I care very little about "Star Wars", but the writing here is so consistently good that I read this piece anyway.
"I found myself wondering fairly often about the gap between Lucas's conception of the Empire as Pure Cosmic Evil and Gilroy's attempts to provide a material account of its workings": So "Star Wars" has discovered the banality of evil? Good. A major reason why I never cared much about "Star Wars", even when I was a child, is that its villains were so implausible (and not in a satirical, Dr. Strangelove-esque way) and its notion of evil so unrealistic.
I care very little about "Star Wars", but the writing here is so consistently good that I read this piece anyway.
"I found myself wondering fairly often about the gap between Lucas's conception of the Empire as Pure Cosmic Evil and Gilroy's attempts to provide a material account of its workings": So "Star Wars" has discovered the banality of evil? Good. A major reason why I never cared much about "Star Wars", even when I was a child, is that its villains were so implausible (and not in a satirical, Dr. Strangelove-esque way) and its notion of evil so unrealistic.