REVENGE OF THE SITH, MOVIE WITH A MESSAGE

The latest Star Wars effort has been awarded the Trophy of the Festival at Cannes. Here's the Guardian's Charlotte Higgins to explain why this honour was bestowed on such a crassly commercial Hollywood creation:

The republic is crumbling under attack from alien forces. Democracy is threatened as the leader plays on the people's paranoia. Amid the confusion it is suddenly unclear whether the state is in more danger from insurgents, or from the leader himself.

It sounds more like a Michael Moore polemic than a Star Wars movie. But George Lucas, speaking as his latest epic was given its world premiere at Cannes yesterday, confirmed that Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, could be read as a parable about American politics.

When he conceived his series of films in the 1970s, he says, he was thinking about Vietnam and Nixon, investigating "democracy, and how a senate could give itself over, could surrender itself to a dictator".

Asked whether Star Wars Episode III openly alluded to the Iraq war, he said: "When I wrote it Iraq didn't exist. We were funding Saddam Hussein and giving him weapons of mass destruction. We were going after Iran. But the parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing in Iraq are unbelievable."

Anyone who has seen episodes I and II will know Lucas hasn't had an original thought since the 70s. Time to retire, or maybe switch to "documentaries".