Star Wars And The Curse of Lucas

Did you know that one of the people on whom George Lucas based his evil emperor was the former American president Richard Nixon?  It's a little nugget of information I've always enjoyed as both a fan of the original Star Wars films and someone fascinated by the career of Nixon.  The late president, of course, was a rather more complex figure than Lucas's straight-forwardly evil emperor, but nonetheless it represents a little bit of linkage between fantasy and reality.  I mention this simply because in the wake of Disney's purchase of the Lucasfilm franchise, I re-watched the execrable "Phantom Menace" to check that a change of ownership was a good thing, and then wrote a blog post about it, here.   Too much time on a Sunday, clearly.