Sunday, June 23, 2013
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Friday, June 14, 2013
This is my Star Wars blog. I plan to treat it more like a Star Wars diary than a blog – which means a lot of writing and very little revision. Sry bros.
Until I was about 13, Star Wars was “Return of the Jedi.” I had seen “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” probably, but nothing really gripped me nearly as much as “Jedi.” It had tons of weird aliens! Disguises! A sense of humor! Ewoks! It was everything that Mike ages 0-13 could want. I remember seeing the trailer for the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition in front of Baz Luhrmann’s god-awful “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,” and it was like a light turned on. Seeing X-wings flying around. Hearing John Williams’ Force theme. My stomach was in knots through the following movie. “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” was a piece of shit.
Once the Special Editions came around, I really sat and took in the whole saga – “The Empire Strikes Back” became more than “the boring one.” “Return of the Jedi” stopped being the cool one with the Muppets and became more about the last-ditch effort to defeat the Empire, and the redemption of Darth Vader. I started to look into the mythology and storytelling behind Star Wars – not too much, because I was 13, but a bit. At this point I became, I think, a lifelong fan. I started collecting action figures. I started reading the books. I started playing the video games and buying the music and eating cereal for Star Wars prizes, etc etc etc.
Star Wars Episode I was the thing I wanted most in the world. Before the movie came out, I already had the merch. I had the first run of action figures, and the album, and the Making Of book, and the Pepsi cans, and the Taco Bell cups. I waited in line for hours the week before the release date to make sure I got tickets, and I did get those tickets for 10pm on opening night.
When I got back from that first showing, I felt empty. I remember thinking to myself, “I liked that, right?” There was some cool stuff. The final lightsaber battle. The music. Yoda was there for a few minutes? I saw it three more times in theaters. I kept buying the toys, and the books, and the lollipops, and the hats, and the backpacks, and the Band Aids. I made a website dedicated to collecting all of the pictures, trivia, and information regarding the movie. And still I don’t remember ever getting to a point where I actually cared for the movie. There were certain things about it that I did like – the deepening of the Star Wars lore, the creation of all sorts of new robots and beasts and alien races. It wasn’t until I rewatched the film again, fairly recently (whenever it was rereleased in 3D into theaters) that I really understood why I felt so let down and abandoned by “The Phantom Menace” – the movie was made specifically for children. Jar Jar Binks, and the poop joke, and the 8-year-old protagonist. This was all made to cater to the me that, years before, didn’t really “get” “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” The original films were made for an audience of tweens and teens, and the prequels were made for big dumb babies.
Big dumb babies that also enjoyed lengthy senatorial discussions.
As I was sitting there watching the movie on the big screen again, I couldn’t even focus on the movie. I could only focus on what I disliked about the movie, and how easy it would have been to make those changes in preproduction. Hindsight is 20/20. I know. Cast members were recently interviewed saying how much fun Ahmed Best’s Jar Jar was on set, and that they assumed he would be the breakout character of the movie. People thought that!
So anyway, that whole post, thus far, was just to introduce my “one major tweak to make ‘The Phantom Menace’ a really cool Star Wars movie.” And that tweak isn’t even Jar Jar (although certainly many parts including Jar Jar, could use minor tweaks). The tweak is this:
Change Anakin. He should be around Padme’s age. Making him eight years old is, as far as I’m concerned, nothing but pandering to a specific audience, and it makes things much sillier when he ages ten years and she ages two in “Attack of the Clones.” If he’s going to be a slave, make him a slave. Make it seem like his life sucks. There is no weight to Anakin and his mother’s slavery. Anakin plays with his friends and builds robots and machines all day, and his mom stays at home all day and makes enough dinner for three additional guests to eat, uninvited? Give him a reason to want to escape. Aging him up would also make him a participant in the final battle, instead of a kid who sits in an autopilot starfighter and accidentally blows up a spaceship. What? Garbage.
Anyway, I just killed a half hour of time that would otherwise have been much more boring. Star Wars Blog. Come get it.
Until I was about 13, Star Wars was “Return of the Jedi.” I had seen “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back,” probably, but nothing really gripped me nearly as much as “Jedi.” It had tons of weird aliens! Disguises! A sense of humor! Ewoks! It was everything that Mike ages 0-13 could want. I remember seeing the trailer for the Star Wars Trilogy Special Edition in front of Baz Luhrmann’s god-awful “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet,” and it was like a light turned on. Seeing X-wings flying around. Hearing John Williams’ Force theme. My stomach was in knots through the following movie. “William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet” was a piece of shit.
Once the Special Editions came around, I really sat and took in the whole saga – “The Empire Strikes Back” became more than “the boring one.” “Return of the Jedi” stopped being the cool one with the Muppets and became more about the last-ditch effort to defeat the Empire, and the redemption of Darth Vader. I started to look into the mythology and storytelling behind Star Wars – not too much, because I was 13, but a bit. At this point I became, I think, a lifelong fan. I started collecting action figures. I started reading the books. I started playing the video games and buying the music and eating cereal for Star Wars prizes, etc etc etc.
Star Wars Episode I was the thing I wanted most in the world. Before the movie came out, I already had the merch. I had the first run of action figures, and the album, and the Making Of book, and the Pepsi cans, and the Taco Bell cups. I waited in line for hours the week before the release date to make sure I got tickets, and I did get those tickets for 10pm on opening night.
When I got back from that first showing, I felt empty. I remember thinking to myself, “I liked that, right?” There was some cool stuff. The final lightsaber battle. The music. Yoda was there for a few minutes? I saw it three more times in theaters. I kept buying the toys, and the books, and the lollipops, and the hats, and the backpacks, and the Band Aids. I made a website dedicated to collecting all of the pictures, trivia, and information regarding the movie. And still I don’t remember ever getting to a point where I actually cared for the movie. There were certain things about it that I did like – the deepening of the Star Wars lore, the creation of all sorts of new robots and beasts and alien races. It wasn’t until I rewatched the film again, fairly recently (whenever it was rereleased in 3D into theaters) that I really understood why I felt so let down and abandoned by “The Phantom Menace” – the movie was made specifically for children. Jar Jar Binks, and the poop joke, and the 8-year-old protagonist. This was all made to cater to the me that, years before, didn’t really “get” “Star Wars” and “The Empire Strikes Back.” The original films were made for an audience of tweens and teens, and the prequels were made for big dumb babies.
Big dumb babies that also enjoyed lengthy senatorial discussions.
As I was sitting there watching the movie on the big screen again, I couldn’t even focus on the movie. I could only focus on what I disliked about the movie, and how easy it would have been to make those changes in preproduction. Hindsight is 20/20. I know. Cast members were recently interviewed saying how much fun Ahmed Best’s Jar Jar was on set, and that they assumed he would be the breakout character of the movie. People thought that!
So anyway, that whole post, thus far, was just to introduce my “one major tweak to make ‘The Phantom Menace’ a really cool Star Wars movie.” And that tweak isn’t even Jar Jar (although certainly many parts including Jar Jar, could use minor tweaks). The tweak is this:
Change Anakin. He should be around Padme’s age. Making him eight years old is, as far as I’m concerned, nothing but pandering to a specific audience, and it makes things much sillier when he ages ten years and she ages two in “Attack of the Clones.” If he’s going to be a slave, make him a slave. Make it seem like his life sucks. There is no weight to Anakin and his mother’s slavery. Anakin plays with his friends and builds robots and machines all day, and his mom stays at home all day and makes enough dinner for three additional guests to eat, uninvited? Give him a reason to want to escape. Aging him up would also make him a participant in the final battle, instead of a kid who sits in an autopilot starfighter and accidentally blows up a spaceship. What? Garbage.
Anyway, I just killed a half hour of time that would otherwise have been much more boring. Star Wars Blog. Come get it.
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