Low Budget

I think we all remember that moment when Darth Vader became the greatest archetypal bad-guy in modern cinema.  It was as he stood over the freshly dis-armed Luke Skywalker and announced: "I am your father, Luke!" This was, to the truly uninformed, during the second (and best) Star Wars movie, The Empire Strikes Back.

Darth didn't have to prove his claim, he told Luke that Luke knew it was true.  Luke did, and so did we.  Darth Vader was a powerful archetype and needed no explanation.  When he, in the third installment, was redeemed, we all felt lifted.  Somehow, his own son's nobility and resistence to the dark side allowed the unfeeling and ultimately evil Darth Vader to instantly transition back to the side of goodness.  It was quick, perhaps cheesy, but it made total sense within the genre, using those archetypes. We bought it.  Partially because we often fall for our most powerful villains, but also because they just did it and didn't spend a lot of time explaining.

The more you explain something, the better the explanation has to work.  If you say "we're jumping into the DeLorean and going Back to the Future," fine.  We're with you.  If you start talking about a contained black hole and the event horizon, we start wondering how that might work.  You've given us an authentic sounding explanation, and we're more likely to test it for true authenticity.

When a charming little kid, smarter and wiser than his peers, grows up to be evil, you can either just say it happened, or you can try to show us how.  But once you start showing us, you've changed the level of discourse.  Do we trust George Lucas to do this? 

The transition has been done.  Al Pacino's Michael Corleone went from being the good kid who wanted out of the family business to the new Godfather, as hard and violent as his father had ever been.  Of course Charlize Theron showed us the story of Aileen Wuornos, who became a serial killer.  These are, unsuprisingly, Oscar winning performances.  Will Hayden Christensen win an Oscar?

Still, this could be a fun movie.  The early press is good, even though Lucas' track record is unpromising.