Be Excellent To Each Other

Okay, I've had a fair bit of wine, and I've just been reading the golden persuasive writing of David Brin, but he's beginning to crystalise certain dark, troubling thoughts for me. He's making me realise some of the reasons why I hate Star Wars now.

Star Wars for me used to be glorious panto with amazing imagery and Athurian japes. It was all surface and hi-jinks like a quality episode of 30's Flash Gordon, only several hundred times more awesome. But ever since Lucas started asking me to look into his society of Jedi councils, Padawans, mentors, galactic senates and every single pissing crowd being another 'Mos Eisley' cantina of exotic roguish types I've become increasingly annoyed at the entire stupid, irresponsible, mass-murdering structure.

It's a universe where we don't give a damn about anyone who dies, not even an entire planet. After all, as Brin said...



Yoda and company stamp a cheque for Palpatine to build a big army, wibble on about prophecy, don't even have the decency to act surprised when it bites them in the ass and then forgive one of their personality-free own for butchering millions when they merrily slaughter thousands upon thousands of 'clones' and roofing contractors without a tear of regret? What, so because Anakin 'defies' these retarded rules in order to fuck Padme he's somehow a heroic figure, and we're meant to sympathise with a murdering fuck who was clearly always a sadist? EH? EH? The back story to Darth Vader was never, NEVER any good. Or if it was, it was only in the sense of Hitler having a 'good' (read exciting) backstory. If they were to do it, the only way could have been a very complex, very moral, Tinker-Tailor-Soldier-Spy compromised banality-of-evil storyline.

Or ditch the 'corruption' aspect and have fun ala Richard III.

But to do either you ditch Lucas's obsession with the Joseph Campbell myth married with his merchandising-panto-vision. Buggery-cock.

The trouble is the more the Star Wars universe is expanded upon by cartoons, video games and books the more superficial it becomes. Star Wars used to be great because it was married the spectacle and design of Metropolis with the vim and dash of Robin Hood and put it through a high-tech blender. The vaguer it was, the better it was. Lucas seems to think otherwise, and unfortunately many, many deluded fans think otherwise.

GARN.

Star Wars is a universe where only somebody with a big fucking dollop of prophecy can get anything done. Where taking a shit is foreshadowed. It would have been far more ace-biscuits if some random mother shot Yoda in the back of the head for leading to the death of her pre-teen nameless Padawan son through his stupidity, or some medium-frigate captain aced a big baddy. This is why my fave character was Lando. He's an administrator for fucks sake, but he ends up pulling a gun on the guys bullying him. Han we all love, because he's pushed around by crime-lords but has insane luck, he becomes less an absurdly talented everyman as the trilogy goes on, but he is at least recognisable. He came up from nothing and didn't want to attain anything other than a fast ship and a dame. If more minor characters suddenly rose up to overwhelm bollocks 'fate' and fuck things up for the annointed ones like Han *didn't* (I would have loved to see him drop-kick Yoda) then it wouldn't be so creepy. Namely, if things were more like that other film starring a rogue captain with a shitty-ship, 'Serenity'.

Yes, Serenity. Where a largely forgotten humble sergeant saves the day through bloody-mindedless and an amazing ability to take punches. Where you care about people dying because its personal. Where the deaths of millions you get upset about because you see the cause and the effect and the aftermath. Where monsters can live at the end, can defy their masters and work to the good, but still remain monsters all the same because their past drips with blood.

But hey, Pete! Aren't you taking Star Wars a mite too seriously? After all, it is space panto!

Well yes, it is - or would have been if they'd stopped with the original fucking trilogy. GAGH.

P.S: I still adore the PC games Tie Fighter and Knights of the Old Republic however - at least you can come to your own moral conclusions.

(Inspiration for blathering here - http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/feature ... index.html)

But Serenity had a scrawny runt girl, even skinnier and less convincing in a danc... sorry, fight than me, caning ... well, everyone. And one of the characters even points out how silly this is.

Therefore it is bad and everything in the film is bad, because of one tiny flaw. Ha!

So anyway, George Lucas is a useless twat who lucked out once decades ago and has been riding an easy train ever since. I hate him even more than Spielberg, and Spielberg is ninth on my list entitled "punch in throat at earliest opportunity". And I never even liked Star Wars, so this is nothing to do with kneejerk fanboyism. The sooner someone murders him and takes all the rights away from him, the better.

"Ha!" indeed. But you are wrong.

She is useful for that one moment, luckily. She just fucks things up the rest of the time. She isn't some prophecy-girl come to save us all, she's a brain-damaged young girl with pre-progammed assassin capablities that kick in due to her brother fortunately getting shot at the right time. And inferior choreography has nothing to do with it!

I love Serenity, despite it having medium dollops of wrong in it. See also Dark City.

Yes, but assassin capabilities or not, she clearly punches like a wuss, and shouldn't be able to take out people with approximately infinity times her size and strength without mostly flipping, overbalancing and/or grappling them. Wah wah wah, I say.

But nah, I mostly enjoyed it. It wasn't great but it was pleasant and original, and there was a lower than usual level of non-specific stupidity on show from most of the cast. Although one stupid bit - how did the Agent bloke get ahead of the main Soldiery bloke in the installation at the end? Big hint, writers: Tunnels only have two entrances. Also, excellent arse-kicking woman who actually demonstrates some competency in combat tactics kind of loses those points again for immediately walking out of cover for no good reason. Pissed off or not, that's super fucking dumb, and not hard to write out.

But anyway, I nitpick because it was otherwise mostly good.

If Lucas had been in charge, of course, there'd have been nine prophecies and the agent bloke would have been killed by a physical manifestation of pure Confederacy.

When we came to love Star Wars in the first place, we didn't have standards, or at least not ones which you can use now.

I now have Weezer's 'Say it aint so' in my head. I want to play Rock Band!!

I remember first seeing Star Wars in 1998(ish) and thinking it was rubbish of the highest order. I just utterly hated the setting, really.

I was talking on the internet to someone who was saying that they should make a cartoon out of the Dr Who Time War, because it sounds so mysterious and interesting and epic.

I think Star Wars has conclusively proved that the more you show of your mysterious backstory the more you ruin the good stuff you already have.

The new films ruined the old films for me. Vader's a twat. Yoda's a fool. Jedi's are elitist bastards. It almost makes you feel like the rebel alliance should have formed even if Palpatine never existed.

Anyway, thankyou Pete. For your original post sums up everything that is wrong with Star Wars. Never been that much of a fan TBH, I see the first three films are enjoyable ways of passing the time. If they are on telly, and I have nothing important to do, I'll sit down and watch them.

You are right - there is no "little guy". No-one to relate to. The prequels have no tension because you know exactly how they will pan out. Lucas can't write for toffee. That isn't an exaggeration, he really can't write. The plots are the sort of thing a 14 year old would write, about Empires and prophecies. What is the main motivation behind the war in "The Phantom Menace"? Trade tariffs! A film built on the idea of TAXES!

Star Wars is an inverted pyramid. All this merchandising and mythology balanced on the tiny, tiny tip of a half decent fun Saturday morning flick.

*Cough* C-3PO *cough*

Seriously. He's a poor functionary who gets dragged into all this shit time and time again with no choice in the matter, and has no useful skills or powers to contribute, and is roundly ridiculed and treated like shit by all and sundry.

Sort of like the Star Wars equivalent of a call centre operator being dragged off to Afghanistan by the A-Team, really.

Also camp as Christmas, moans a lot, doesn't get to wield a gun or save the day and is merely there to translate a bunch of random bleeps for the benefit of the audience.

Fine, he translates R2. Then why does everyone else not need a translator for R2? Or indeed Chewbacca? Or the Ewoks? Or the Jawas? But Jabba, we need a translator for. Except for Han Solos bit in the Special Edition of the first film.

Gnnnrgh.

Han is able to understand Jabba in RotJ as well, mind. Understandably, as he's supposedly been working for the Hutts for many years.

As for R2, I always just assumed that people just humoured him, and basically ignored his responses or interpreted them the same as one would with a toddler's squawkings.

Anyone who tries to read subtext, analyses, or queries bits of Star Wars is quite thoroughly missing the point. Why does it have to make sense?

So's your face.

See?

LOOKIT THE PWETTY SPACECHIPS.

This.

I love Star Wars.

It's lovely.

FTFY

True. I wasn't trying to subtext, just define in my noggin' why I find the plot of the prequels so desperately tedious and the characters so crushingly wrong.

(I think we need a blushing Dimlie)

A mate of mine just sent me a lightsabre app for my N95 which makes suitable whizzy zappy sounds when you swing it and ignites when you slide the cover up.

I got so excited about it I almost wet my pants. That's Star Wars.

OK. Explain Yoda accent you must, mmm?

It's like Germans who've only just started learning English - the word order in their own language is different, so all the verbs at the end of sentences they stick.

Fuck - Yoda's German!

Do not look at or approach the golden calf.

David Grin is bang on the money, really. You can pretend that the subtext is too subtle to matter all you like, but by the prequel trilogy it becomes so overt that it actually actively begins to make everything crap. Where is Attack Of The Shit's equivalent to Han Solo, the plucky everyman hero?

Also, midi-chlorians, the incredible hereditory plot device that assures kids that they can't be the guy swinging the cool light sabre.

Since we've already demonstrated that there is no need to translate the native tongue and specifically invented a character to translate anything anyway then why is Yoda speaking in a bastardised English? And Jar-Jar for that matter?

I've just realised how smart Han Solo is. He can speak English and understand perfectly (but still reply in English) Jabba the Hutt, Chewbacca and Greedo. Four languages!

Knights of the Old Republic certainly support that theory. Also, Yoda is an idiot.

The backstory gives plenty of detail on why Han can speak Hutt and Wookie. There's no excuse for Yoda not being able to talk properly after 300-odd years most of which were spent in the Jedi order.

Gah! Now I'm doing it!

Much like Metallica after the 80's, Star Wars ended for me when the Faces boxset of the Original Trilogy got released in 1994 on VHS and finally got to replace my shitty taped-off-telly copies I had watched to death since the late 80's. By pretending the Prequels, the books, the cartoons all doesn't exist, I still love them I watched the Prequels once each in the cinema when they came out, thought they were rubbish, have never watched them since and can barely remember anything about them now - so they haven't tainted my love of the originals.

You're dead right though, the more back story we get force fed, the more shite the whole thing becomes. Just pretend nothing exists past 1983 and the cool as fuck toys you had when you were a kid and then everything is great!

Do please explain this to the yoof of today, who keep using "innit".

It's still another example of yoof not being able to talk proper though, innit.

It's proper annoying.

Res ipsa loquitur, indeed.

Your mum's res ipsa loquitur.

I'll res ipsa loquitur you in a minute.

Yoof are quite capable of talking "proper", they just choose not to. It's called social identity. Same as dialectical accents, which no one moans about as they are looked upon as acceptable ways of not talking the Queens' English.

Essentially, get over it, it really isn't important. People can talk however they like, the same way if anyone corrects me when I say "2 while 3" instead of "2 until 3", I tell them to fuck off.

What? All of them? Really?



Yes they can, provided they don't mind being corrected and/or being ridiculed for being relentlessly and wilfully thick.

As with (mis)use of the written word, this is a big bugbear of mine - mainly because my job is almost entirely about language and the correct use thereof. It's *important*, damn it.



Goodness, that's polite.

I've always appreciated being corrected when I'm wrong about something, as one doesn't learn otherwise. Unless it's done in a rude way, of course.

Northern and Scots dialects often have the word 'while' mean 'until'. Not sure that makes it wrong.

Goodness? Really? I never knew that. Well, there you go. You learn something new every day.

But just because a mistake has become traditional and commonplace doesn't make it any less wrong.

Of course then you're into the argument of at which point commonplace usage is sufficient to make something right - or we'd all still be correcting people to the standards of 14th Century Olde English.

Mr Chris: The English language is in a constant state of flux and evolution, so your right is someone elses wrong. Maybe I should bollock you for not speaking Shakespearian English or even Latin - or maybe you're just being an elitist snob.

EDIT: Craster beat me to it.

You what? Innit is a shortened version of "ain't it".

A commonplace counter-argument, and one with a small amount of merit, but one has to draw the line somewhere. Otherwise we'd be reduced to having txt spk as the "official" and normalised method of written communication in English, were that particular ball allowed to be rolled along.

Pupil - Elitist snob? Yes, of course. Thanks for engaging in a civilised conversation rather than just being rude. Oh...

He means that having a word on the end of a sentence that makes it a question (as 'innit' does) is something that comes from Hindi, not the word itself.



Indeed, but who's to say that isn't valid? Is there any metric other than usage that should dictate what makes up a language?

That doesn't make sense because it's already a question

There's little more fuck annoying than someone expressing surprise by saying "Is it?".