Someone gave Luke Skywalker that weird bowlcut in the first movie. Someone put Leia's hair up in those two buns on the side of her head. Maybe the same person who put Amedala's hair up in all those enormous Japanese hair sculptures, or who had Anakin grow that rat tail and pull it back in that weird little pig tail in back. This evil barber apparently also convinced Mace Windu that the shaved look was the way for him to go. No one has normal hair on Star Wars, and it's just too much of a coincidence to believe that it just happened.

 

In Star Wars, issues of good and evil have always been pretty clear-cut. Bad guys look bad, they're usually named Darth, and they have trouble breathing. The good guys are usually naive and have really bad hair.

 

I kind of feel bad for Darth Vader. I mean, when we first see him in the first movie, he's all evil and he inspires very little sympathy, I mean, he blows up a whole planet and he breathes real funny; in fact, when I was little I used to think that the sound he made breathing was him saying "Obi....Obi....Obi...." over and over, because he was obsessed with killing Obi Wan Kenobi. Aside from these things, at this point we knew very little about Darth Vader at this point, who he is, where he comes from, or what made him that way.

 

Most of all, we don't know that his real name is Anakin. That's a name for a care bear or a cross-dresser, not a badass Jedi knight. Can you imagine being a guy and growing up with a name like Anakin? No wonder he became evil. He was over-compensating. It also explains why he spent his childhood building a gay droid. He was conflicted.

 

I kind of feel sorry for any kid who has to grow up with a name like Anakin. It sounds like something a Southern debutante would call her boyfriend to get him to do something he really didn't want to do. "Oh, my, I'm ever so thirsty, and that water pump is dreadfully hard to manage! Anakins, could you fetch me a pitcher?"

 

That of course would be Queen Amedala. Or Senator or whatever. That's a bit of an odd name, too, but at least it doesn't have the implications of a name like "Leia". Hey, Princess, what do you want me to do? Lay-ya? *hyuk, hyuk* Of course, if you're like me, when you hear the name Amedala you immediately want to start singing "Rock Me Amedala". Anyway, I think the name Amedala means "great abs" in Nabooese. Bad people in Star Wars never have great abs like hers. Actually, very few people have abs like hers except women with fitness shows on cable at 5:00 in the morning.

 

 

Like I said, originally, good and evil were pretty easy to tell apart in Star Wars. But not anymore. You see, the Republic is debating whether or not to create an army. An army would apparently be bad, and the Republic and democracy are good. Jedis are good. They're against the army idea. Except for Qui Gon Long John, who died in Episode I, but apparently not before he commisioned the creation of an army of clones from a bounty hunter named Jango Fett. Or maybe not. All we know for certain is that Obi Wan Kenobi comes to the clone place and chases Jango Fett to the home of the evil gray-haired Jedi guy, who has an army of droids. And armies are bad. Even armies made up of droids, who are generally good.

 

And then...

 

The wrinkly, British Senator guy (who we all know is going to wind up being the Emperor in Return of The Jedi) is given these emergency powers to fight the droids, right? So he takes the army of clones and goes to fight the army of droids and save Obi Wan, Anakin, and Amedala. And it turns out the gray-haired Jedi guy works for the wrinkly British Senator guy. In the end, I'm not sure who to root for: The guy I know is evil but is trying to look like he's good, or the guy who is good but is being tricked into doing evil, or the guy who is good but eventually will become evil.

 

This could be another lesson from Star Wars: That everyone is evil. Isn't that supposed to be the X-Files?

 

...I think Natalie Portman's abs were computer-generated in this movie, just like everything else...