zombie84 said:

Actually, I'm doing an interview with a right-wing newspaper this week, which normally isn't my thing, but they did a piece on this and they made a very good point about the factual inaccuracies. TPM and AOTC were both written and filmed before George Bush was ever in office. Lucas has admitted that any similarities to contemporary politics in those films is coincidental, as the only American politics those films referenced was the Nixon administration, and that was just one source of many (e.g. Julius Caesar, Adolph Hitler, etc.). ROTS tailored itself to the politics of the time, but only a little, as the story was already in place by 2002 and the writing was begun before the war in Iraq existed.

To be fair, I think he was suggesting that the the PT was better because it reflected more modern and complex ideas of good and evil - however unintentionally. I think he used the Bush era as examples of what kinds complexities he has in mind. He is imposing his worldview upon the movie and calling it brilliant on that basis. I think his characterizations of the Bush era and his allusions to the Cold War or WWII are oversimplistic, if not flat out wrong. Lucas is an avowed liberal who certainly knew about complex notions of good and evil in the wake of Vietnam War. That he didn't include such ideas in 1977 but did include them in 1999 doesn't indicate brainlessness in '77 and thoughtfulness in '99. It just goes to show how easy it is to read what you want into something so jumbled.