The Force Is Back With Us

In reviews at Variety and The New York Times, critics say this week's Star Wars movie Revenge of the Sith evokes the quality of the best of the series, The Empire Strikes Back. Variety, all about the business potential of any movie, reports that we can believe in the Force once more, after being disappointed by the last two movies:

Given the general awareness of what's going to happen, it's up to Lucas to make it exciting. Despite fans' varying degrees of loss of faith that set in with Menace and Clones, most will be inspired enough to believe again.

Variety, in its trademark telegraph styles adds, "Stratospheric B.O. is a given." And no, that doesn't mean they expect this one to stink up the theatres like Episodes I and II.

A.O. Scott in the Times says this is the best Star Wars movie George Lucas has directed. "That's right, it's better than Star Wars," he notes.

Nothing like a dark story — like my favorite, Empire, where Darth emerges as Luke's dad — to grab our hearts. Like anybody, I want to feel that surge of emotion again, experience the brain's mirror neurons I felt almost 25 years ago in the old one-screen Americana Theatre on Hancock Street in a much-smaller Austin. That old-style theatre, with one giant screen and an auditorium wide enough to have a middle aisle, it's gone. The lines wrapped around that building in June of 1980, when Empire opened. That theatre's site has morphed into a library. But PBS says that mirror neurons in brain circuitry let us "lose it completely" at the movies. That's the feeling I want to find again, the amazing sound of Yoda's voice, the thrill of Luke and Vader dueling, even though my fledgling Buddhist training tells me that some things never return, no matter how much we want to experience them again. No, that's grasping and attachment, like wanting another championship run for the Spurs to the NBA title.

At 11:50 PM, Wednesday night, the first screening unreels in Austin, at the Alamo Drafthouse North. Maybe I'll enjoy a chance encounter with my neurons there. It seems appropriate to watch the darkest side of the Force in the darkest side of the night, past midnight.