back to the interesting views that went in this direction when we first talked about the subversive potential of this movie (um, before i saw it, that is)
June 3rd, 2005 at 5:44 pm
I have a suggestion that may help. Read the novel. Perhaps that is why my opinion of the movie is so different to everyone else’s. I read the novel when it first came out (to help me write a paper that was due before the movie was released), and then saw the movie. I really think that the book helped to fill in a lot of tiny spaces and allowed me to peer into the heads of all of the characters (including Count Dooku). Perhaps after reading the novel, everyone may have a different interpretation of the story (not necessarily the movie).
June 4th, 2005 at 5:52 pm
I’ve got to interject here- the OTO, Hermetic brotherhod, Rosicrucians, etc., neither represent the “dark side” of anything, nor do they control the world.
Instead of looking for ridiculous grand conspiracies, let’s stick to the truth- what rules the world is greed, ego, and lust for power. Secret societies have almost always been created to counter the establiushments of control, coercion, and dogmatic literalist religion. The ‘evil’ of modern freemasonry (or modern Christianity, or any group that’s been absorbed) is not inherent to the ideals of freemasonry, it’s from the co-option of the brotherhood by the powers.