Why Greggity isn’t scared of Darth Vader anymore

I haven’t seen a movie in the theater since seeing the most recent Star Wars, Volume III, whatever they call it; the one where we learn how and why Darth Vader became Darth Vader.

Full disclosure: I’ve still never seen the two other new Star Wars prequels. Previews and trailers of the first one turned me off, and I didn’t need to watch it to know how Jar Jar Binks soiled it. I didn’t see the other one, either, because I didn’t care to see Darth Vader as a teenager rolling around in a meadow getting to second base with Natalie Portman.

I was curious about the last one, though . . . How and why did Vader turn to the dark side, how did Yoda wind up on a swamp planet, etc. I was optimistic about the third one, but I was severely let down.

My grievances with the film are many. I won’t even comment on the vapid script and pathetic dialogue. That’s too easy a target. And I think we can all agree the dialogue was never the strong point of the original Star Wars trilogy to begin with. What the original trilogy had was a compelling story, a basic tale of good vs. evil.

Before turning to my issues with Darth Vader, allow me to briefly address a handful of ancillary concerns. First of all, I thought there were far too many alien/droid/creature things. What happened to all the people? The best characters in the original trilogy were the people, such as Han Solo and the Billy Dee Williams guy in Cloud City, or the people in suits like Boba Fett and Vader himself. I felt Episode Three had far too many cute (or ugly) “alien things” in the universe. And what in the world was that giant lizard that Obi Wan rode around on? It had a mind-numbing screeching squawk worse than 1,000 simultaneous fingernails scratching a chalkboard. But I’ll allow that it could have just been too loud in our theater that day, so let’s let that go for now.

Based on the original movies, I always thought the Jedi Warriors were these incredibly brilliant galactic samurai ninjas who could pull off David Copperfield style magic and other tricks with their minds, by channeling their collective power of the force. They always seemed like a crew with nearly matchless ability, right? But Episode Three made it seem remarkably easy to kill them off. Once the evil order was given, it took the new bad guys about a minute and a half to wipe out all of them. I’d have thought Jedi would have put up more of a fight. And shouldn’t they have seen it coming?

But nevermind all of that.

The reason we saw Episode Three was to see Darth Vader become Darth Vader, and I guess we got that.

I’ll begin by saying I’m not scared of Darth Vader anymore. . . I used to be. He was the ultimate menacing screen villain who ruled the galaxy and struck fear into the hearts of aliens and droids. But Episode Three turned him into a comical character for me, even less fear-inducing than the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man of Ghostbusters.

Here’s how.

Why does Anakin turn to the dark side? A girl. Anakin has nightmares of his wife near death and he’s convinced that he can heal her with mystical powers. That’s essentially what’s at the heart of his turn to evil. Okay.

How does Anakin actually become Vader? This was insane. This is what kids have been waiting for since 1977! This was the big moment! The theater was filled with tension and awe, while I suppressed a smile and fought the urge to laugh out loud. It was very funny to me. I felt like Tracy watching War of the Worlds.

Anakin is dueling Obi Wan for a while on this volcanic planet. Eventually Obi Wan gets the upper hand, proceeds to cut off Anakin’s arms and legs and he burns up. The Emperor swoops in, collects what’s left, and they fly away. The Emperor puts what’s left of Anakin in a suit, he starts up the familiar deep breath thing, and there you have The Birth of Darth Vader.

Vader’s last screen appearance in Episode Three is him yelling a whiny and dreadful, “Noooooooo!” when he finds out the Natalie Portman character died. (After all he did to save her?! Drat!) I recall the Natalie Portman character was perfectly healthy, physically, by the way. Her cause of death was a broken heart and losing the will to live. How tragic. George Lucas tried to become a galactic Shakespeare! He turned Darth Vader into a big weenie while he was at it.

Here’s the bottom line. In my head, Darth Vader doesn’t care about girls. Darth Vader eats rocks and batteries for lunch, he blows up planets, drinks beer, watches football, fixes up old cars, listens to AC/DC, then blows up more planets.

That’s the prequel I wanted to see.

g.