Background
I've been a Star Wars fan since before I stopped crapping my pants, all of 2 years ago... I was 12 years old when I read the Thrawn trilogy and I've read numerous books since. The original trilogy was great, but I'm a much bigger fan of the expanded universe. It's all one big story line, some happening concurrently, others in a straight line, but only as terrible and fantastic as the author allows. The period in the Star Wars mythos that has the least history containing Jedi is between Episode III and Episode IV. That's where The Force Unleashed comes in.
The Story
Turns out no matter how bad ass Darth Vader is supposed to be, he's too much of a pansy to kill the Emperor and take over the galaxy. It makes sense. With all of that circuitry keeping him alive, his greatest weakness has to be water. The Emperor being the self assured smug prick that he is must have bottled water readily available and in great supply. Fuck force lightening, just toss some Evian on Vader whenever he gets uppity.
Being the aquaphobic that he is, Vader enlists someone else to do his dirty work. He finds a Force sensitive boy on Kashyyyk and trains him as his secret apprentice. This is what makes the least amount of sense to me. Have you ever tried to keep a bastard child under wraps? They don't stay "secret" for very long. The filthy little ingrates always find the worst way to come out in the open. I digress, so Vader sends the now 20 something year old out to kill the remaining Jedi masters, kill the Emperor, and presumably have sex with a bleach blonde empirical trollup.
Along the way Darklighter, the bastard child, learns more Force powers, meets people, and travels to interesting locations. Long story short, you're supposed to make the Force your bitch and it comes down to being good or evil. The same mockery of choice as with so many other games. You are either black or white with no grey area and the only real option is in the very last bit of the game.
The Good
With so many crappy wannabe Star Wars games in the past few years, Battlefronts, Lego Star Wars, the likes, it's about time we get a real Star Wars game. There are some phenomenal effects when you use the Force, you get a meek RPG element with upgrades, and the physics are top notch. It might be hard to tell by the previous section in this article, but the story is actually pretty good, better than the game actually. For the most part the game is fun and shows a lot of potential for similar future installments.
You can murder slews of Wookees and Jawas, which with the latter never gets old.
The Bad
It seems like they redefined the Force just for this game. Up until now the greatest act of Force usage was by Kyp Durron in the Jedi Academy trilogy, the die hards know what I'm talking about here, when he pulled the ship out of the center of Yavin. Now the die hards should find a tissue to clean up the spunk they just messed themselves with. In respect to the series as a whole, a Jedi or Sith can't bring an entire legion of stormtroopers down with a flick of the wrist, let alone a Star Destroyer. I know the Force is supposed to be "unleashed" in this game but if the Jedi were this bad ass, none of them would have died during order 66. They would have sat back laughing, killed Palpatine with a blink of their eyes, and then retired to a cantina for some mojitos.
Oh, there are son of a bitch quick time events.
The Ugly
Something that borderline ruins the game for me is the targeting system. It always manages to lock onto the crate on the ground when I want it to lock on the little bastard Jawa throwing grenades at me. The level designs are good, but much like the combat, are fairly repetitive. Most Force powers prove to be worthless. There's no time when you're surrounded and need to use repulse or lightening shield, the lightsaber throw is mostly novelty only good for killing the aforementioned Jawas, and you can't move when you levitate objects.
The one shining weakness in this game, which during development was supposed to be a strength, is the involvement of George Lucas. He has no idea how to implement realistic human elements in his stories. Is it too much to ask to have a genuinely mean heartless prick as the story's main character? If he's supposed to be nice, fine make him a savior. This guy, on the other hand, is supposed to be a Sith but he finds the right path, or not depending, but I was under the impression that very few return from the dark side.
Closing Comments
The targeting sucks, the story is fairly good, and this is the first real current generation Star Wars game. No Star Wars game story will top KOTOR but I'm going to throw my treatment for this out there just to see what everybody thinks.
Darklighter follows Vader until he kills the Emperor, then when Vader is basking in his feeling of accomplishment, Darklighter shoves his lightsaber down Vader's throat like a terminal blow job. He then slays the entire non Jedi having rebellion he previously befriended and finishes the day with a Jedi mind trick fueled three way between Leia Organa and Juno Eclipse. After he leaves and doesn't call them back, he dies of a black membrosia overdose, and the galaxy is left to take a collective shower from the anal raping Darklighter delivered... all before he was 27.
Score: 7.7
Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
As a Star Wars fan who has been let down by the very material that I love I feel I need to write another installation in my little "What I Hate About" series dedicated to Star Wars. With that, remember I hate you just as much as I do everything else.
Hayden Christensen. He was okay in Jumper but the movie was shit to begin with. My problem with Hayden's portrayal of Anakin is for a time, Macaulay Culkin was rumored to be in the running of Anakin Skywalker. Like anybody in my age group, I watched Home Alone I and II, The Good Son, My Girl, and a handful of others and wondered what the hell happened to Macaulay. The roles he would have starred in were given to his brothers and he basically disappearred. He has things Hayden does not, experience and fans. From The Good Son we know he can play a bastard and from My Girl we know he can insight sympathy. Look at it this way, if Lucas thought about giving a cameo to N'Sync, and continues to alienate die hard fans, the least he could have done was revive Culkin's career and cast him as Anakin.
Palpatine's dialog. Every time the Emperor speaks I'm reminded of an episode of Family Guy. "Something, something, something, dark side, something, complete!" The only real lines he has are the throwaway dialog from the prequels. In the original trilogy he only appears, in person, in Jedi. That episode of Family Guy sums up every word he says.
Being an asshole, simply to be an asshole. Darth Vader had some motivation for why he turned to the dark side. Even Tyranus had a slightly discernible lust for power. Why did Sidious go bad? Did he want to rule the galaxy? He was bad before he had his goal of running the galaxy. Did he want to kill Jedi? Was it to oppress the innocent? None of the reasons I come up with seem valid. When watching a movie or playing a video game, the main antagonist can't be an asshole simply to be an asshole. It's like kicking a puppy just because you can. If you kick a puppy, do it because it is chewing on your couch. Do it because it's just way too cute to not be kicked, but have a reason. On a side note, the Joker has no real motivation for being an asshole but he does it with gusto and is considered the antithesis or balancing force to Batman.
Merchandising. I have a couple of Star Wars lego kits and the DVDs, of course. I mentioned Jar Jar and now I have to extend to Grievous. There are far too many characters that were conceived purely because they would make a good toy(coughs)Ewoks. I haven't read the expanded universe book detailing Grievous' descent from alien to robot. I don't care about his motivations or his health problems. What I do care about is how much of a bad ass he's supposed to be even though he sounds like he has lung cancer and runs at the slightest visage of defeat. Again I can picture George Lucas sitting in his living room saying, "How about a 6 limb being... no robot... robot being... that has a terrible cough and is supposed to be a total bad ass. Nobody could get sick of hearing him wheeze and the toy will sell like children's chewable crack. GOLD!" Add to the characters the star ships and speeders designed and manufactured for the movies by Mattel and we have a recipe for shittiness.
No sympathetic characters. The only time true feeling of camaraderie or encumbrance came in Empire. It's the darkest one with the least meddling done by Lucas. The viewer felt the emotion when Han was lowered in the carbonite chamber, the tragedy of finding out Vader was Luke's father, and the fellowship of Luke abandoning his training to rescue his friends. This was in stark contrast to A New Hope where no matter how close Vader came to targeting Luke the viewer knew nothing would happen to him and the Rebellion would destroy the Death Star. The princess was a righteous bitch, Han was a greedy prick, and Luke simply couldn't act. In Jedi we got a taste of the Force but that was overshadowed by cheap quips, Ewoks, and the stereotypical asshole known as the Emperor. The prequels were no different. Big name actors/actresses had to frown constantly and no trepidation was felt past the moment it occurred.
Forced poorly written and executed love story. It might have been the lack of chemistry between Portman and Christensen, or the shitty dialog they shared, but at no time did I believe a Queen/Senator would or had actually fallen in love with a slave/Jedi 7 years younger than her. This philosophy is more like sleeping with the pool man or aspirations of being a cougar. Sure it's fun and all but she's going to choose a bread winning husband over the dirty pleb. I complain because this sordid affair was supposed to be the driving force of Anakin going over the edge.
The Clone Wars. Speak to an orthodox Star Wars fanboy and The Clone Wars was a stroke of genius. Let me put this directly and monosyllabically, it was not. I hate anime, see my previous post, and tainting Star Wars with it does nothing short of piss me off. It debuted on the Cartoon Network in 10 minute format and added to Star Wars canon, those are points in its favor. Otherwise they weren't very story driven, action driven just like all anime, and are a poor excuse for hopeless fathers to say their neglected young children are "watching cartoons."
George Lucas. I give that man all the credit in the world for coming up with the idea. That is where his involvement should have stopped. The movies are the canvas but the real painting and artwork are done by people like Timothy Zahn, Kevin Andersen, and Irvin Kershner. Lucas, like all major Hollywood types is a greedy asshole. His greed has clouded his judgement. I've given him credit for creating the idea, but I'm also going to give him the much deserved credit of shitting on it. Star Wars now belongs to us, the fans. It has gone beyond a late 70's early 80's scifi blockbuster and deserves to be catered to us. I want to see an R rated Star Wars movie following the life of a Sith. I want to see characters like Mara Jade and Talon Karrde hit the big screen. I want to see George Lucas pull his pretentious head out of his pompous ass.
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?
