An interesting convergence of news stories in the papers these days.
Item: "Star Wars" fans line up by the hundreds, many of them in full regalia, waiting to get into advance screenings or premieres of "Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith."
And Item: Fan ejected from Oakland-Yankees game, arrested, after throwing a beer at Jason Giambi.
Ask around about which group of people need to get a life, and you'll most likely hear it's the guys in imperial stormtrooper armor and Chewbacca masks. The New York Sun recently went so far as to suggest in a front page article that fans obsessed with "Star Wars" have mental problems. But I've yet to see any of them get arrested, attack a celebrity, or show any kind of hostility outside of recreating the Battle of Endor from Episode 6. And there's generally no beer at the local cineplex.
Sports fans on the other hand are increasingly out of control. From the infamous brawl last November in Detroit involving Ron Artest sparked by an unruly fan to the assault on another Yankee, Gary Sheffield, in Boston, there are growing concerns about boozed up fans being too close to the field or floor as rivalries between teams become increasingly passionate.
Richard Lapchick, a sports sociologist who runs the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida, told the Associated Press that fans "think they can get away with things ... There haven't been enough consequences meted out over the years. Fans think somehow the ticket is a license to behave as badly and rudely as they want to."
Full disclosure here: I enjoy the "Star Wars" films and I'll be on line tomorrow with my kids to see Episode 3, the final installment (until George Lucas gets hungry for his next billion.) I'm not a fanatic, don't own any costumes and have never attended any conventions or written actors for their autographs.
But I respect people who do those things as genuine, if somewhat silly people who enjoy projecting themselves into a universe where good and bad is so cleanly delineated: Light side of the force, and dark side. Jedi and Sith. Good-looking young actors and cute puppets vs. mean old guys, monsters with bad make-up and killer robots.
I'm also a Yankees fan, but I can't imagine ever painting my face with pinstripes or teaming up with four friends to spell Yanks on my bare chest at a game. Yet somehow doing that seems more socially acceptable than bringing a lightsabre or Darth Vader helmet to a movie theater.
That's because it's assumed to be more manly and natural to be fanatical about sports than about any entertainment venue.
To be fair, the overwhelming majority of sports fans enjoy their games peacefully and responsibly. But there is nothing masculine or "cool" about those who get carried away. If you saw the video of the beer-spilling fan, his arm being twisted by a security guard, being chucked from the stadium you will surely agree.
A favorite riff on Star Wars fans, and those of other sci-fi franchises like "Star Trek" is that they shun real social interaction like dating.
But do the math. The first "Star Wars" film is nearly 30 years old. "Star Trek" is pushing 40. A lot of the most ardent fans are younger than that. Most likely they've been turned on to it by their parents.
It's harder to believe women are drawn to sports fanatics who shout cruel slogans and throw things at players, and we should all hope they aren't. That way we can expect fewer assailants in the stands as they fade from the gene pool, and Gary Sheffield's successors can one day field pop flies without keeping their eyes peeled on the fans.
Review: "Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge Of The Sith"
"I don't know you anymore," Senator Padme Amidala tells her husband Annakin about midway through this film. It seems he's been staying out late murdering Jedi knights, hanging out with a bad crowd and being seduced by the dark side of the Force.
Amidala has secretly married Annakin, evidently a social transgression a long time ago in a galaxy far away, either because members of the republican senate or Jedi knights aren't allowed to marry, or maybe they aren't allowed to marry each other. We're never sure know which it is, just that their union is taboo.
To further complicate matters, she's pregnant and he's about to grow a foot taller and lower his voice a few octaves to morph into Darth Vader, the latest apprentice to Palpatine, the hidden lord of the Sith who will soon accomplish the unthinkable task of taking over the galaxy.
We can chalk up Amidala's surprise up to the self-imposed blindness of love, but she's had plenty of warning of Annakin's psychosis. Didn't he level an entire village of Tusken raiders in the last film and then confess to his beloved that he didn't spare the women and children? In a matter of minutes the liberal and benificent Amadala manages to push this out of her mind and, rather than suggest some serious couch time and medication (if not a war crimes tribunal) she goes ahead a few scenes later and instead ties the knot with him.
You reap what you sow. And that's how the good former queen winds up being telepathically strangled by the twisted Jedi who professes to have turned to the dark side of "the force" in order to protect her and her unborn twins at the climax of the film.
To be convincing, this character development needed more time and script to play out. But "Episode 3" is a very busy movie, and nuance is something it can ill afford. There are numerous loose ends that have to be tied up between "Episode 2" and the orginal three films. Often that makes the film more fast-paced, but you can't help feeling rushed when a battle sequence between the separatist droids and the Wookiees (Chewbacca's kin) takes up all of four minutes or so. George Lucas has devoted far more time in the other films to epic clashes between fur and metal.
The fast pace also leaves the devoted viewer taking inventory after the film and tallying loose ends. We'll never know how Annakin, who is told at the climax his wife and unborn children are dead, somehow knows in the series ultimate moment -- the classic revelation scene in "Empire Strikes Back" -- that Luke Skywalker is his son. And if he knows Luke is his offspring, why doesn't he know about Leia, especially when he tortures her aboard the Death Star? And if Annakin is reborn as the Emperor's Sith lord apprentice why does he, in the seminal"Star Wars" that now succeeds "Episode 3" appear to be the lackey of Grand Moff Tarkin, a cog in the bureaucratic wheel who doesn't even believe in the Force?
These are questions that only devotees of the series will ask. Others might be bogged down by the simple inability to suspend belief enough to buy Dawson's Creek-looking Hayden Christiansen as the same guy who fills out the Darth Vader costume, breaks people's necks and talks like James Earl Jones.
I strongly suspect that Lucas, in his original conception of Star Wars, never intended the whole Darth as Luke's father plot twist, but added it while planning or filming "Empire Strikes Back." That would explain why so much of that storyline is implausible and disjointed. All of which won't prevent this movie from raking in hundreds of millions -- enough to maybe tempt Lucas to make an Episode 3.5 or Episode 7. And because the movies, warts and all, are always worth the price of admission and then some, I'll be there to watch.
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