Star Wars Fan : Sharp-Eyed; Inconsolable.

In some cases, such the visual allusions to Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will that cap the concluding medal ceremony of A New Hope, the reference could only become clear in the context of the saga as a whole. In that case, the allusion to the Rebel victory as a quasi-fascist one suggested the moral hollowness of their victory achieved by military force, while setting the stage for their defeat at the start of the second film.

The failure of many critics to understand this point -- the interior rather than exterior nature of moral conflict in the Star Wars saga -- probably explains why so many seem oblivious to the extremely literate qualities of the latest film. Yet once these are recognized, it becomes hard not to admire Lucas for his audacity in building such a complex six-part drama, and his willingness to face critical and popular scorn for pushing it through to its logical end.

Deliberately reversing the logic of the opening Hoth sequence from Empire, the closing battle in Attack is filled with cross-cutting visuals of an evacuating rebel base and an invading army of proto-stormtroopers. The presence of such early Imperial technologies as squat walkers invites further doubt as to the moral virtue of the Republican assault, as does the generally right-to-left direction of their attack (the positive direction in film being of course left-to-right) and the reddish-brown haze that masks the battlescape.

The most obvious way Lucas condemns violence continues to be by showing on the narrative level that aggression is the surest road to defeat. Obi Wan's assault on Jango Fett leaves him hanging below the city in a clear parallel to Luke's defeat in Empire. Attacking Count Dooku at the climax, Obi Wan and Anakin also assure themselves of a terrible loss at his hands. The tide of this battle does not turn until the arrival of Yoda, whose appearance significantly marks Dooku's shift from a defensive to an offensive strategy and in turn triggers his own loss. The pursuit of would-be assassin Zam Wessel provides a more subtle case in point: it succeeds only when the hunters allow themselves to become the hunted.

Attacks on Lucas as elitist and anti-democratic are equally puzzling. Far from the embrace of authoritarianism that some otherwise perceptive reviewers including David Brin insist on reading into his work, Lucas actually offers a more nuanced claim: every democracy is part Republic and part Empire.
Defense Of The Clones