Inheriting the Force

First off, I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who has visited this topic and read the articles I have written. The traffic here has been very steady, with hits numbering in the thousands for almost every article. The response has been much better than I had anticipated, and I hope fans are enjoying reading my interpretations as much as I am enjoying writing them.

Overall, these essays have been pretty long, and I appreciate the time people have taken to read them. Actually, I've received criticism from only two readers, both of which said they found them too short! I also appreciate Suite101 allowing me to take on the role of contributing editor here. As an ex-English major (assuming you ever stop being one), I love doing this stuff, and I've written dozens of articles, essays, and editorials about Star Wars all over the web during the past three years.

If nothing else, I think it is established that there is more to the prequels than meets the eye. To be certain, I'm reading a lot into this stuff, but in all honesty the prequels seem to be capable of absorbing all the interpretations I'm tossing at them. I find it too great a strain on my imagination that George Lucas did not establish them to take on that kind of critical weight. As he himself once said in an interview with the Star Wars Insider - "I stay away from critics. I just don't find them valid in any way. If criticism were the kind of analysis it was meant to be in the first place - as it is in other arts, where you have literate, sophisticated people, who are knowledgeable - then it would be worthwhile to listen to it. But I haven't discovered anyone who knows anything about film. To have them rant and rave about their personal feelings is a waste of my time." So that has been a kind of informal mission statement here. Already, the articles have gotten heavily into philosophy, mythic archetypes, religious allusions, and psychology, and there is still so much I haven't touched on.

Having said that, let me recount an amusing incident that occured at a local theater during one of my viewings of Attack of the Clones. It was a Saturday afternoon, and the stadium seating theater was quite full. About halfway through the film, a mother was attempting to get her son back up the crowded rows to their seats. The funny thing was, the young boy - probably about six or seven - would not walk up the steps to the seat because he didn't want to take his eyes off the screen! So there was the poor mother who was having to quite literally drag the boy up to their seats because he steadfastly refused to turn his back on the drama unfolding on the movie screen, even for only a few seconds. Both myself and the person I was with were smiling about it, and the mother noticed and just smiled back. All the time I was just sitting there thinking - this is so much better than anything I'll ever write about the movie.

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