I just saw the new Star Wars movie. Uh, it was okay I guess. A little long. I started looking at my watch about 75 minutes in, hoping it would end soon. It didn't.

For much of the movie, I couldn't help but think back to the last movie I saw Hayden Christensen in, the excellent Shattered Glass. In Shattered Glass, he played Stephen Glass, a journalist who starts making up stories. In a way, I feel like that character and Anakin Skywalker are kind of the same. Both are promising young professionals (a reporter in one case, and a Jedi in the other) who decide, somewhat inexplicably, to go to the dark side (making up stories in one case, and becoming Darth Vader in the other). The wise mentor -- Charles Lane, or Obi-Wan Kenobi -- tries to save him, but ultimately is unable to, and Stephen / Anakin ends up unemployed and disgraced / the victim of terrible burns and forced to wear an evil black mask. Also, Washington DC in the summer gets very hot, like that planet of fire. And if Stephen Glass is Darth Vader, then I guess that would make Jayson Blair the chancellor. Okay, I'm done with the analogy. I do think the actor played both parts pretty much the same way, which either means he saw these parallels, or that he's a one-note actor incapable of doing anything else. I suppose we must await his next role to see for sure.