Here is a Chiss playing chess while chomping on cheddar cheese:
EDIT: A friend came up with a good one...
Chiss chess champion chewing cheddar cheese.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Someone suggested that he could also be "cheating". But that's something that Grand Admiral Thrawn is above doing. He certainly wouldn't do that with chess. It would be too dishonorable. Still a fun idea though :-)
Okay, let me say first that I love this little film! Whatever has happened to Star Wars in recent years, there still are and always will be the true fans who thrill to share their love of the saga with others. This spot shows the kind of energy that we used to have at a new Star Wars movie. The costumes, the mock lightsaber fights, screaming lines from the movie out loud...
...it was a whole different and in so many ways better world than it is today. I know, I was there. I didn't just see it with my own eyes, I was part of it. Maybe it will come back someday. Especially for the youngsters. The ones who George Lucas intended Star Wars to be particularly for. The grownups have tried to make Star Wars into something it was never meant to be. So we get bullcrap like The Acolyte and movies with no clear plan in mind (coughcoughsequeltrilogycoughcough).
Actually, I'm coming to like Episodes VII through IX now. The more time that goes by since that trilogy ended, the better those movies seem. And the children seem to like them well enough. I saw lots of young girls dressed as Rey when The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker came out. If they were enjoying that, just as my generation did Star Wars in our own youth, well... what's wrong with that?
Anyway...
Coca-Cola has this new film that celebrates what it means to be a Star Wars fan. Here it is:
Okay, like I said I love that spot! But my memory can be a harsh thing. Because what might be to the chagrin of some, I also remember a time more than a quarter century ago when that was not Coca-Cola in cahoots with Star Wars. And this is why things like YouTube are so handy.
Behold the Pepsi commercial that premiered during the Super Bowl in 1997, days before the Star Wars: Special Edition was released in theaters:
Not kidding: in the space of two months I saw Star Wars movies eleven times altogether. A New Hope four times, The Empire Strikes Back four times anda three for Return of the Jedi. That was my second winter at Elon and I was sort of the stereotypical "Star Wars geek" for our campus. Ahhhh, those were good times.
Okay, I'm feeling my Star Wars mojo coming back, a little. We will always have the original movies at least to bask in.
Colley had enjoyed having many roles in his six decades as an actor. He did some work with Monty Python (that's him playing Jesus in the opening of Life of Brian) and he appeared in Clint Eastwood's 1982 sci-fi Cold War thriller Firefox. Colley was also among the amazing cast of the sweeping television epic War and Remembrance.
But it is his portrayal of Captain... and then Admiral... Piett that is most remembered in the annals of pop culture.
Piett first appeared in 1980's Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back as the captain of Executor, Darth Vader's flagship Super Star Destroyer. Following the deployment of thousands of probe droids across the galaxy, Piett was monitoring their progress when a droid in the Hoth system picked up signs of habitation. Admiral Ozzel was quick to brush it off, though Vader took interest and was convinced that this was the Rebel base that the Empire was looking for. Vader ordered the fleet to set course for Hoth, as Ozzel gave Piett a spiteful glare. Piett merely stood in quiet confidence, content to have done his job to the best of his ability.
I think that Darth Vader appreciated that. Vader appreciated Piett as a man. I have to wonder if Vader had wanted Piett to be higher up in the chain of command all along. It would explain Vader's disdain for Ozzel. When Ozzel messed up by coming out of hyperspace too close to Hoth, Vader was all too eager to express his displeasure. Vader immediately tapped Piett to take Ozzel's place: "You are in command now, Admiral Piett." Piett expressed his thanks and immediately gestured for Ozzel's corpse be taken off the bridge. And then toward the end of the film, when standing there after Vader had lost the Millennium Falcon, Piett awaited his lord's next action, certainly that he now would be punished. Instead Vader walked away, and no doubt Piett breathed an inward sigh of relief.
Piett showed up again in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. He must have been doing something right because by that point in the story he had survived being admiral aboard the Executor for a year. Admiral Piett had been ordered by Emperor Palpatine to move the fleet around the Death Star to the far side of the Endor moon, where it waited to ambush the incoming Rebel forces. In the massive space battle that followed a Rebel A-wing veered out of control and slammed into Executor's bridge. Piett and the rest of the command staff were killed, and Executor was sent smashing into the second Death Star's surface.
Piett has been called one of the most important of the many background characters in the Star Wars saga. Kenneth Colley certainly brought dignity and gravitas to the role. It was one of those nuances that gave Star Wars its rich and deep presence in our culture. It also endeared himself tremendously with fans, who Colley always came across as being very appreciative of. I had the honor of meeting him a couple of times, at Star Wars Celebration II and then III a few years later. The first time we met, I told him that it must be quite something to be known as "the luckiest guy in the Empire". Colley said that he heard that quite a bit actually!
He played an honorable and decent bad guy, and you had to respect a character like Piett. Colley really was the only person who could have pulled that off as magnificently as he did.
I think that in his memory I'll plop in my Blu-Ray of The Empire Strikes Back for background sound as I work this afternoon. Which includes this classic scene of Darth Vader "promoting" Piett to admiral:
Things like this usually doesn't go past my notice. Guess I've been so occupied with other stuff lately. But yesterday was the anniversary of something very special and I need to make a note of it...
May 25th, 2025 is the twentieth anniversary of my... or rather I should say our... first motion picture, Forcery. An almost hour-long parody of Rob Reiner's film adaption of the Stephen King novel Misery. Forcery depicts Star Wars creator George Lucas, hot off of finishing the script for Episode III, being rescued from certain death by his "number one fan" Frannie Filks. It's not long before Lucas, who used to create Star Wars for a living, is now making it to stay alive.
This was an idea that hit me about a week and a half before 9/11. Indeed, I started writing the screenplay (though I had no idea HOW to really go about doing that) on the night before the attacks. I knew nothing about filmmaking at all. But I began learning everything that I could about it. I read, studied, watched how-to videos, got really good at scriptwriting and lighting and editing and whatnot. Most of all I learned anew how to work with people and collaborate with them on a project. It's amazing how so many good people came together to work on this. Forcery is a monument to them and their sacrifices toward making this dream into a reality, and I'll forever be thankful to them.
In the end, our movie was finished, just in time for Revenge of the Sith being out in theaters. And it's gotten some appreciation over the years. "Weird Al" Yankovic saw it and told us "Nice job!" Then it wounded up being featured a lot in the award-winning documentary The People vs. George Lucas. But I'm especially fond of all the good word that has come from Star Wars fans who've watched and enjoyed it. I think Melody Daniel - who plays Frannie in Forcery - is quite fond of all the guys who have said they like her especially. I'm going to be forever indebted to Melody. She brought a LOT of knowledge and wisdom (and patience) to the set and it would have been a far lesser film without her being there. Ed Woody, my college roomie from Elon, came up with the portable greenscreen and the "nine dollar dolly" and a lot of other inventions used in production. And of course there is Chad Austin, my best friend since third grade, who absolutely rocked it as George Lucas. I told him he could do this and he delivered magnificently. And there were many others also, who believed in this project and helped it come into being.
Well, you can read more about it on the Forcery page that's on this site. If you've never watched it before you can click on that link and then watch the original on Google Drive. Or you can watch it here courtesy of YouTube.
Thank you to everyone who in the past two decades has watched Forcery and took the time to tell us that they enjoyed it. We had fun making it for you :-)
(And to George Lucas, Stephen King, Rob Reiner, and the estate of Slim Whitman: thank you for not suing us!!)
Note: The top image was made by feeding the original poster for Forcery - which did not depict anyone - into ChatGPT and instructing the artificial intelligence to simply produce a cartoon rendering. And that is what it came up with. I am STUNNED. That looks exactly like cartoon versions of Chad and Melody in costume. I've no idea how the AI knew to do that... but ChatGPT did it!
Well, however it is that you choose to celebrate the occasion, May the Fourth be with you :-)
Is it because this spring marks the twentieth anniversary of Revenge of the Sith? Or is it another factor? I wonder if there's some sentimentality at work. Twenty years ago we were a fandom united in spirit and purpose. Star Wars was something that we shared and had common ground over. It wasn't what it has devolved into. It was a purer, and more beautiful, work. Star Wars was one of the few truly good things in this world that could bring almost everyone together. The third installment of the Star Wars prequel trilogy was by all accounts going to be the absolute last film of the entire saga to be made. So we made the very most of that.
I like to believe that the old spirit of Star Wars is still there, beneath the mangled morass of corporate bungling driven more by agenda and less by the desire for good storytelling. But as it is, there are no more midnight madness-es for Star Wars. I don't know if there will ever be one again. It's something you kinda "had to be there" and be part of the moment.
It is a nice thing though to be able to report that all these years later and I still keep in touch with a couple of people mentioned in that post. Darth Larry (pictured above), better known as Brian Hodges, is a much-acclaimed and accomplished cello player in the Pacific Northwest region. And the paths of Fonso (below with Yours Truly) and myself crossed quite a few more occasions, enough to now count him as a dear friend who has been there for me several times.
That is what Star Wars is best at doing. Forging not just friendships but bonds of family. Kathleen Kennedy and everyone else at Disney haven't understood that and quite possibly can't understand it. Star Wars under their management just isn't resonating with the fans as it should.
But, Star Wars has endured before. I well remember the "dark times" between Return of the Jedi and the publication of Heir to the Empire. That was eight solid years that we went without the saga being added to. If it wasn't for West End Games' Star Wars role-playing game we might have lost all hope. Sometimes we wondered if many people even cared about Star Wars at all. And then Timothy Zahn's first Star Wars novel came out and suddenly the mythology roared back to life. Star Wars hadn't died out at all. It just went into hibernation for awhile.
Star Wars right now is a mess. I watched two episodes of The Acolyte and gave up on it hard. Disney should disown that series just as it has other works in its history. Star Wars needs to be cleaned up. And made into something wholesome and agreeable to by everyone, especially children.
It has been that before. It can be that again.
There is a lot on my plate right now. I'm having to figure some things out. Time is not on my side. But sometimes things percolate to the surface of my mind that I haven't thought about in years, or even decades. And that's what happened today.
Waaaay back in 2001 and thereabouts I was on the staff of TheForce.net, which at the time was the biggest website devoted to Star Wars on the whole heapin' web. It wasn't long after I came onboard that I volunteered to take the vacant position of humor editor. That was my main job for the next two and a half years, and it was a lot of fun! I got to see quite a bit of reader-generated funny stuff that almost always left me smiling.
One of the things that I got to curate as humor editor was song parodies. And they were out the wazoo. There were tons of spoofs of well-known tunes that got the Star Wars treatment. They were quite clever. Here they are, still archived away on TheForce.net after all these years.
It was so much fun reading the song parodies, that I found myself wanting to write one of my own. I wracked my gray matter trying to come up with something that would be on the level of the material that our readers were submitting. Finally, one day an idea hit like a bolt of lightning. I had the lyrics written in less than twenty minutes. Then I shared my creation with the rest of the staff: it needed to pass muster with them before I could post it alongside the works of our readers. The staff approved. And so I shared my parody with the world.
It's a bit of a product of its time. We had plenty of insider knowledge of Star Wars Episode II, but as you can see, especially with the reference to clones, I was a little off. But it don't matter. That makes it even more an artifact of its era.
So without further ado, here is my saga-fied parody.
Parody of "Cat's In The Cradle" by Harry Chapin
New Lyrics by Chris Knight
Found a child just the other day
Came to the world in an unusual way
He's got no dad, and his mom is a slave
He races pods in the desert haze
And he was flying 'fore we knew it, and as he grew
He'd say, "gonna use the Force like you, yeah
I'm gonna use the Force like you"
And the boy's in the Boonta racing on the dune
Against a Dug and a Tusken or two
"Weesa going home soon?"
"We don't know when, but he'll be a Jedi then,
You know he'll be a Jedi then"
Got to Coruscant just the other day
He was strong in the Force, Yoda had to say
"Can you teach me the Force?" They said "Not today,
You're too old to learn," he said "That's okay"
He walked away, but he smiled at Qui-Gon Jinn
And said, "I'm gonna be like him, yeah
You know I'm gonna be like him"
And the boy's in the Boonta racing on the dune
Little punk makin' the bad guys go boom
Is he a Padawan now?
He don't know when, but he'll be a Jedi then,
You know he'll be a Jedi then
Well, he met Lord Sidious just the other day
Became a Sith, Kenobi had to say
"I'm ashamed of you, you're now evil and vile"
He shook his head, and he said with a smile
"You're being a pest Ben, like stinkin' Bantha fur fleas
What you doing? Not that lava please!"
And the boy's in the Boonta racing on the dune
Fought the Federation, clones and Dooku
When'd the bad breathing come?
We don't know when, but he turned to the Dark Side then,
You know he had the Dark Side then
He's long been a Darth. His kids hid away.
He fought his son just the other day.
"Come to the Dark Side if you don't mind."
Luke said "I'm a Jedi, Dad, of the Lighter Side
You see my friends are my strength and the Emperor's through,
But it's sure nice fightin' with you Dad.
It's been sure nice fightin' with you."
And as he cut off the hand Luke could plainly see
"He grew up just like me,
MY DAD IS JUST LIKE ME!"
And the boy's in the Boonta racing on the dune
Palpatine's screaming down a mile or two
Will Vader be a ghost now?
He don't know when
But he'll be a Jedi then,
You know he'll be a Jedi then
To: Star Wars producers and fandom
Re: The Acolyte and social media insanity
I can't even anymore. I feel like I've officially become an old man who can't keep up with the youngsters. I went through enough of this crap twenty-five years ago. God only knows what it would have been like if there had been Twitter and YouTube back in the day. To paraphrase the final line of a famous movie: "Forget it Jake, it's Star Wars." This entire drama along with The Acolyte itself has taken the wind out of my fanhood's sails, and my fanhood goes all the way back to the late Seventies. I shall always treasure the good memories along with the various trophies I've accumulated along the way (signed copy of Heir to the Empire, my self-designed and constructed lightsaber, the Yoda puppet autographed by "Weird Al" Yankovic...) and I can watch the classic trilogy in their original form anytime on my VCR. But this is it. I've already been on the bad side of a few breakups. Now I'm finally finding out what it is to be the one who picks up and leaves behind something that won't get better.
It was on May 14th, 1944 that a little boy was born in Modesto, California. Growing up he was a restless young man, with no clear idea of what he wanted to do with his life. He finally settled on being a race car driver. But a near-fatal car crash a few days before graduating high school put a damper on that idea.
Our hero eventually decided he wanted to go to college. He enrolled in a junior college and studied everything from anthropology to sociology to literature. While there he began experimenting with filmmaking. He then ended up at University of Southern California, choosing to continue his studies in cinematography. And he discovered that he enjoyed it, a lot. A series of student films followed, and many of them gained notice for their groundbreaking and breathtaking visuals.
The young lad graduated from college and tried to enlist in the Air Force. Unfortunately his many speeding tickets, of all things, disqualified him. He was drafted to serve in the Vietnam War but was again disqualified from service, for medical reasons.
He then returned to University of Southern California as a graduate student. After producing the short film Electronic Labyrinth: THX 1138 4EB he came under the wing of Francis Ford Coppola. It wasn't long after that when the young man was given the opportunity to make a full-length adaptation of his film, and in 1971 came the release of THX 1138.
It was not a box office success.
Undaunted, our hero decided he wanted to make a different film. One drawing from his experiences coming of age in Modesto. That became the genesis of 1973's American Graffiti: a film that has become as classic as any.
Then, around 1974, our young hero sat down with a pad of paper and began writing the first draft of what he roughly titled "The Star Wars".
And the rest, is history.
On this very special day, The Knight Shift and its eclectic proprietor wishes a Very Happy 80th Birthday to George Walton Lucas Jr. A man who perhaps more than most in our lifetime has impacted the world in so many positive ways than can ever be counted.
And I like to think that he still isn't finished with his craft.
Someday, I hope George Lucas once again shows us something we haven't seen before.
Before I close out this post, I want to share one of my favorite photos of Lucas. It's from the filming of American Graffiti. Here is Lucas, sitting on the floor beneath the countertop at Mel's Drive-In, directing Ron Howard:
I just love the pose Lucas is in. That, my friends, is directing with dedication.
Well, I'm now a liar and worse.
A little over ten years since I vowed that I would never, EVER do it, I am indeed selling my much-loved Yoda hand puppet signed by "Weird Al" Yankovic.
It's really out of my hands (no pun intended). For reasons which I don't care to disclose publicly, some financial resources have come to be required. That's just the way things are right now.
Mom bought me the puppet in 1980, a few months after The Empire Strikes Back came out in theaters. I was six years old and distinctly remember that night at the toy store. Long story short this puppet - which has maintained PERFCT condition despite the years and miles traveled - went with me to a book signing by "Weird Al" Yankovic in June of 2013. Al's eyes lit right up when he saw it! And he was very glad to sign it.
It's Star Wars. More to the point it's Yoda. And it's been on the hand of and signed by the greatest parodist in the history of the arts. For those reasons and more, it's a very precious possession of mine. And now I'm prepared to let it go.
I thought long and hard about how much I'm asking for it. This is such a unique item, and it really does matter to me that this will go to a good home. In the end I had come up with a substantially larger figure. However eBay's system doesn't think I'm a "power seller" just yet and it's restricted me to bidding starting much smaller.
So if any of this interests you, click on the link above and learn more. If you would like to bid on it, I wish you all the best.
See? I really do know how to write an op-ed piece that doesn't honk off many readers!
This edition of Elon's student newspaper The Pendulum came out right before spring break 1999. I didn't want to be on the cusp of that and deliver something that would be overly provocative. There had been an article for Christmas a few months earlier and this new one needed to be on a happy note too.
So here it is, from two months before the premiere of Star Wars Episode I. Note the special photo we used for the essay: me brandishing a toy lightsaber and wearing the helmet from a Darth Vader mask. Click on the pic to enlarge and read!
George Lucas's movie - the first for his own company Lucasfilm - American Graffiti was released fifty years ago tomorrow. It premiered at a film festival and was followed with wide release soon after. If you've never seen American Graffiti you really should do yourself a favor and watch it. It's a film spanning the course of a single night, in the lives of a group of friends who are spending the final hours of summer break in 1962. I don't know if "plot" is the right word to describe this movie as having. But it's a mighty monument to a way of youth that isn't there anymore. American Graffiti has a solid cast and a soundtrack that is just as much part of the film as those appearing in it.
Well, I thought that for the occasion we would go WAY back into The Knight Shift's archives, to when it was less than a year old in 2004. At the time my friends and I were working on our very first film together Forcery. The final scene takes place at Mel's Drive-In, from American Graffiti. Short Sugar's Barbecue in Reidsville, North Carolina played the part of Mel's. We shot the scene at the drive-in part of the restaurant, and then... this idea hit for something we could do as a homage to George Lucas's classic movie. I told Chad Austin, who was playing Lucas in Forcery, about it and he was game for it. He was already wearing the costume and makeup for the part anyway.
So here is Chad Austin as George Lucas in September 2004, in a recreation of the famous behind-the-scenes still from American Graffiti showing Lucas crouched beneath the counter while directing Ron Howard:
Wow. That was September of 2004 when we made that photo. So much has happened since then but it seems like just yesterday.
Of course George Lucas - the real one - got a lot of respect and admiration for American Graffiti and would use that goodwill when he was shopping Star Wars around to the studios. I'm glad that he did, but part of me also wonders what it would have been had he made more films like American Graffiti. The Star Wars franchise arguably stymied a lifetime of potential movies from this talented filmmaker. But I like to think that Lucas still hasn't forgotten his greatest career passion. Maybe someday we'll see him return to what makes him happiest in life after his family.
I hope that he will.
I should probably preface what you're about to see with something. For the past few months, well...
There's really no other way to put it: I've lost my interest in Star Wars.
I can't finger any one particular reason why. But what Disney has done with the franchise, what Disney has done period, is a major factor in that. I find myself no longer able to support a company that apparently no longer desires me or my hard-earned cash. It's much worse than that even: Disney is now trying to rewrite and redefine history so as to advance an extreme leftist agenda.
How do I in good conscience, as a citizen and as a Christian, find myself able to support that? I can't.
Which makes what I'm about to post seem direly hypocritical. But I think that this once, the good memories can take priority. I mean, I have spent almost two-thirds of my life waiting to see this.
Disney's upcoming Star Wars series Ahsoka dropped a new trailer today, and for a few fleeting seconds in it we get our first look at how Grand Admiral Thrawn appears in live-action. Thrawn first appeared in Timothy Zahn's 1991 novel Heir to the Empire. Thrawn became such a respected character that he was one of the few elements to be adapted from the "Expanded Universe" and into the current Star Wars canon. He has probably become even more popular as a result.
So how does Thrawn come across in our first live-action glimpse of him?
Pretty darn close to what I've always imagined he would look:
That's Lars Mikkelsen in the role. Mikkelsen previously voiced Thrawn in the animated Rebels series. I'd say he seems to be projecting the gravitas and dignity (for a major villain) that the Thrawn of the books has always presented. I could accept this as being Grand Admiral Thrawn, if I ever find that I'm getting my love for the saga back.
Well, like I said, I've waited a very long time for this day to come. And to be honest I had come to believe it would never happen. But it has. It's enough to pique my curiosity, at least.
Wow. Where did the years GO to?
A few minutes into it, I realized that this May marks the twentieth anniversary of the film's release. A week and a half before Episode II premiered, I was at Star Wars Celebration II in Indianapolis, Indiana. Not just as an attendee but as a member of TheForce.net's staff. We had our own booth and everything. We even got to attend the dinner with a lot of Star Wars notables on the night before the event's opening (Kenny Baker, thank you for forgiving me for almost stepping on you). After the dinner Bonnie Piesse (Beru in the prequels and in the upcoming Obi-Wan Kenobi series) joined the staff for a really nice pic that resembles the "Scarlett and her suitors" pose from Gone with the Wind. A jolly time was had by all!
Of course, Celebration II was the big lead-up to Attack of the Clones. A movie that for various reasons, will forever be a curious touchstone of my younger life. As a TheForce.net staffer I was privy to just about EVERY "spy report" that got leaked from behind the scenes. It's safe to say that I knew far more about the movie as it was being made, than what we saw in the final cut of the movie itself. In one especially memorable incident, another staffer and I almost flew to Sydney, Australia to take part in a sting operation involving a stolen copy of the Episode II script. But that's all I should probably say about that...
Maybe for that kind of stuff and others, I'm forever going to be looking at Attack of the Clones through rose-colored glasses. Instead of seeing it for what most perceive the film to be: perhaps the most mediocre and problematic of the entire Star Wars movie library. It's not without reason that Episode II gets that reputation. For one thing, it's the LEAST quotable Star Wars film. The ONE line that sticks out - when Anakin says "I hate sand..." - is only repeated when mocking the film.
For another reason, the very title is somewhat of a misnomer. It's not a very good title at all when you think about it. At the time though the official PR line was that the phrase "attack of the clones" hearkened back to the B-movies of the Fifties: "The Attack of the Monster that Ate Minnesota" etc. As one who was "in the know" about Episode II more than most, I found the title more than a little ludicrous.
Personally, I think that the biggest reason why Attack of the Clones is so derided, is that it looks the least like a Star Wars movie.
This was the first installment of the saga to be shot digitally as opposed to traditional film. George Lucas got his grubby little paws on a sweet new camera system and he was eager to put it to use. Digital was the wave of the future and Lucas wanted Episode II to be the movie that blazed that path to glory. But going all digital came with an unforeseen price: the finished picture looks, well... too DIGITAL. There is no real warmth or film grain that had come to be expected of a Star Wars movie. It's jarring, to be honest, to go from the analog look of The Phantom Menace to the almost sterile tone of Attack of the Clones.
And on top of THAT, there was ALL of the computer-generated effects that Lucas ladened the movie with. There were very few practical effects. Again, it was almost completely digital work, done on a workstation at Industrial Light and Magic instead of in-camera or with miniatures and pyrotechnics. There were even CGI costumes (and the clones themselves are completely computer rendered).
It is a movie rife with problems, and I don't know why I pulled it out of my "Star Wars shrine" to watch again. But I did. And maybe some fresher eyes would better appreciate the film.
And now?
Having watched it again for the first time in awhile, I'm more forgiving of Episode II's shortcomings. In hindsight it builds well upon the foundation laid by The Phantom Menace, and some have argued that Attack of the Clones makes Episode I an even better film. It also raises the stakes, and sets up things to come in Revenge of the Sith.
I now think that Attack of the Clones is a worthy Star Wars motion picture, that unfortunately suffers from some significant production choices. It is glaringly obvious that Lucas went mad with power in making this movie, and was hellbent on bringing EVERY toy in the box to bear on his endeavor. That was not a good thing to have done at all. Sometimes "less is more". Not everything has to be a 3D model to be rendered on a Silicon Graphics mainframe.
For all its faults though, and as noted for various reasons which shall remain personal, I like Attack of the Clones. Warts and all, it's still a Star Wars movie. And the franchise has yet to completely go off the rails. If it ever does, it will be for far worse reasons than any that Episode II represents.
Maybe it's the fact that it has violated forty years of tradition by showing us Boba Fett without his helmet?
From the article:
Maybe it’s because The Book of Boba Fett doesn’t fully understand who it is that it’s being made for. Or maybe it does, but it has forgotten its roots. See, Boba Fett was my generation’s most iconic man of mystery. We had no idea who that was beneath the helmet. And we liked it that way. Heck, for all we knew that could have been a woman in the armor posing as a man (no offense meant to the memory of Jeremy Bulloch). The only thing that mattered is that Boba Fett was the most infamous of the bounty hunters who answered Darth Vader’s call, and he succeeded in his mission to capture Han Solo. Come to think of it, Fett was the only character in The Empire Strikes Back who accomplished his purpose.
I have a new article up at American Thinker this morning. "Cancelling Gina Carano: Work Worthy of an Evil Empire" addresses what happened last week in regard to Disney firing one of the lead actors of its series The Mandalorian (image: Disney). Gina Carano made a post on social media that some allege was anti-Semitic and overly controversial. But was it really? Especially in light of the fact that others associated with the Star Wars franchise have made statements just as "controversial" and saw no repercussion.
In short: was Carano let go because she leans conservative?
As always, comments are welcome.
...make it this one. This is GENIUS. Wish I'd have thought of it :-D
Look, I love Star Wars as much as anyone (maybe far too much more than anyone. But what came out of the Disney Investor Event a few days ago worries me:
Ten... count 'em TEN... new Star Wars projects going on for the next few years. Those are in addition to The Mandalorian. Most of these are likewise going to be streaming series on the Disney+ service. Ahsoka and Rangers of the New Republic are said to be spinoffs of The Mandalorian. We knew that Obi-Wan Kenobi was coming (it begins filming next month) as well as the series about Andor from the movie Rogue One. Ditto the animated series about the Bad Batch (introduced in the final season of The Clone Wars).
Do we really need... or were we at all asking for... a series about young Lando Calrissian though? No offense to Donald Glover, I thought he nailed it in Solo: A Star Wars Story. But seriously, it's going to have to be something special to keep me tuned in every week. The Rogue Squadron movie to be directed by Patty Jenkins piques my curiosity. Done right, it could be a real homage to the fighter pilots of World War II (which George Lucas based the space fights in the original trilogy off of).
But to be honest, the only ones from this list of Star Wars projects - along with The Mandalorian - are the Star Wars: Visions animated anthology series (I have long argued that Star Wars needs an anthology series of fresh stories and new perspectives) and The Acolyte. The latter said to be set some two hundred years before the time of the Empire, and focusing on the Dark Side.
THAT is what I want most from Star Wars right now. Some new eras to open up and explore. Instead it's as if Disney is to afraid to move away from the well of the Clone Wars-Empire times.
How much more are they going to milk that? When there is some twenty thousand years of potential Star Wars lore to draw from and expand out into?
I want more Star Wars, no doubt about it. But of greater import I want good Star Wars. I want a saga that is fresh and full of surprises. And what came out of the investors event fell short of fueling anticipation for anything like that.
The good thing about Star Wars though, is that you don't have to imbibe of all of it. There's a lot of freedom to pick and choose which parts of the saga you will follow along with and which don't really satisfy your appetite. So I can maybe skip some and still thrill to The Mandalorian. Just like I have come to disavow The Rise of Skywalker almost completely.
(Hey Disney, give us that rumored "Lucas cut" of that movie instead!)
Awright, we could all use some laughter right now, no matter who you are. And in the past few days I've come across some really good videos worth sharing.
First there's this parody of "Sweet Child O' Mine", performed by Guns N Helmets featuring Axl Rose Grogu aka "Baby Yoda":
And then there is this fine piece of work: heavy metal guitar accompanying televangelist Kenneth Copeland (who has always been pretty creepy to me):
