Guess what’s coming out tonight???? Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past week or so, you probably know that the final film of the Star Wars movies, Revenge of the Sith, is coming to your local theater. Now, you may not believe it, but in my youth I was a crazed Star Wars fan. I did not wear costumes, but I did subscribe to the Star Wars Insider in high school.

Being somewhat knowledgeable in this topic, I feel qualified to give you my opinion of the prequel set (which I can do, given that the General Assembly has not yet developed an opinion on Star Wars that I would be contradicting in my role as a staff person). Basically, my judgment on the first two can be summed up by saying that they were “a grave disappointment” (or in slightly less delicate language, they stunk). The plot was too diffuse, the dialogue too insipid. I still own both films on VHS, though. Go figure.

This doesn’t mean I won’t spend my hard-earned dollars from working for you all to go see the third one this weekend. Unlike in college, where I studied for a final all the way up to the midnight showing on Episode II, I will not attend tonight’s show. I have to be responsible now. The plan, though, is to go on Saturday morning, when hopefully I can get some tickets.

Now why, you wonder, should you bother seeing this film when the others have been so bad? One, because it is a cultural phenomenon. Just as reading novels by Dickens was a mark of the 19th century Victorian middle class, seeing a movie like Star Wars is something that we share in our collective consciousness. We all know, for instance, that Darth Vader is Luke’s father, or what a Wookie is. The allusions are something we share and can go back to as a point of reference.

I also do think the films as a whole, because of their archetypical themes, bring up interesting questions about sin, redemption, and salvation. Do we all have good in us, as Luke believes about his father, even when it is buried beneath the massive horrors of our own tragic hubris? Does grace, essential to Protestant teaching about God’s forgiveness, play into Anakin Skywalker’s redemption? Or does the film reflect more of an American perspective on redemption, that “God helps those who help themselves”—or at least help their children when they’re about to be electrocuted by a psychomaniac?

Hmmm… the film does point to one essential Christian doctrine, however. Even the enormousness of our own sin cannot preclude us from redemption, or separate us from God’s love. That alone makes the series worth watching for me.

“For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” --Romans 8:39-40

Kelsey