Lucas Be DeMille?

When the smoke clears after the 1st Great Box-Office Battle of the 21st Century, critics and advisor clones alike will still be missing the point. The Star Wars series isn't about ticket sales, redeeming social value, dialogue, plot development, or any other standard we rate other films by. Rather, we must remember what made this series part of American mythology: its vision of the future.

When Ronnie Ray-Gun immortalized Star Wars as a nickname for his SDI nuclear deterrent program in the 80's, he shared a vision with George Lucas that most mere mortals failed to grasp. Regardless of the outcome, the significance of what Lucas brought to world culture cannot be overlooked. For the movie industry in particular, he set a precedent that would forever influence his contemporaries: digital imaging. Luke, Leia and Han are dearly departed, while Vader, Obi-Wan and Boba Fett are being recycled, but the images get better and better. How soon we forget that this was what it was all about. Gone are the cups and saucers of Ed Wood, the balsa wood navigational consoles of Star Trek. Lucas not only inspired the virtual reality of Nintendo but upped the ante by dropping movie stars into the midst of it.

The big beef has been that the dialogue is a light year behind the F/X. Yet we ask what immortal line remains from a quarter-century ago other than "The Force be with you"? The F/X are so overwhelming that there is bare room for further diversion. As the Emperor of Austria would have pointed out to Mozart in Amadeus, there would have simply been "too many (notes)". Turning Greco-Roman pageantry into Shakespearean tragedy pours too many spices into a succulent stew, as if this was Lucas' intent in the first place.

Instead, Lucas has become the Cecil B. De Mille of the 21st century, transmogrifying a cast of thousands into a cavernous coliseum filled with winged serpents with the flick of a switch. He has taken the dreamscapes of the underground cartoonists and given them life, transported us to the galaxies that our forefathers reading Buck Rogers could only close their eyes and dream about. His messages are plain and simple, parables and fables about the vanity of men, good triumphing over evil. Anakin will eat the Darth apple and Pat-Me will give birth to a Savior, but the Force will always be with us and everything always ends up as perfect as digital imaging can make it.

Of course you can't do it all with smoke and mirrors. Natalie Portman as Senator Pat-Me is every bit as good as Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia was a quarter century ago, and Ewan Mc Gregor as Obi-Wan Kenobi is holding fast to his place in line behind Liam Neeson's Qui-Gon. Hayden Christensen as Anakin captures our imagination as Mark Hamill's Luke Skywalker gone bad, and Yoda, R2D2 and C3PO are, well, what they are. Samuel Jackson is still keeping pace, but the most pleasant surprise is the resurrection of the Count, Christopher Lee. This piece of work has gotten him more exposure and more money than all of his Dracula roles combined, and I can't think of an actor who deserves it more.

Oh, yeah, the Clash of the Titans. When all is said and done, us Boomers backing Spider-Man will fade behind the Force Freaks who will see this Episode fifty times. It won't be a relevant statistic, however, because Spidey onscreen was the culmination of everything we anticipated for over nearly half a century. Episode II, alternately, was still Episode II. This is Kramer Who? vs. Apocalypse Now revisited, and we'll remember Spidey vs. the Green Goblin long after we forgot who Ewan Mc Gregor, Hayden Christensen and Natalie Portman were in which episode.

Like I said, that's not the point here. The point is what George Lucas, our Cecil B, has done and is doing for the motion picture industry. Star Wars is merely a monument to his greatness, just as The Ten Commandments was to his predecessor. Don't buy this DVD for its depth of dialogue, subliminal message or spiritual revelations. Pick it up and take it home for the sheer pleasure of being entertained and enraptured in a visual experience second to none.

That's what great movies, and LucasFilm in particular, is all about.