No, actually it wasn't that bad. REVENGE OF THE SITH, I mean. It was loooong. The battle scenes were relentless and often incomprehensible: at one point a spaceship window gets broken, everyone starts getting sucked out into space (never mind the science, I'm talking You Have To Buy It Or Leave The Theater) and then, as my friend Larry said, "they get over that" and go on fighting. I'm willing to buy their phoney physics, but even if it's phoney it has to be consistent or I get irritated. And the lava planet was way cool, except it should have been way hot. I mean, no one's sweating until they start fighting, and meanwhile the streets are flowing in the streets. The acting is alternately over the top or wooden, but given that two of the wooden performances are turned in by Samuel L. Jackson and Jimmy Smits and an over-the-top one by Natalie Portman, I suspect the actors were directed to act in what might have been thought to be a mythic style. Not, in the end, such a good idea.

But: it was good to see how and why Anakin became Darth Vader, and how the situation was created that we saw at the opening of STAR WARS thirty years ago. And the special effects were pretty spectacular, if not nearly as awe-inspiring as when we first saw them, when they were fresh and new.

And is it an allegory of the current political scene, as I've been hearing? In literary terms, I don't think so. The Sith Lord transforms the Republic into an Empire and declares himself Emperor, in the name of peace and security and to the thunderous applause of the people he's subjugating. While I think there are plenty in the present administration who'd be happy to do that, it's a pretty broad event to base a claim of allegory on. If the Sith Lord's father had fought a war to a draw a decade before, and the Lord re-started that war based on false claims of the destructive potential and intentions of the enemy, well, maybe. But the idea that a bad guy can masquerade as a good guy and fool lots of people into acting against their own best interests is unfortunately not unique to our time.