The dark side of summer

What evil lurks beneath the shiny surface of the season's blockbusters? Fallen heroes, death-dealing aliens out to steal our natural resources and family values gone awry. Here's how our real-world worries play out on the big screen.

Star Wars: Episode III–Revenge of the Sith
We just can't get enough of God and Satan these days. Evil hasn't been this trendy since Puritans roamed the Colonies. We've heard an awful lot about "evil-doers" lately (thanks, Mr. President), we're entertained by a miniseries about the end of days and we play video games about the resurrection of evil. No wonder in Revenge of the Sith, the latest installment of our beloved space saga, Anakin finally gets down with his bad self.

Revenge picks up pretty much where Attack of the Clones left off and ends around where the 1977 original begins: Anakin is slowly seduced by the power of the dark side and becomes the icon of evil—Darth Vader. As he transitions from hunky hero to mechanical villain, all eyes—raging yellow—are on the dark side. This image of the shadowy depths of the Force plays directly into our cultural lexicon of good versus evil, present not just in other pop fiction, but also in pervasive cultural mythologies.

The representation of evil in Star Wars and in Revenge of the Sith particularly reflects a generic Christian model, says Lucy Pick, director of undergraduate studies in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago. "Goodness creates the potential for evil, but evil doesn't become evil until there's a negative will associated with it. The Force only becomes evil once people choose it," she says.

In other words, the bad guys use "the Force" just like the good guys do. In the first film, Darth Vader uses the Force to choke a guy who's critical of Vader's "sad devotion to that ancient religion." "I find your lack of faith disturbing," says Vader, as the skeptic's eyes bug out of his head. Revenge demonstrates that the Force itself isn't good or bad; but those creatures sensitive to it can harness its power for good or for evil.

So in the end, what exactly brings Anakin to the dark side? Pride. He thinks he's more powerful than his teachers, that he's qualified to be a master Jedi, that he can become powerful enough to control everything. As sinister Count Dooku tells a not-yet-evil Anakin, "Twice the pride; double the fall." It's the same way Lucifer fell in Christian mythology: He thought he could be more powerful than his boss, so he started doing a whole bunch of naughty shit.

Described throughout the films as a "chosen one" (cue the flashing neon religious terms sign), Anakin is the brightest and most promising student the Jedis have trained—the answer to everyone's, um, prayers. It's a long way down from the top for young Skywalker, and he hits every evil stop along the way. He's deceitful, quick to anger, something of a horndog, not to mention violent and ungrateful. "It's a classic Christian fall," Pick says.

No one can be too surprised that Anakin's big duel with Obi-Wan occurs in what's clearly the lava-belching bowels of hell. Yeah, they call it a "volcano planet," but tomayto, tomahto. If Dante could see us now.

Think we're going too far? Just check out the fringe industry devoted to Star Wars's Christian links; tied to the new film's release, Dick Staub's Christian Wisdom of the Jedi Masters promises to reveal the "theological truths" in the Star Wars films.

While George Lucas's stories obviously don't fit perfectly into a specific theological or spiritual school of thought, it's easy enough to make the connections to today's evangelical climate. Even though the films' sampling of religious terminology (all that "Lord Vader" junk isn't an accident) and iconography (see: billowy robes) reflect an American mishmash of religious cultures, that good vs. evil stuff is hard to dismiss. We're looking for the big battle, and the inevitable triumph of the cuddly humans over the militaristic and mechanized "others"—like Vader. He is one of the most enduring images of evil not just because he's so freaky and bad, but because he used to be good. Then again, it could be that voice, too.—Margaret Lyons

War of the Worlds
Steven Spielberg has wanted to make a movie of H. G. Wells's 1898 tale The War of the Worlds since 1967, when he first heard a recording of Orson Welles's infamous radio adaptation. The program, originally broadcast by the CBS network on Halloween in 1938, attracted an audience of about six million, most of whom had no trouble identifying it as a drama. But about one in six were fooled by the play's novel format, which simulated a series of fast-breaking news bulletins interrupting a bogus "regularly scheduled program."

According to psychologist Hadley Cantril's 1940 study of the panic, those who bought the Martian invasion at face value took the news in a variety of ways. Some prayed in their cellars, others made tearful farewell phone calls to loved ones or tore sleeping children from their beds and fled into the night on foot. One fatalist calmly polished off all the leftovers in her icebox. "We may as well eat this chicken," she told her nephew. "We won't be here in the morning."

It's unclear whether the mischief was intentional: Welles denied it at the time, but decades later claimed the bedlam was all according to plan. He was a notorious bullshitter either way.

Cantril concluded that the tense state of world affairs had helped lay the emotional tinder for the hysteria. In fact, a quarter of those who thought the attack was real assumed the actual culprit was Germany or Japan. "The announcer said a meteor had fallen from Mars, but I had the idea it was really a Zeppelin that looked like a meteor and the Germans were attacking us with gas," said one.

Ironically, the ease with which the broadcast spread terror undercuts one of H. G. Wells's central themes: human complacency in the face of escalating danger. Unable to take the Martians seriously, the smug Victorians of the novel give the invaders all the time they need to assemble their gigantic, death-dealing mechanical tripods. Even when reports of devastation in the countryside reach London, they're dismissed as hoaxes or downplayed as exaggerations. Thus the era's only superpower, England, is enslaved in a matter of days.

On a metaphorical level, Wells was trying to get his readers to think critically about the European colonization of Africa and Asia by showing them what it would feel like to be outgunned by an unfeeling and technologically superior foe. But his concrete description of the alien invasion was so hair-raisingly persuasive that many readers missed the political point entirely.

The Spielberg version, starring Tom Cruise, ditches the Mars angle and shifts the action from the late 19th century to the present, but it will apparently revive Wells's anti-imperialist subtext, judging from remarks recently made by screenwriter David Koepp to the French magazine L'Express. "One can see in the script something of the paranoia that followed the events of September 11, but to my mind we're really talking about the stupidity of American imperialism," said Koepp (Jurassic Park, Stir of Echoes, Spider-Man). "The extraterrestrials invade the earth for its water; other wars are fought for oil."

Wells's novel has been filmed three times before—a low-budget British production was released earlier this spring—but as the granddaddy of all space invasion stories, it's also inspired more movie knockoffs than just about any story ever written. According to Koepp, the Spielberg version will stay true to the novel while avoiding the hackneyed heroics of the genre it spawned. "The extraterrestrials create an electronic field that disrupts all modern technology, which enables the story to stay pretty close to Wells," he said, adding that he and Spielberg had begun the project with "a list of cliches we wanted to avoid."

Given Spielberg's track record as a sentimentalist and Cruise's as an action hero, they seem an unlikely pair to bring the full pessimistic force of Wells's grim and unheroic tale to the screen. But we're crossing our fingers and hoping for the worst.—Cliff Doerksen

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Banish all memories of orange-skinned, green-haired Oompa Loompas and Anthony Newley singing "The Candy Man."

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is not—repeat—not a remake of the 1971 kid-traumatizing musical starring Gene Wilder as the mercurial sweets-maker. "We are keeping the same title as Roald Dahl's book, and this is a very true adaptation, with Tim Burton's vision," says producer Richard Zanuck. "We've got a real 80-foot waterfall, a chocolate river and we've even got the trained squirrels that Roald Dahl described. Ours is not a remake of the 1971 movie, not a sequel. That movie took certain liberties, with characters singing to one another and the orange-faced dwarfs in unattractive costumes."

With Johnny Depp cast as the mysterious Willy Wonka, the mood is lightened considerably, says Zanuck. "Our movie will have some scary moments if you are eight years old—this is a Tim Burton movie. But Johnny gives a wonderfully bizarre performance. He's out there the way he was in Pirates of the Caribbean." (The actor has reportedly based Wonka's mannerisms on shock-rocker Marilyn Manson.)

Young Charlie, the poor boy who wins a chance to tour Wonka's factory, is played by Freddie Highmore, the same child actor who costarred with Depp in Finding Neverland. "He truly looks as though he's been eating nothing but cabbage soup all his life," Zanuck says. "We couldn't cast a rosy-cheeked little Macaulay Culkin as Charlie, who eats one chocolate bar a year."

Dahl's Oompa Loompas have been the subject of much controversy since the illustrated novel's 1964 publication. The author, in what was perhaps a satire of Victorianism, depicted Wonka's factory workers as imported African pygmies who delighted in their toil. (They did, however, offer arch commentary on their visitors.) But after academics condemned the portrayal as racist, the book was reissued in 1974 with new illustrations: The Oompa Loompas were bleached into white-skinned, blonde-haired, hippie-like helpers.

Depp's diminutive costars are all played by one actor, Deep Roy, who (with the help of computer animation) will perform "Esther Williams–style dance spectaculars," says Zanuck, when each spoiled child meets his downfall (the score is by Burton collaborator Danny Elfman). These Oompa Loompas are from some ethnically, geographically indeterminate place ("Oompa-land," Zanuck demurs), just as the film is set in an indeterminate era that has both flat-screen TVs and vintage cars.

The 1971 film made it seem that the Oompa Loompas had painted themselves with the wrong shade of self-tanner. That wasn't the only jarring aspect of that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Grim, harrowing and luridly art-decorated, the movie plays like Seven for the grammar-school set. Tempted into a sugarcoated wonderland, four naughty children (and one nice one) endure tortures borne of their own weaknesses: Video- and gun-addict Mike TeeVee is sucked into a TV screen; a gluttonous girl is expanded to zeppelin size. The songs are generally execrable, though "Candyman" became a hit for Sammy Davis, Jr.

Zanuck says the 1971 Willy Wonka was unfortunate mainly because it was a musical with unfamiliar songs. "It's always a risk, always dangerous when you have people bursting into song onscreen," says the producer who, as a studio executive, headed up some of cinema's most successful screen musical adaptations (The Sound of Music) and some of its biggest flops (Dr. Doolittle).

As for Charlie introducing new horrors into the easily-warped minds of today's children, Zanuck simply laughs. "It's all fun, and everyone survives. It's not as though anyone's being tortured," he says. "Well, for a little while they are being tortured, but they all come out alright. The sequence with Veruca in the trash with the squirrels is probably the most scary."

Most important, though, is the message that Dahl posthumously gets across: that the kids' beastly behavior is a direct result of the adults'values. "All the parents' coddling has hurt the children," Zanuck says. "If anything, they are helped by what happens in the factory."

Morality in a hip family film? Can't we just have one more song and dance with Veruca Salt? Says Zanuck, "Only if you take the squirrels, too. We worked too hard with those things."—Justine Elias

Scare tactics

Horrific frights for sweltering nights

Hollywood knows what you did last summer. You saw scary movies and now you want more. So from May to September, studios big and small will deliver a dozen fright flicks—twice as many as usual—to sate the cravings of horror and suspense fans. Some will be one-weekend phenoms at the multiplex (hello and goodbye, House of Wax) that'll go on to healthy lives on DVD. But many shivery attractions are best experienced on the big screen.

Dark Water (opening in July) comes with both a top-notch pedigree and troubled history. Jennifer Connelly stars as a young mother embroiled in a grueling custody battle; when she moves into a New York City apartment building, she encounters creaks and groans that may be ghosts, her ex-husband's harassment or products of her own mind. The thriller's release has been delayed several times, allegedly to distance Dark Water from similar Japanese-horror remakes like The Grudge and The Ring Two.

Skeleton Key (August), written by Ring scribe Ehren Kruger, has a guaranteed spooky setting: New Orleans, where Catholic and voodoo saints mix it up. Kate Hudson plays a hospice worker assigned to care for an elderly couple in a decaying bayou mansion (Is there any other kind?).

But the hard-core horror hit of summer may be a European import: High Tension (June), the made-in-France thriller that's been described as a throwback to the grueling, intense horror of the mid-1970s. (As genre fans know, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was far less gory than its title, but the audience's expectation of blood and guts made the experience almost unbearable.) A tale of two gritty college girls defending themselves from an ax-wielding killer, the movie is suspense in its purest form.

The new wave of zombie movies continues with Undead (July), a cheeky, low-budget (but sharp-looking) horror-comedy from Australia directed by twins Peter and Michael Spierig. The brothers, fans of Peter Jackson and Sam Raimi, rallied their talented friends, fired up their Macs to do special effects and made a slick, scary thriller. George A. Romero, who began the flesh-eating fun with Night of the Living Dead, makes the fourth and long-awaited final film in his series with Land of the Dead (June).

At the opposite end of the undead-moviemaking spectrum, a newcomer puts his money where his moniker is. Rob Zombie makes movies about killers, the flesh-and-blood kind. While most rock stars want to be movie stars, this metal god decided to become a movie auteur. His second directorial effort, The Devil's Rejects (July), described by Lions Gate execs as an "intense, Rob Zombie take on Natural Born Killers," won't be everyone's cuppa tea, but you can't say the guy isn't dead serious about his work.

And for everyone who can't get through the hot weather without a monster movie, there's The Cave (August), in which spelunkers encounter something big and crawly and Alien-like in the darkness. Let's hope it doesn't like movie theaters.—Justine Elias