OK, so there's been some coverage in the news over the politics of the new Star Wars movie. It leads me to wonder, "You have seen the previous movies, haven't you?"

I mean, you know that the Empire is bad, and is going to rise to power, right? So they're probably going to say and do bad things?

And in oh, 1977 it gets established that there's a good Senate, and it gets thrown out by the Empire nefariously. So, where's the surprise coming from in what happens in this one?

Sure, there's parallels when you dig hard enough between the movie and political events, but seriously, "You're with us or against us" isn't a copyrighted idea by anyone.

Might have been nice if it was, since it'd be one less piece of crappy dialog in cinematic history.

Scaring people into giving up freedoms for security isn't exactly a new phenomina either. We're looking at ideas that might have been cliche by, oh the time of the Romans.

Lucas isn't exactly charting new, dynamic storytelling ground here. And he never has been. Grab some archtypeal stories, rip off Hidden Fortress, then proceed to redo the effects sequences over and over, and keep tweaking until the story is as mechanical and soulless as Vader himself.

George is probably happy his story has suddenly become "relevant' somehow, by being applied to the present, but really.... Reporters are equating things done in Phantom Menace as being about W in Iraq, when he wasn't even elected.

But I guess people with a shaky grasp of history and politics, and even a more shaky grasp of Star Wars need to latch onto to the media tidal wave with something to made headlines with.