See what I did there?

Did you see that? Pretty neat right? I disappear for a while and then BAM all of a sudden I'm back talking about Star Wars all week. From out of NOWHERE man. Like a ninja and shit. Exactly.

Don't worry, things will be back to normal on Monday, since I'm unlikely to post much next week. I've got to go out to Van Nuys, CA for a week, with all of Saturday to kill in the LA area before a late night flight home. I'm thinking I'm going to try to head down to Santa Monica and stare at the ocean for a while.

Another Star Wars poster

 

Credit where credit is due: Poster by Craig Drake and available for purchase from StarWars.com

Change we can really believe in

Credit where credit is due: Poster by David Friedman of Ironic Sans which is easily one of my favorite blog names ever.

Seven things Star Wars can do to make itself interesting to me again...

I think it's become fairly obvious that there is no stopping the behemoth that is Star Wars. Games, books, tv shows, maybe more movies. Who knows. All I know is that George Lucas seems to want to kill Star Wars. I think that's his plan. Kill the franchise. Drain every drop of blood from the stone and leave it in a pile of wanton destruction. I can think of no other possiblity.

So, here at 7 things Lucas could do that would make me interested again. Or, maybe it's really just one thing said 7 different ways.

1. Create a new lead or 12

I like Obi-won. I like Anakin. I like Luke. All I'm saying is that there has to be more than 3 interesting people in the galaxy.

2. End the Clone Wars

I know, the war ended in Revenge of the Sith. Lets talk about something else now.

3. Look to the future

The reforming of of the Republic had to have had consequences. Training new Jedi had to have created some new adventures.

4. If you're going to mine the past, go further back.

Knights of the Old Republic was great. How about more like that? If the Jedi, Sith and Republic have been around this long, there must be more conflicts out there to tell stories about.

5. They don't have to all be trilogies.

The 'Episode X' thing was a crutch. Drop it and make a stand alone movie or two.

6. Show me something new.

Seriously. The prequel trilogy was fun. Let's move on.

7. Get away from the Skywalker era.

That's the big one for me. (And, really, this is all about me.) It's time to move past these characters. It's time to move past this era.

Analyzing Star Wars: The Clone Wars

Princess Leia: General Kenobi: Years ago, you served my father in the Clone Wars; now he begs you to help him in his struggle against the Empire. I regret that I am unable to present my father's request to you in person; but my ship has fallen under attack and I'm afraid my mission to bring you to Alderaan has failed. I've placed information vital to the survival of the rebellion into the memory systems of this R2 unit. My father will know how to retrieve it. You must see this droid safely delivered to him on Alderaan. This is our most desperate hour. Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you're my only hope.

A long time ago in a world that seems light years away now, there was a movie called Star Wars. A few years later they made a sequel, and another one soon after. However, there was something mentioned in that first film that took on a life of it's own. Something that was obviously pivotal to the story of the scrappy young hero who could. Something that laid the groundwork for everything that happened afterward.

The Clone Wars.

For 25 years, we could only speculate. What happened during this war that left the Empire in such turmoil? How were the Jedi wiped out? How did Vader fall to the Dark Side? In 2002 those questions began to be answered with the release of Attack of the Clones.

Since 2002 they've kept answering those questions...regardless of whether or not anyone is still asking.

Aside from Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith there have been 5 video games, an animated series, a CGI movie and, soon, a TV show.

What this really leaves me wondering is, are the Clone Wars really that interesting?

I like the Star Wars universe. I like the characters. But, really, can we move on? It's really kind of KILLING Star Wars for me. It's creative bankruptcy. There are no new ideas apparently. There are no new stories worth telling. That is what this says to me.

It's time to move forward. It's time to go into the dark unknown of the future. Star Wars needs to either stop or find a new story worth telling. If they're just going to keep mining their own past, then the story is already done and over.

Maybe it should have stayed leashed. Maybe that was the problem...

Go ahead and watch this. It's only 2 minutes. I can wait. I just need you to be familiar with the subject at hand.



Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is the latest entry in the ever more diluted Star Wars universe. Not a movie this time, but a video game. A video game that looked pretty sweet, to be honest. I mean, look, you can pull down a Star Destroyer! How cool is that?

Let me tell you how cool it is...it isn't. It's such a stupid thing in the game that it took me 45 minutes to finally bring the damn thing down and dying repeatedly because wave after wave of Tie Fighters come at you making you break your grip on the ship so you can destroy the Tie Fighters and essentially start over on bringing dow the Star Destroyer. You have to use the controller to position the Star Destoyer for a certain amount of time to bring it crashing down. It took me forever and I had the game on easy!

The game takes place in that magical time between Revenge of the Sith and A New Hope, which at least means that it's not dealing with the already boring Clone Wars. You play as a Sith apprentice named Starkiller. Vader has been training you in secret and is now sending you to kill the remaining Jedi for him.

It's a very linear story. After Knights of the Old Republic, I kind of expect more from a Star Wars game. I don't want to sit down and play through the story, I want an experience. Maybe KotOR is the wrong kind of game to compare it to. Maybe I should compare it to something more linear, like Gears of War or Bioshock, but it still wouldn't fare any better.

It's not a very deep game. While the use of the force is exciting and over the top at times, it's not enough. The game play mysteriously hovers somewhere between over simplified and overly complex without ever finding a happy medium. The story, while filling in an area of the mythos that hasn't been explored too much is interesting, but kind of silly at times too.

The game itself was kind of fun, most of the time, but for $60, I want something that is more than just 'kind of fun'. It's certainly worth playing, just not worth buying.

Was that really the same movie?

Occasionally, I'll watch a trailer for some movie that I've heard a little about and think to myself 'Damn that looks good. Time to go to Netflix.'

I get the movie home, watch it and think, again, to myself 'Was that trailer for the same movie that I just watched?'

For example...In Bruges



The trailer looks exciting and hilarious. The movie itself...not so much exciting. It's funny, there is a lot of very dark and dry humor in it, but it has an aura of melancholy that permeates the movie. The movie moves along at a slow pace, building and building throughout the story, finally coming to a crescendo at the end. The trailer makes it seem as though the movie is full of fast music and quick pacing. I'm not saying that it was a bad movie, I really kind of liked it. No, what I'm saying is that it wasn't the movie that I saw in the trailer. And that threw me off. Suddenly what I got wasn't what I expected. I felt cheated, betrayed.

I felt as though Colin Ferrell had persoanlly let me down.