UNDERSTANDING VADER.

Byline: - Rob Lowman

While Darth Vader has always loomed over the ``Star Wars'' saga, in ``Revenge of the Sith'' one of filmdom's greatest villains finally gets his close-up.

After all, ``Star Wars,'' as George Lucas has insisted all along, ``really is about Darth Vader. It really isn't about Luke and Leia.'' And he felt that the only way to show this was to tell the back story.

Vader only showed up in the first trilogy as a dark figure - black cloak and helmet suggesting the armor of a Japanese samurai. (Lucas was enamored of the samurai films of Akira Kurosawa.) In the prequel trilogy, the man who would be Vader is introduced as a 9-year-old boy named Anakin Skywalker.

Lucas said when he told people that was his plan, they panicked because ``everyone wanted to see Darth Vader going around killing people.'' But he wanted to tell a different story - one of fathers and sons, good and bad choices - which makes Vader a very complicated villain.

``Anakin's greatest virtue is his greatest flaw,'' says Matt Stover, who wrote the novelization of ``Sith'' for Lucas. ``His loyalty to his friends and how much he cares for the people around him, his love for his wife - how he can't let things pass out of his life - that's what ultimately causes his fall in the end.''

He goes on to say that Anakin's need to control the universe around him costs him his humanity. ``The whole function of the dark side is about personal power, control - about that lust to control everything, which is why making Vader more machine than man was such a brilliant metaphor.''

The late Joseph Campbell, whose classic text on mythology, ``Hero With a Thousand Faces,'' influenced Lucas, thought that the part-machine Vader with his black outfit represented the dehumanized power of the state, something that goes along with Lucas' well-known anti-establishment bent.

But unlike other famed screen villains - Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates - Vader isn't a totally lost soul. In the last ``Star Wars'' episode, ``Return of the Jedi,'' Lucas allowed Vader to sacrifice himself so that he is not condemned to eternal darkness.

Interestingly, had the ``Star Wars'' films been released in chronological order, audiences wouldn't know that. But ``Sith,'' despite its descent into the dark side, offers hope - or as the case may be, ``Episode IV - A New Hope.''

In Daniel Goleman's ``Emotional Intelligence,'' a book that Lucas has embraced, there is an old Japanese tale in the chapter ``Know Thyself'' that sounds like it had Anakin/Vader and Luke in mind.

A warrior challenges a Zen master to explain the concept of heaven and hell to him. When the master spurns his request in vile terms, the furious warrior draws his sword and threatens him for his impudence. That is hell, the monk tells him. After calming down, the warrior thanks the monk for his insight. And that is heaven, the monk says.

It is the difference between Luke and his father. Luke refuses to use his weapon when urged to by the Emperor; Vader wields his in anger.

``I felt if I gave Darth Vader his due,'' says Lucas, ``you would understand what a tragic story the whole thing is and it would change the way you look at the movies.''

- R.L.

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Father and son: Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader