I did something Sunday night that I haven't done in a long, long time. It wasn't that I watched Revenge of the Sith; it's that I had tears in my eyes from about the time Anakin's tears rolled down his cheek in the Jedi Temple, straight through to the end. It took me quite a while to turn off the waterworks completely, too.

What a beautiful film ROTS is...visually stunning and emotionally heart-wrenching. Lost love. Brothers torn apart by sinister forces beyond their control. The pain wrought by mistrust. Betrayal. When I allow myself to get lost in its story, as I did on Sunday, I hurt at the loss of love and feel isolated by the hate that rips the Light apart. It hurts so good; I love this film.

From the opening crawl, Anakin Skywalker is presented with tests. "There are heroes on both sides," it says. Light and Dark, in such close proximity that they blend together into gray...is it any wonder that Anakin can't discern right from wrong when nothing about his Jedi training was strictly black and white, Light and Dark? While we're still holding our breath from the pulsating opening, Obi-wan issues Anakin a test. "There's nothing more you can do," says Anakin's Master, challenging him to choose between his humanity and his Jedi resolve. Anakin never had a chance.

The road to Anakin's redemption is a long one, and on both sides, beings die. Heroes die. While it's true that Anakin's Dark alter ego wields the blade that delivers so many of the killing blows, it is the forces behind his fall that put the blade in Darth Vader's mechanical hand. It is in the gray areas of our collective conscience that the popularity of this saga exists. I used to think it was in the Light and the Dark. I was wrong, at least at how I see it...feel it. Are any of the SW characters 100% good or bad, right or wrong? Of course not! That opening crawl might as well read, "War! The Force has dissolved into shades of gray..." Then again, that would make it a tale of simple humanity, simple reality, wouldn't it?

Darth_Hiram is quite the blogger, and his A Journey into The Force blog (just about every entry!) is one I have had bookmarked for quite a while. This entry came instantly to mind as I watched ROTS the other night. I pictured Anakin fumbling in the Dark to find the Light switch...reaching, stretching... only to be blocked by haunting dreams and the face of evil itself, Darth Sidious. Anakin wanted so desperately to find the Light. So desperately. I listened to his plaintive confession to Obi-wan as the older Jedi prepared to leave for Utapau, that he hadn't been appreciative of his Master's training. "May the Force Be With You," tumbled awkwardly from Anakin's lips. Why? Why wasn't Anakin able to silence the hyperdrive in his psyche and just accept what the Force asked of him?

He wasn't made that way. The Force didn't steer him toward that proverbial Light switch because it wasn't meant to be that way. Anakin was raised in gray world, and his path to redemption had to remain equally gray. Life was never black and white for him. I like to think that even as he stood as a blue apparition with Yoda and Obi-wan at the end of ROTJ, the whole of him still wasn't perfect. His imperfection gives us hope that we can all be redeemed, no matter how bleak our lives may be...no matter how gray. There's hope.