Tag: star wars (Page 1 of 6)

I found this in the archives and fixed up all the broken parts. It’s a trifle, but why take yourself so seriously?

Thoughts on Star Wars Ephemera, Part I

Thoughts on Star Wars Ephemera, Part II

“What’s your name?”

“Rey.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Bacca.”

…

“Wha?”

“Rey Bacca. That’s my full name.”

“I’m sorry, do you think that his name is Chew Bacca?”

“Yes.”

“What are you, an idiot?”

“That’s how we were introduced.”

“Surely not.”

“Well, if I’m honest: My Shyriiwook is a bit rusty. I only understood maybe 30% of what came out of Chew’s mouth.”

“HIS NAME IS NOT CHEW.”

“You didn’t even know him!”

“I’ve never fucked a Jawa, but I know it’s unpleasant.”

“That’s space-racist.”

“It is absolutely not racist to say you don’t wanna fuck a reptile in a robe.”

“They’re reptiles? I thought they were like little monkeys or something.”

“Monkeys? Jesus, now who’s space-racist?”

“We’ve veered from the point. My name is Rey Bacca.”

“I’m just astonished how wrong you are.”

“I’m not wrong.”

“You think that on official paperwork, Chewbacca is known as ‘Bacca, Chew?'”

“There might be a middle name.”

“Yeah, you’re an idiot. Is Chew short for anything?”

“Chewis?”

…

“I’m gonna ride off on my weird, stupid-looking desert horse-monster now.”

“Well, what’s your name?”

“Ken.”

“What’s your last name?”

“Obi. My name is Ken Obi.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“Kiss my sarlaac.”

• Instead of talking about Star Wars: Rinse of Skywalky, maybe we can just all hang out and drink some Claws and watch old Tina Turner performances.
• Like this:

• You see that shit?
• That’s some good shit, bro-heim.
• Those back-up dancers brought the energy.
• And there were no enormous plot holes.
• Nor did watching Tina’s performance seen like a chore that must be endured lest one’s Social Affability Index be degraded.
• That’s what I need to know: is there a way to stop watching Star Wars movies without being sent to Disney’s reeducation camps?
• I mean, I certainly don’t want to turn into one of those assholes that watches films.
• Me, I like movies.
• ‘Splosions and punching and wisecracks.
• Which Star Wars: Rime of the Skymariner had in spades, but they were the wrong kind.
• Remember that poem about the Hollow Men?
• I think T.S. Eliot was talking about Tobacco the Space Monkey; he just made it about men because he had had just done all the ones about cats, and he was afraid his peers were gonna start calling him a Furry behind his back.
• Enthusiasts, this bullshit here is the Death of Fun, and if young people were radicalized into Luddism by it, I would cheer them on.
• BURN THE LOOMS, MOTHERFUCKERS!
• Just stop making these movies.
• Everybody’s dead or fat or Harrison Ford, and no one cares about the new characters except for Sexy Space Mexican, and all the plots are recycled.
• But not recycled in a First World way.
• Like, how your empty bottle of banana schnapps gets taken to a factory, broken down into its component parts, and reconstituted into a jar of half-sour pickles.
• Recycled in a Third Word way, where a broken-down Ford gets welded to half a bootleg Schwinn and used as both a taxi and a brothel.
• Wait, wait, wait.
• From here on:

• “Totd,” you ask, “why have you posted a picture of KISS’ semi-competent drummer Peter Criss?”
• Because according to Peter Criss’ biography, his penis is so large that it was nicknamed “The Spoiler,” as that was the effect it would have on women.
• “I wish you hadn’t told me that,” you say.
• Well, fuck you for being curious.
• Remember what it did to the cat?
• Anyway: spoilers.
• The good guys win.
• I did not want them to.
• I wanted the Emperor to win, because I love that scrotum-faced maniac and his joyful malice.
• Conflicted villains are boring; gimme a fucker who wants to masturbate using the galaxy’s tears as lube.
• Oh, remember the Emperor?
• He’s back.
• How?
• If I gave you a 24-oz collector’s edition bottle of Johnson’s Baby Yoda Shampoo, would you retract your query?
• Johnson’s Baby Yoda Shampoo: Tears, No More There Will Be.
• There is no explanation for Palpatine’s resurrection.
• Even the Friday the 13th movies went through the motions of “explaining” how Jason came back in each installment.
• Disney respects you, the viewer, LESS than Friday the fucking 13th.
• And he’s Rey’s grandfather.
• I swear to God.
• Which is not as dramatic as Darth Vader being Luke’s father.
• He tells Rey, “I am your grandfather,” and I desperately wanted her to answer, “Peepaw?”
• “No. Stop calling me that.”
• “Awww. You’re my mean ol’ Peepaw.”
• “Cut that out. I’m eeeeeeevil.”
• “You’re cranky is what you are. Did you take your pills?”
• This does not happen.
• Instead, he and Rey pull weird faces and make Jedi-gestures at one another while EVERY SPACESHIP IN THE GALAXY shoots at each other.
• Here, look at this:

• Falcon versus four TIE fighters.
• Wouldn’t even count for a skirmish in Star War: The Rimbaud of Skyjellyfetti, and yet it’s more exhilarating than anything in that flick.
• Quick cuts, lateral motion of the guns and ships, big ‘splosion at the end: it’s almost as if filmmaking has a language all its own.
• And in said language, this…

• …just registers as noise.
•  Look at that and try to give a shit.
• Try your hardest.
• Work at caring about that under-designed, colorless schmear of spacey garbage.
• And the bad guys were just as bad.

• DO NOT AVERT YOUR EYES, SINNER!
• This is what you wanted.
• This is what we asked for.
• And this is what we deserve.
• I dare you to say America in 2019 deserves better than Star Wars: the Roomba of Spaghetti.
• Two minor points relating to Tobacco the Space Monkey:
  • He is taken prisoner by the Empire (or whatever the fuck they’re called) and his bandolier is removed; when he is rescued, he runs around without it for a couple scenes but no one says to him, “You’re nakey,” and I think that was a missed opportunity.
  • At the end, the little CG creature who ran a bar in the first one gives Tobacco the medal he should have received in the first film, saying, “Leia wanted you to have this,” and I said, “Oh, go fuck yourself,” to the screen out loud. (I make a lot of shit up, but not that. Ask Brother on the Dead. He shushed me.)
• Anyway, Luke and Leia and Han come back, and also Lando.
• Delightfully, Lando is just as horny as the last time we saw him.
• Mark Hamill, on the other hand, is over it.
• I’m talking Harrison-Ford-levels of apathy.
• And HOLY SHIT did Harrison Ford phone in his scene.
• I think they might have shot it in his pool house and just CG’ed him into the movie.
• Dude didn’t even shave.
• His hair was all messy.
• HARRISON FORD’S BENTLEY SCREECHING UP NOISE
• “Just gimme the goddamn vest and the check. You got an hour.”
• “Harrison, in this scene–“
• “I love you, Billy. You’re my son or whatever. Don’t worry about killing me. You’re a good kid”
• “Harrison, that’s not the line and his name is–“
• HARRISON FORD’S BENTLEY SCREECHING AWAY NOISE
• “We’ll fix it in post! Moving on!”
• What was the plot?
• I saw the movie ten hours ago and can remember just snatches of it.
• I recall a bit of zippity, some zoppity, a whole steaming pile of pewpewpew, but not the actual plot.
• Oscar Isaac did get himself a girlfriend in this one to combat the perception that he and what-his-face were humping.
• She was dressed like the Rocketeer and did…something.
• I can’t remember her name.
• Zoopy Doopy?
• Something like that.
• Also: the Force can do fucking ANYTHING now.
• Used to be that the Force was mild telepathy and a li’l bit of telekinesis.
• Maybe some soothsaying, but that was only for the high-level users.
• Now?
• You can Force-heal fuckers back from the dead.
• Or teleport solid objects between discrete locations.
• Light speed also has new rules.
• Wait.
• No.
• Light speed now has no rules.
• Except that you can’t do the bullshit from The Last Jedi where Laura Dern turned her spaceship into a rail gun and obliterated the entire Imperial Fleet at once.
• The reason for this is that J. J. Abrams literally reversed every decision from The Last Jedi.
• Rey’s parents being nobodies?
• NOPE!
• She’s a Palpatine.
• Rose Tattoo (or whatever the fuck the lovely-seeming Asian-American actress whom the internet was so unpleasant to was called) as a main character?
• NOPE!
• She has three lines.
• Kyle Reddit destroys his cheesy helmet?
• NOPE!
• Puts it right back together.
• Do not mistake my mockery of these reversals for an advocacy of The Last Jedi.
• It suuuuuuuucks.
• Watched it last night.
• It’s still boring and miserable and overlong and stupid and tonally schizoid.
• Final topic: Star Wars must be taken away from Kathleen Kennedy.
• The Disney era of SW has been marked by nothing by reactionary movement.
• Directors fired in the middle of shoots, movies announced and cancelled, the flagship trilogy shoddy and forgettable: far closer to DC’s cinematic offerings than to Marvel’s.
• The best we’ve gotten so far is The Mandalorian, and the shine is off that helmet, mostly because after the second or third episode, the Mandalorian became functionally retarded.
• “Hi, Mando. You’re probably surprised to hear from me, seeing as how I tried to kill you last time we met. And the time before that. And the time before that. But I got a job for you.”
• “Okay.”
• “Meet me in an abandoned alley in the bad section of the galaxy. Come alone and bring Baby Yoda.”
• “Sounds good.”
• Enough.
• No more.
• Let us stand athwart Star Wars, yelling stop.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker was (a rousing end to a triumphant trilogy/the cinematic equivalent of a doody-covered needle in the eyeball). There were so many spaceships and laser swords and spooky aliens that I shat myself (out of joy/from boredom). We got to find out how the new characters (who were so memorable/whose names I cannot recall) fared, and see the returning cast (get their moments in the sun/literally decay before your eyes). I was most excited to see (Artoo/the spectre of death superimposed over every frame of the film).

Director J.J. Abrams has hit (a home run/me in the dick) with this movie! He had a lot of work to do after the Rian Johnson-directed The Last Jedi, which was (mildly controversial in some corners/just like 9/11 in every way), but he manages to (tie up all the loose ends/further shame and horrify anyone stupid enough to love Star Wars in the first place). My favorite part was (the return of Emperor Palpatine/the popcorn-shit I took when I got home). I hope Disney has (1000 more of these movies in the pipeline/assassins they can send to just fucking kill me)!

Vive le (Star Wars/guillotine)!

• Star Wars, nothin’ but STAAAAAR Wars…
• Fuck you, Star Wars.
• Fuck you sans grease or a kind word.
• I’m already lost.
• The opening scroll did me in.
• Who are the Separatists?
• They sound rather stand-offish.
• Ooh, space pew-pew.
• Always did love the spaceship battles the best, though even as a kid I wondered why the ships all had wings.
• You don’t need wings in space.
• Of course, you also can’t swoop about like you’re dogfighting high above the bloody fields of Bastonne, either.
• Anyway, My Boyfriend and Calvin Klein get to where they wanted to go, which is General Grievous’ ship.
• When Grievous entered, you knew this one was gonna suck, too.
• I remember having hope for the first little bit.
• And then the cyborg lizard with the smoker’s cough showed up.
• He has kidnapped Emperor Palpatine, who is not officially Emperor Palpatine yet, but is totally and blatantly evil and everyone’s an idiot for not figuring it out.
• But, wait, maybe Count Dookula kidnapped him.
• None of these movies have a clear hero or villain.
• But My Boyfriend has been knocked conveniently unconscious, so Calvin Klein can decapitate Count Dookula.
• Now the ship has been damaged and immediately pitches downward and begins falling towards the planet’s surface.
• Which is not how space works.
• That’s just obnoxious.
• So the Jedis and Artoo are captured and brought in front of Greebles, who hacks up a robolung, and OH GOD I DON’T CARE ABOUT ANY OF THIS.
• How the fuck is this battlecruiser re-entering an atmosphere?
• Clearly, it was built for interstellar travel.
• Not to fucking land like a 737.
• Why is there even a runway?
• Every single vehicle in Star Wars simply rises up and flies away.
• But for some reason there’s a LaGuardia-size strip of pavement in the middle of Coruscant.
• Calvin Klein and Patalie Nortman make kissy-faces at each other, and I’m gonna scroll through Instagram.
• All of the Instagram Hotties are broken up about Juiceface.
• Juicy SMONK?
• Whatever the dead kid’s name was.
• Very sad when young musicians die, unless you’re the young musician’s record company.
• Anyway, the Instagram Hotties are beside themselves.
• Black bikinis and everything.
• Anything happening?
• …
• Nope, still a love scene.
• Natadoo Dorpsucker is pregnant.
• She got a space-bun in the oven.
• Gotta say this: Yoda is terrible at his job.
• Calvin Klein comes to him, and he’s clearly a disintegrating maniac.
• The kid’s sweating and glowering and saying vague shit about how he sees terrible shit in the future.
• THE SIGNS WERE THERE.
• He may as well have shown up to high school in a trenchcoat.
• Yoda really should have tugged on Samuel L. Jackson’s cape about this.
• “Shoot up the place, the white boy is going to.”
• “Mm. I agree. That cracker is fucked up and shit.”
• “Blame video games, I do.”
• There’s just so much standing around and talking.
• Shit, Aaron Sorkin figured this out.
• Have your characters walk somewhere while they jibbyjaw.
• Gives the scene some momentum.
• Anything but this standing there.
• No.
• Wait.
• There’s something worse.

• Just sitting there and talking.
• How can a movie about WARS in the STARS be so fucking boring?
• The Chocolate War was more interesting than this, and that took place at a Catholic school.
• Conversely, the Battle of the Network Stars was also more interesting, but Gabe Kaplan was usually one of the team captains and a lot of the actresses wouldn’t wear brassieres under their tee-shirts, so you can understand my fascination.
• Ooh, best scene in the whole trilogy:

• THREE
• EVIL
• HEAD
• TURNS.
• Which just proves that Calvin Klein is a moron.
• A guy does that to me once, and I’m out of the room.
• But not Pretty Boy.
• Palpatine’s not being subtle, either.
• “The Jedi don’t like you, Anakin. They talk shit behind your back all the time.”
• “What!?”
• “Oh, yes. They call you Skyfarter.”
• “I hate that name!”
• “I told them it was cruel, but they wouldn’t stop.”
• Everything, everything, everything looks fake.
• Nothing is matted properly, and all the lighting is slightly off.
• Endor seemed like a real place.
• Cuz it was.
• Redwood National Park.
• And Tatooine, too.
• It was Tunisia.
• But the cameras never went outside during filming of the Prequels.
• All computer generated.
• General Grabass?
• Never existed.
• Jabba was a real puppet in Return of the Jedi.
• The world’s largest kiln had to be built just to bake the puppet’s latex into place, and then four guys were stuffed into the model to make it move.
• Which is so much work.
• Easier to do it all in the computer.
• Ugh, a stupid chase.
• Again: go watch Red Letter Media’s review; it’s better than mine.

• Told ya.
• Though it’s never mentioned in the films, the Emperor’s first name is Shreev.
• Which is short for Shreevport.
• Shreevport Palpatine.
• And it seems like he’s the only one in the Prequels having any fun whatsoever.
• Both the actor and the character.
• Back to General Grapedick and My Boyfriend.
• They were chasing each other on some sort of bug planet, and OH GOD FUCK THIS KILL ME.
• I’ve never read Proust.
• And it’s been a while since I played Joust.
• Remember Joust?
• You sat on an ostrich and fought with a lance?
• Great stuff.
• I bet Proust would have loved Joust.
• I bet he would’ve written about it, at least.
• That fucker needed topics.
• I know he wrote about cookies and France, but that’s about it.
• Palpatine and Nick Fury are lightsabering now, and they are not very good at it.
• It’s not quite the fight scenes from Dolemite, but it’s not not that.
• And now Calvin Klein is evil and Palpy has a face like a ballsack.
• CK is all, “I’m your guy now.”
• So Palpatine goes, “Niiiiiiice. You’re gonna be…uh…Darth…uh…something evil. Darth AIDS Needle. No, I can do better than that. Daaaaaaaarth…Drunk Driver. No, that’s terrible. Darth Hitler. Yes! You’re Darth Hitler.”
• “How about Darth Vader?”
• “Fine, fine, whatever. Go kill some younglings for Daddy.”
• And so he does.
• For those keeping track, this will be the second batch of children that Calvin has slaughtered.
• Commander Cody?
• What the fuck?
• Are his Lost Planet Airmen in this movie, too?

• Familiar looking sound system.
• I AM GOING TO REINTEGRATE THE SAXOPHONE PLAYER.
• Hey, Wally.
• DO NOT CALL ME THAT.
• Reintegrate? Don’t you mean disintegrate?
• MY WORDS ARE PRECISE. HE SHALL BE REINTEGRATED WITH THE FUNDAMENTAL FORCES OF THE UNIVERSE.
• Don’t do that.
• TELL JIMMY BUFFET WITH AN AFRO TO STOP HONKING THAT SATANIC SHOFAR INTO ME. IF I HAD TEETH, THEY WOULD BE SET ON EDGE.
• Just deal with it.
• I think the Jedis all just died.
• Gotta be straight with you folks: I went to the bathroom and didn’t hurry back.
• But I think all the Jedis are dead.
• That whole Order 66 thing.
• Were there 65 other Orders implanted into the Clonetroopers’ subconsciousnesses?
• Order 14: Rob the nearest jewelry store.
• Order 29: Everybody whip out your wangs.
• Order 30: Enroll in a Berlitz course and learn Space Italian.
• And so on.
• Hey, Jimmy Smits!
• The Galaxy’s Lone Mexican (until Oscar Isaac)!
• So now Palpitation is addressing the Senate; he tells them that the Jedi all went nuts, so he had to kill them, and now he’s in total control.
• And everyone’s like YAAAAAAAY that makes sense.
• Trump wishes he were Shreev Palpatine.
• If Basketball Head could shoot Force Lightning out of his tiny hands, he totally would.
• Don’t even pretend he wouldn’t do that shit constantly.
• “Those younglings were no angels! Many, many of my powerful space-friends have told me that, and these are heavy-duty guys I’m talking about. Jabba. You know Jabba? Great guy, Jabba. He’s a Hutt, one of the biggest Hutts, very powerful, got a yacht like you just wouldn’t believe. Just the most beautiful yacht. And he’s always talking about those Jedis and their younglings. Not great kids. Maybe not so sad that these kids are dead.”
• And so on.
• My Boyfriend and Calvin Klein are now up to their balls in lava and having a tiff.
• How the fuck do you make a laser-swordfight in a volcano boring?
• Anyone got an extra for Phish NYE?
• I’ll drive up.
• I would rather take a 24-hour drive than watch another second of this vomitous bile.
• I’d rather pickle my dick.
• Is that even possible?
• Wait, pickling makes things smaller, and I don’t want that.
• The movie is bad, but I need all the dick I got.
• Tommy Lee could lose an inch to the pickling process and not miss it, but I would notice.
• Something’s happening on the screen involving a volcano.
• I don’t know.
• I don’t know.
• I don’t know where I’m-a gonna go when the volcano blow.
• CONFESSION TIME: Love that fuckin’ song.

• There’s something vaguely disreputable about being a Parrothead, though.
• Those fuckers all swing.
• Parrotheads go to key parties.
• Aaaaaaaaaand My Boyfriend just chopped off Calvin Klein’s arms and legs.
• And then doesn’t even finish him off.
• You’d put a dog in that condition down.
• Plus, he’s evil now.
• Sloppy move on My Boyfriend’s part: never walk away from the bad guy as he’s dying and assume that’s the end of it.
• CHOP OFF THE VILLAIN’S HEAD.
• Because if you don’t do that, then someone will rescue him and stuff him into a robot suit and he will scream NOOOOOOOOOO.
• And if he does that, movie audiences across the world will shrink down in their seats, snigger into their hands, ask their respective gods why such an event would be allowed to occur.
• NOOOOOOOOOO.
• Get the fuck out of here.

• What did I say?
• Get the fuck out of here.
• Has there ever been a more unintentionally hilarious climax to a film?
• Sometimes in porn, the fellow will spooge right into the lady’s eye.
• That’s a pretty funny climax.
• But it’s nothing compared to NOOOOOOOOOOOO.
• Okay, I’m done.
• All out of space-gas.
• I hate Star Wars and I never want to see another Star Wars movie as long as I live, or at least until Christmas Day when Brother on the Dead and I have tickets for Rise of Skywalker, and obviously I’m gonna watch the new episodes of The Mandalorian, but other than that: No more Star Wars.
• I mean it this time.

• AHHH!
• Punchy brass!
• My teevee set was too voluminous; excuse my fright.
• Christ, I don’t wanna do this.
• No one asked for this.
• Literally none of you.
• I threw it out there, and no one caught it.
• And I don’t wanna, not particularly.
• No one is enjoying this.
• A perfect synecdoche for 2019.
• Anyway, I have not seen these films in a decade.
• I saw all three opening weekend in the theaters, with repeat attendance for the first two.
• Starting to see a problem.
• The first bit in Star Wars was an exciting pew-pew battle.
• The first bit in The Phrantic Mormon is two guys in robes talking about politics, and also some aliens in robes.
• No, wait.
• Something blew up.
• And now the Space Rabbis are slicing and dicing with their magic swords.
• “More lightsaber” being the preferred answer to all life’s little problems at Skywalker Ranch is one of the Prequels’ weaknesses.
• There are so many weaknesses.
• But the over-reliance on lightsabers is a glaring one.
• Yes, fans like them.
• They’re shiny.
• Fans like shiny things.
• And they make the noise.
• Oh, do the fans love the noise.
• But the weapons were used sparingly (enough) in the Only Trilogy.
• SW: Obi-Wan’s hut, briefly on the Falcon, and the duel with Vader.
• ESB: on Hoth, and then on Dagobah, and then Cloud City, okay fine this one had lightsabers coming out of its ass.
• ROTJ: Escaping from Jabba, escaping from the Stormtroopers, fighting Vader, okay this one, too.
• I will modify my point to “the weapons were used tastefully (enough) in the OT.”
• One-on-one fights.
• Slow, clumsy, goofy-ass one-on-one fights.
• And lightsabers were just swords.
• Hence the name.
• Sabers.
• Prequels changed all that.
• Now lightsabers could have multiple blades, just like men’s razors.
• Or lightsaber nunchucks or shit like that.
• Fuck!
• Jar Jar!
• Woooooooooow.
• He is…
• He is not quite as photorealistic as George Lucas had hoped, is he?
• It’s slightly better than Roger Rabbit, but not really.
• Jar Jar has brought Taken and My Boyfriend to the underwater city where he’s from, as he’s a member of a race of amphibious fish-monsters?
• This is Naboo.
• Everybody’s on Naboo, which is a planet that looks like a Robert Kincaid painting, except for where the fish-monsters live, which looks like a Roger Dean painting, and the Space Rabbis and Space Scrappy have to get to other side of the planet, so they…take a submarine through the planet’s core?
• That’s not how planets work.
• That’s not how cores work.
• Who wrote this shit?
• 
• Oh.
• Never has a man more benefited from an idea than George Lucas has from Auteur Theory.
• (George Lucas also benefited from being a rather canny businessman.)
• But Star Wars and the two that followed were group efforts.
• The original film was apparently unwatchable before a massive re-cut by Brian DePalma and George’s wife, Marcia.
• And, of course, Empire and Jedi were written and directed by others.
• Why are these robots even bothering to hassle the Space Rabbis?
• They get sliced through tin foil.
• Ah, shit, it’s Artoo.
• Taken, My Boyfriend, and Space Steppin Fetchit are now on a ship; they’re trying to get off of Naboo, but the Buttfaced aliens have blockaded the planet.
• And their pilot’s strategy is to “fly straight at ’em.”
• This works.
• Star Wars is so fucking dumb.
• Oh heeeeeeey Darth Paul.
• I know his name is Darth Maul, but he doesn’t Maul anyone.
• Goes out like a bitch.
• Darth Paul is the Boba Fett of the Prequels.
• Natalie Portman is a queen of some sort?
• But she’s in hiding?
• I dunno.
• None of this ever made sense to me.
• So she’s pretending to be her own handmaiden, but she’s also Keira Knightley.
• And now they’re on Tatooine.
• The cartoon rabbit just stepped in doody.
• When I was a kid, I spent hours in front of the mirror practicing how to smile like Han Solo.
• And now the cartoon rabbit has stepped in doody.
• And anti-Semitism.

• Look at that hateful bullshit.
• I don’t mind those other aliens who are clearly Chinese stereotypes.
• The Chinese should get a sense of humor.
• But that’s not okay.
• Jar Jar is not getting any realer-looking in the harsh desert sunlight.
• Looked shitty in the dappled shade of the Naboo forest, and worse now.
• They are in real sets, though.
• I seem to remember the backgrounds becoming increasingly digital as the Prequels went on.
• Ugh, Threepio just met Artoo.
• Do you remember that–apparently–Baby Darth Vader built C3P0?
• Baby Darth is nowhere near as cute as Baby Yoda.
• Also a worse actor.
• NOT THE KID’S FAULT.
• Still: he was no Jodi Foster.
• Our Star Warriors have met Baby Darth, who is a slave on Tatooine, and also Jesus and also he built Threepio, and there are various complications so as to lead us into an action-oriented set piece.
• I am convinced that Taken is heavily sedated.
• Xanax, maybe.
• Bantha!
• YAAAAAAAAAY, BANTHA!
• I saw the thing from the other thing!
• YAAAAAAAAY!
• From what I can gather, Taken and My Boyfriend’s ship is broken, and they need to win some sort of race to get the money to fix it.
• Which sharpish types will identify as the plot to most, if not all, of Elvis’ films.
• DARTH VADER IS NOT SPACE JESUS.
• Remember how Peter Cushing scolded him when he was arguing with the other guy during the meeting on the Death Star?
• “Hey! Darth! Put it back in your pants!”
• He’s just a Scary Robotface-man.
• But this is what happens when George Lucas is given complete control.
• Within the past ten minutes, we’ve learned that:
  • Baby Darth was conceived immaculately.
  • He built C3P0.
  • There is a blood test for the Force.
• All of these ideas would be discarded after the first installment of the Prequels and never mentioned again.
• Lord, I’m bored.
• Step it the fuck up, people.
• Why isn’t Taken shooting Slavs?
• Usually in his movies, Taken shoots Slavs.
• But now he’s talking to a poorly-drawn anti-Semitic cartoon.
• I am not joking, Enthusiasts: Meyer Wolfsheim was a less overtly Jew-hating caricature than Watto.
• Nothing I can say about the Prequels will be as insightful–or as funny–as the Plinkett Reviews from Red Letter Media.
• Go watch ’em.

• Why is a six-year-old allowed to pod-race with grown-ups, most of whom are aliens?
• Shit, here’s Jabba.
• He continues his tradition of never, ever, ever looking real since that one time they actually made him.
• Anyway, the Laffalympics are going on.
• It’s all cock?
• Used to be a team of guys in tee-shirts built a model.
• Then you ran a camera by it.
• Looked like it was moving.
• There was a weight to the models.
• Now?
• It’s all cock.
• Saw this opening night at Mann’s Chinese Theater, which is a sweet Nerd Cred card to play.
• I lived right behind the storied auditorium on North Orange Drive; for a week before the film’s May 1999 release, the line went by my window.
• Here, look:

• The black line is the line.
• One afternoon, two fat guys dressed as Jedis got into a fistfight.
• They windmilled their arms at one another.
• The Force was with no one that day.
• I did not wait in line; my buddy Phil had scored us tickets for opening night.
• He worked for David Zucker, back when he was not a crazy right-wing person, and so he called in favors.
• Or maybe he just got lucky.
• The Chinese is a Golden Age thousand-seater; there’s velvet everywhere, and the carpeting speaks four languages.
• Swanky establishment.
• We’re sitting middle, center.
• No better seats.
• Crowd went nuts, I must admit.
• No revisionism here: the audience at the Chinese Theatre did not turn on the film as it was shown.
• Cheers and laughs and rousing receptivity.
• And huge whoops any time something Star Warsy came on screen.
• Artoo?
• YAAAAAAAAS!
• Threepio?
• OMIGOD!
• And leaving the venerable movie palace that evening, I would’ve give you a positive response.
• The experience clouded my judgment.
• Went back on Wednesday.
• Hell, it was within walking distance.
• Wasn’t like I had a job.
• This showing was not packed.
• The usual handful of the unemployable, disreputable, and furtive that populate any weekday movie.
• Lights went down.
• Could this be the same movie I just saw five nights before?
• I remembered laughing and cheering, but it was just…boring.
• Mind-meltingly, ball-shavingly boring.
• I took two smoke breaks.
• Considered not going back in the second time.
• Every other occasion a movie forced me to take two cigarette breaks, I didn’t go back in the second time.
• But, you know: Star Wars.
• So I went back in.
• The matte-ing is so cheap.
• The characters all look like Colorforms.
• Like they’ve been affixed to the screen rather than actually being in it.
• Okay, so not Baby Darth is in front of the Space Rabbi council, and Yoda is like. “Let me ride them, someone must.”
• And everyone’s like, “Master Yoda, stop riding people.”
• “LOVE IT, I DO.”
• And then he leapt onto the guy with the giant horse penis head.
• The guy bucked and whirled, but he couldn’t get Yoda off.
• He can grab strong with those little claws of his.
• This kid was not up for this acting challenge.
• That’s all I’ll say.
• NOT HIS FAULT.
• But he’s awful.
• Just like in the Matrix Sequels, there is a guy in this film who I keep wanting to think is Joe Morton, but is definitely not Joe Morton.
• I might be kinda racist
• Except racist people think black people all look alike, and I think all black people look like Joe Morton.
• So I am not racist.
• Whew.
• Glad we settled that.
• Among his near-infinite other crimes, George Lucas gave My Boyfriend the single worst haircut of his career.
• Look at this bullshit:

• That haircut put in his six with the Coast Guard and now works as a union electrician in Ocean City, Maryland.
• Now they’re setting up for a big fight or something.
• The computer graphics are gonna run at the other computer graphics.
• In a big field.
• The Marvel Cinematic Universe stole a lot from the Prequels.
• They’re talking about stuff.
• Real, real close to shutting this off.
• I hate it, and life, and I don’t know why I did this.
• If you enjoyed this, then there’s something wrong with you.
• And I have fried chicken from Publix.
• I could watch something else.
• Literally anything else.
• I could watch paint learn.
• Y’know how people say watching paint dry is boring?
• Imagine how long it takes paint to pick up concepts.
• Very boring.
• They are pew-pewing at each other now, and Baby Darth has stolen a spaceship that he knows how to fly because he is a magic child.
• Buncha assholes fighting in space.
• Buncha assholes fighting on a field.
• Buncha assholes fighting with lightsabers.
• Darth Paul has arrived.
• Face all looking like a burst sausage casing.
• Looking like a dog’s dick got caught in a door.
• That man nasty.
• He has a double-bladed lightsaber.
• One blade comes out one way.
• ZZWHOMP.
• And then another blade comes out the other way.
• ZZWHAMP
• It is very dramatic.
• Damn my man-shorts, there 20 minutes left.
• Taken gets poleaxed, and then My Boyfriend cuts Darth Paul in half.
• I know how it ends.
• Just get there so I can eat my chicken.
• Every decision was wrong.
  • The plot.
  • The script.
  • The over-reliance on effects.
  • Jar Jar.
  • Focus on world-building and politics instead of fun adventures.
  • Lack of Tobacco the Space Monkey.
• Taken and Darth Paul are dueling in a room with a giant open shaft in the middle of it.
• No guard-rails, nothing.
• And this is during the reign of the Republic, mind you.
• I expect that kind of disregard for safety from the Empire, but the Republic were supposed to be the good guys.
• Space OSHA should be called.
• Papa Bear’s balls, the kid is now winning the space battle through luck and pluck.
• I am working on a buddy-cop script entitled Luck & Pluck.
• One’s got nothing but bad luck, and the other is a sentient pair of tweezers.
• They do not get along at first!
• Okay, Darth Paul just died at the road to Dantooine, and I’m gonna pretend the movie’s over.
• My fried chicken says that the movie’s over.

• The Mandalorian is a teevee show about Star Wars.
• The Man, Delorean would have been about cars.
• But I digress.
• Disney’s streaming service went online today, after a fashion, and their Big Honkin’ Content is The Mandalorian.
• Netflix does Hollywood-budget movies, and Apple has that show about Steve Carrell honking Reese Witherspoon’s boobies on the Today show, and HBO had the show with the lady and her dragon.
• Amazon’s originals all feature actors your dad likes fighting crime, except for that one about the comedienne from the 50’s that your mom likes.
• Also, Amazon’s streaming service comes free with Amazon Prime, so I bet most people have it by accident.
• Disney Plus offers The Mandalorian as its BHC, to advertise that all Lucasfilm IP is now available exclusively on its platform.
• This is in addition to the Marvel Corporate Universe, the Muppets, and both entries in the Apple Dumpling Gang series.
• The service is aimed youthward, and towards stunted adults.
• Grown-ups should really subscribe to the Criterion Channel and watch Peter Greenaway films, but those type of flicks make my head hurt.
• I enjoy watching costumed adventurers punch one another, and also cartoons.
• Martin Scorsese would be appalled.
• Werner Herzog would not be, but only because Disney has paid him a great deal of money to appear in The Mandalorian as “Werner Herzog (in space).”
• There has been much mirth made at this casting, but I say it was inevitable once Forest Whitaker was in Rogue One.
• Herzog follows Whitaker like summer follows spring.
• Mark my words: Tom Waits is gonna be in one of these things real soon.
• Anyway, it’s Lone Wolf and Cub feat. Boba Fett (in space).
• The first episode does, though, pull a neat trick by making you think it’s gonna be Yojimbo (in space) up until the very last shots.
• And Boba Fett is not Boba Fett.
• Boba Fett was from Mandalore, and he wore the ancient magic armor of his people, who were all bounty hunters because whatever a character was in the movies, his whole race was in the Expanded Universe.
• Remember the Bothans that died stealing the plans to the Death Star?
• In the EU, the Bothan species was known glalaxy-wide for treachery and subterfuge.
• Or the Gamorrean guards at Jabba’s palace?
• The ones that looked like evil Inspector McGruffs?
• Well, it turns out their entire culture is based around fighting and violence and shit, in the EU at least.
• And I mention the Expanded Universe of Star Wars because that’s where all of this “Mandalorian” bullshit came from.
• The first mention of any backstory for Boba Fett was in the comic book.
• Y’know what else was in the comic book?

• That’s a fucking rabbit.
• Look how angry Tobacco the Space Monkey is that he has to team up with a fucking rabbit.
• And look how sad the caped wolfman is.
• No one is thrilled with this arrangement, Jaxxon.
• (The rabbit’s name is Jaxxon, and I knew that without looking it up, and I am both proud and not of that.)
• The word “Mandalorian” does not appear in the films; hell, Boba Fett didn’t even have a name until the second time he showed up.
• Stand there and look cool.
• Boba Fett was a design, not a character.
• What character there was was that of rank bitchery.
• First, he needs Darth Vader standing next to him in order to capture our beloved Star Warriors.
• Which is cheating.
• I could’ve done that.
• Then, he is eaten by a carnivorous sand-rectum.
• Bitch moves, the both of them.
• It is in Bob’s blood.
• Jango Fett was also a filthy little bitch.
• Left his incriminating bullshit out on the table for random Jedis to see.
• Bitch move.
• Failed to murder a virtually-undefended woman.
• The stink of bitch!
• Gets his head lopped off IMMEDIATELY upon entering a fight?
• F-E-T-T, that spells “bitch.”
• But–as I mentioned–he looked cool.
• He was like Space Fonzie.
• And the books and comics sold better when he was on the cover, so he garnered elaborate backstories, side quests, and possible futures.
• But this Mandalorian is not Boba, as he proved in the initial episode by not being completely incompetent.
• At no point did our anti-hero get eaten by a giant butthole in the desert.
• Which is not to say that the sarlaac incident was not alluded to.
• More than 50% of the shots in The Mandalorian are recreations of, or references to, shots from the Original Trilogy.
• Landspeeder skimming along.
• Vaguely Arabic architecture.
• Gonk droid.
• It’s all connected, man.
• And yet unlike the clumsy fan service of Rogue One and Solo, I did not hate these callbacks.
• I didn’t hate any of it, actually.
• Rogue One made me so angry I adopted a dachshund, let it bond with me, and then abandoned it on the side of the road.
• One mustn’t let anger fester.
• But The Mandalorian did not infuriate me, even when it got batshit insane at the end.
• Spoilers.
• Oh, God, the guy from Swingers has saved Star Wars.

I’ll do it, but not for free.

EDIT: I am altering the deal. Valued Commentator Occidental Poppy suggests that I also take donations to not write about the Prequels; this is an excellent idea and is now implemented.

DOUBLE EDIT: No, fuck it: I’m taking it several steps further. You are all now being held hostage. Thoughts on the Prequels is a threat. Pay me, or I’ll do it. I swear, man, I’ll do it.