CANNES, France — Without Michael Moore and "Fahrenheit 9/11" at the Cannes Film Festival this time, it was left to George Lucas and "Star Wars" to pique European ire over the state of world relations.

Lucas' themes of democracy on the skids and a ruler preaching war to preserve the peace predate "Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith" by almost 30 years. Yet viewers Sunday — and Lucas himself — noted similarities between the final chapter of his sci-fi saga and our own troubled times.

Cannes audiences made blunt comparisons between "Revenge of the Sith" — the story of Anakin Skywalker's fall to the dark side and the rise of a warmongering emperor — to President Bush's war on terrorism.

Two lines especially resonated:

"This is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause," bemoans Padme Amidala as the galactic Senate cheers dictator-in-waiting Palpatine while he announces a crusade against the Jedi.

"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy," Skywalker tells former mentor Obi-Wan Kenobi. The line echoes Bush's ultimatum after the Sept. 11 attacks, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."

"That quote is almost a perfect citation of Bush," said Liam Engle, a 23-year-old French-American aspiring filmmaker.

The film opens Wednesday in parts of Europe and Thursday in the United States.

Lucas said he patterned his story after historical transformations from freedom to fascism.

Unlike Moore, whose Cannes visit last year came off like an anybody-but-Bush campaign stop, Lucas never mentioned the president by name and was careful to note he created the story long before the Bush-led occupation of Iraq.

The prequel trilogy is based on an outline Lucas created in the mid-1970s for the original three "Star Wars" movies, so the themes percolated out of the Vietnam War and the Nixon-Watergate era, he said.

"You sort of see these recurring themes where a democracy turns itself into a dictatorship, and it always seems to happen kind of in the same way, with the same kinds of issues and threats from the outside, needing more control."