Stephen Colbert Examines Vatican’s Harsh ‘The Force Awakens’ Review
While Star Wars: The Force Awakens continues to shoot up the all-time box office list, not everyone is enamored with the latest episode in the space saga. The Vatican‘s official newspaper L’Osservatore Romano previously gave the film a negative review, and on Tuesday’s Late Show, Stephen Colbert examined why the Catholic Church responded so harshly to The Force Awakens.
“The Vatican, and this is true, gave a better review to Spotlight, and I’m not joking,” Colbert said of the film that tackled the child sex abuse scandal in Boston churches. In L’Osservatore Romano‘s review, an unnamed critic said that the film was “confused and hazy” and “overdoes the darkness.” It also criticized the movie’s representation of the Dark Side: “The new director’s setup fails most spectacularly in its representation of evil, meaning the negative characters,” the review said.
“This review really has me torn because I’m now caught in a crisis of faith between deeply held beliefs embedded in me since childhood and the Catholic Church,” Colbert, a practicing Catholic, said. “So before you jump on them for not enjoying Star Wars as much as we did, let me defend my church by explaining why they might have issues with it. For one thing, it’s the story of a savior born in the desert chosen to redeem mankind; that’s copyright infringement.”
Colbert then pointed out that, like the Bible, the original Star Wars prominently features a father (Darth Vader), a son (Luke Skywalker) and a Holy Ghost (Obi-Wan Kenobi).