Thoughts of a Random Gamer

With the recent release of Star Wars: The Force Unleashed I feel the need to stand on the soapbox provided for me by Grundy the Man and rant aimlessly about the shortcomings of a franchise that has seen me from an itch in my father's pants to a malicious 20 something year old. Granted my soapbox is more like the kind a bar of Lever 2000 comes in and my audience is well, you.

Jar Jar Binks. I think we can all agree that Jar Jar was a completely useless and annoying addition to canon. I'm not a fan of the Gungans but Jar Jar is the poster child for why I hate them. What was going through Lucas' mind? Let's make the only comic relief a clumsy semi sentient amphibian with a lisp who also speaks broken English... GOLD! No one could get sick of him after the first 30 seconds. There was some payback for the fans by making him the senator who recommended emergency powers for Palpatine but that could have been easily done by any of the other nameless senators. I'm not well versed on the expanded universe between episode 3 and 4 but I hope Jar Jar was beaten with plastic hangers and dragged behind a landspeeder.

Jake Lloyd. The Star Wars movies are about the rise, fall, and redemption of Anakin Skywalker. Jake Lloyd made it so I wished he was mutilated by Obi-wan and then killed by the Emperor before his prepubescent ass left Tatooine. I've watched the auditions from the special features disc and he was hands down the worse. Have you ever seen Jingle All the Way? Um, I haven't either... Anyway I wanted to kick his ass in it too.

Star Wars: The Phantom Anus. Okay maybe that was the porno parody but this bullet point stands for Episode I. They had Liam Neeson and Ray Park and they threw them away. There was the laughable and consequently insulting puppet that looked nothing like Yoda and the rest of the Jedi sat around looking sad and serious all the time. Then there was the pod race, which might have been cool if it wasn't completely unnecessary and absorbed an hour of screen time. It did have a great fight scene at the end but the double bladed lightsaber looked completely unmanageable and if not for the skill of Park would have looked even more forced. It did however make way for the aforementioned porno, which I haven't seen, but I imagine there is a scene with a massive double headed dildo "doing damage."

The Skywalkers and the Solos save the day... again. This might gain me some nerd cred but I've read roughly 40 of the novels from after the movies. They're not Dickens by any means but they pass the time nicely. There's one theme that resonates through the majority of them. The Star Wars universe is held together purely by the Skywalkers and Solos. Much like the pages of a Hustler are held together by dried ejaculate. If not for them the universe/pages would fall apart revealing the deepest depths of depravity.

The Empire is composed solely of the British. I distrust the British as much as I do every man, woman, child, race, creed, and animal but I don't think they deserve to be the enemy a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. Let me elaborate. I think it would have been more fitting to have the Germans or Russians be the main ethnic enemy stereotype. After all they were the conclusive evils in the last century, A New Hope did come out in the middle of the Cold War, and frankly has anybody forgiven the Germans for the Holocaust? Even the Chinese or Arabs would have made a little more sense, I don't know anybody who still harbors aggression toward Great Britain for the American Revolution.

Rereleases. I like the special editions because I like Star Wars. I'll pause a second to let everybody catch their breath after that gasp of surprise. (pause) I actually enjoy Star Wars so much that I would like to be able to watch the old versions as well as the new. They were cutting edge in their day and just because the special effects were outdated it doesn't mean cinematic fags like myself don't want to still appreciate them in the proper context. It's a bad habit in Hollywood to release a movie then either remake it, or remaster it. Is anybody else insulted that the guns were replaced by walkie talkies in ET?