I recently returned a day early from a trip and found my husband on the couch, dallying with a piece of white trash he picked up at the library. It was "Star Wars: Episode III, Revenge of the Sith." Why white trash? Let me count the ways:

-Dialogue alternately stolen from Dr. Phil and the Lifetime Network? That's pretty white.

-Jive-talking alien Jar-Jar Binks? Gettin' whiter.

-A Samuel L. Jackson so mellow and non-threatening I began to suspect chemical castration? Oh, you better believe that's white, motherfucker!

There was so much in this movie to abhor. Don't get me wrong; watching a spry little Yoda fling himself at people's throats like Monty Python's Killer Rabbit was quality entertainment, but having to sit through 90 minutes of incoherent xenophobic geek-crack to get there seems like a poor trade.

However, more than Lucas' laughably one-note approach, what bothers me about this movie is that it presumes to change my view of history. If Lucas wanted to pull a Spielberg and bring a doddering Harrison Ford out of retirement, out of Calista Flockhart, or wherever he happened to be and do a crappy fourth "Star Wars," I would be okay with that. But making subsequent films "prequels" to the narrative forces the viewer to see the original movies through an inferior lens. (Side rant: I'm a child of the 70's, so you would think I'd be used to having my childhood strip-mined for every cartoon, movie, and toy I once held dear. But even after two "Scooby-Doo" movies and a "Transformers", it still upsets me.)

Lucas, Spielberg and their ilk have "tinkered" with their earlier films before. Clearly, they value regular infusions of cash over respect for history, continuity, and the integrity of their work, so it seems prequels are inevitable. But every cloud has a silver lining. Anyone want to read my screenplay for "Indiana Jones and the Placenta of Peril?"

--Becky_Sharp