I'M AWAKE!
Topic: The Movies
AND I HAVEN'T BEEN PLAYING GUILD WARS! AND I DIDN'T GO BUY THE COLLECTOR'S EDITION SO I COULD GET THE WAY COOL HEADSET/MICROPHONE AND THREE MONTHS OF TEAMSPEAK ON SPEAKEASY!

...I bought it for the art book and in-game graphics.

I'm weak.

May 19th is a big day. It's the release of a major cinematic effort, nearly 30 years in the making. No, it's not the next episode of Neurotically Yours (although it is, coincidentally, releasing that day, and you might be better off just watching that). It's Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

I'm not going to link it. Go to your pantry and get some product. There's a URL there somewhere. I saw Darth Vader on a box of Cap'n Crunch the other day. Sellout > Lucas > artistic integrity.

This vexes me, because I don't know what they're getting revenge for.* I mean, Darth Maul even said it in Episode I (one of his few speaking lines). "Soon we shall have our revenge!" For WHAT? Did Yoda dis some Sith Lord way back when they were both in 3rd grade? Did the Jedi start selling Pop-Sithcles and force the Dark Side into hiding out of embarrassment? Did the Jedi stand the Sith up at a wedding? Did the Jedi bogart all the cool light-saber colors, leaving Sith with nothing but red?** Did a Jedi run over some Sith's dog with a land speeder (which would have had no effect, unless it was a real tall and stupid dog)?

And since this is the final episode, that means it's finally going to be okay to call for Lucas' head on a platter, because he's run out of opportunities to redeem himself. There will be no "Episode 3?."

Quick precis.

Episode 4: A New Hope was released first. I still think this is because Lucas knew it was the only good film of the bunch. Some space princess gives hyper-important plans to a pair of droids and shoots them off a ship so they can give them to a person that may not even be alive any more, allowing herself to be captured.Supposedly, this is done because gunners don't shoot pods with no life readings on board. Bullshit. I've known gunners. They shoot anything they can get away with shooting. But I digress.
In a target the size, literally, of a planet, the droids land in Obi Wan's back yard, taking the one person that could threaten Sith control of the galaxy with them. Obi Wan gets the message, begins teaching Luke to be a Jedi, goes to the Death Star to rescue Leia (who never asked to be rescued), and becomes a martyr. Luke takes the princess and the scoundrel to a rebel base and instantly learns to fly an X-Wing like an ace. In a spectacular assault on the Death Star, he drops a pair of proton torpedoes (whatever they are) into a 2 meter exhaust shaft that goes straight to the core (yet its' only 2 meters... wtf?) and destroys the base. Medals for all, until...

Episode 5: The Empire Strikes Back
The rebels get their ass kicked on Hoth and a yeti almost eats Luke. They all run away, and Luke defies orders and goes to Dagobah because Obi Wan told him to do it in a near-death frozen hallucination. He gets there and crashes (proving he's not such a hotshot pilot after all), again landing, somehow, in the right person's back yard, and a Muppet starts stealing his stuff. He does everything the Muppet tells him to do, except the important stuff... like "size matters not," and "stay on Dagobah" and "you don't need your light-saber in that creepy-ass tree." Meanwhile, Leia and Han go to Cloud City (imaginative name) and become bait. Han is preserved in carbonite and taken away by Boba Fett. Leia realizes she's kissed her brother. Twice. She doesn't care, proving royalty is inbred. Threepio is blown up, but unfortunately, they put him back together a little. This is done by Chewie, who somehow never gets short-circuit causing fur in the delicate electronics of whatever he's making. Luke (remember Luke?) gets a vision on Dagobah and falls right into the trap. Vader chops off his hand and then tries to make up by telling him he's his father, and did they want to rule the galaxy together or some other family-building activity, since bowling is now out of the question. Luke decides he'd rather die than be helped by anyone Sith, especially if it's his dad. Movie ends on a downer; Han's captured, Luke's missing his hand, and now all the kids are going to call him "Sith-head."

Episode III: Return of the Jedi
Well, they don't really return. It's just Luke, true, but there was always at least one Jedi; two if you count Yoda before he died right after finishing Luke's training. So that means they never really left. They just kept it on the down-low.
Leia pretends to be a bounty hunter and botches it and gets captured by Jabba. Luke shows up dressed like Lee Van Cleef and uses The Grip™ on an orc and still isn't a Sith. He kills a rancor and makes a bad guy cry. Later, he rescues everybody and dumps Boba Fett into a sarlacc and we think it's cool. A bunch of other stuff happens, and they end up on Endor with speeder bikes, which are cool, and a bunch of teddy bears, which aren't. They blow up another Death Star (because you can't stop with just one). Meanwhile, Vader redeems himself and saves Luke and kills the Emperor and gets himself killed in the process. Closing scene of three ghosts and a funeral, and dancing teddy bears in the forest.

Twenty years later, Lucas remembers he was making movies a while ago. He did something called Willow shortly after Episodes 4 through 6, which was a D&D kind of thing with almost the same plot as Star Wars, only with midgets. Val Kilmer was in it, but not even he could have saved the film. Lucas realizes he needs another influx of money because Industrial Light and Magic isn't making him as famous as he wants to be any more, and re-mastering his old successes isn't panning out as well as he'd hoped, and some fat slob is making Lord of the Rings and invading Lucas turf, and doing a much better job of it than Lucas ever could. It's time to get serious. It's time to get creative and clever, and give the people more of that Hollywood magic they crave so much. Somehow, that led to Jarjar Binks.

Episode 1: The Phantom Menace
Why the Hell did he call it that? Shouldn't it have been "The Hidden Menace?" Or maybe "The Unseen Menace?" "The Menace That You Can't See?" What phantom? No phantom was there! Just Sith that were really sneaky! What was it Yoda said... "Difficult to see is The Dark Side." Bullshit! Senator Palpatine was in plain sight all the time, and any Jedi that got near him and didn't get intestinal cramps shouldn't have been making light-sabers.
Obi Wan (much younger) and Qui Gon (soon to die, but not yet) nearly get killed (see?) and escape to an underwater city. They take a Jamaican salamander and a submarine to Theed, where they rescue a queen (is rescuing royalty a recurring theme or what? Obi Wan could have told Leia "I remember when I first rescued your mother..."). They emergency stop on a planet to fix a hyperdrive. (Broken hyperdrive? In a Star Wars movie? Can't be!) They meet a kid that's stronger in The Force than God, but he doesn't know it. Someone says "midichlorians," and the audience realizes how much they hate Lucas. There's a big race scene, and the kid wins (shit... who saw that coming?), and they take him to Coruscant. Yoda says he won't get trained because the kid's got fear. Duh. He's a kid, and Muppet or no, Yoda's a green wrinkly booger with a light-saber. They go back to Naboo and blow up a mini-Death-Star (a "Death Moon" if you will), make peace between the indigenous races of Naboo, blow up a lot of droids, and kill a bunch of Gungans, but not, unfortunately, Jarjar. Darth Maul has the best light-saber duel ever filmed, with Qui Gon, who dies, and Obi Wan, who doesn't. After a spectacular display of skill and mastery of the double-bladed light-saber, Maul, who has all the time in the world while Obi Wan propels himself out of a pit, does a back-flip over his head, force-pulls a light-saber to his hand, and mauls Maul, just stands there with his face hanging out throughout the entire event, not once thinking "damn... I should... like... block, or something..."
Medals to the heroes.
So, basically, it's the same as Episode I, only much worse, but with better light-saber duels.

Episode 2: Attack of the Clones
This was a title worthy of Ed Wood. And so was the movie.
The brat's older now, but still a brat. Lots of stuff happens as the characters search for some kind of a plot. The brat kills sand people because they killed his mom, and we think it's cool.
Eventually, there's clones, and they attack. Yoda shows you don't mess with no wrinkly boogers with light-sabers, even if you have two of them (light-sabers, not wrinkly boogers), with pistol-grip pommels. Cool though they are, that just won't do it. We get to see Padme's belly and the outline of her nipples, because Lucas finally realized his writing talents weren't going to do it alone. The brat marries the used-to-be-queen, with his artificial hand.

Whew! I'm ready for the final episode now! Aren't you? Can't wait! I'm eagerly anticipating it, with great eagerness and being eager! It'll be... it's gonna be... it's...

Who am I kidding? I'm going just for the closure. One day, Lucas will realize that all we really want to see is light-saber duels and Padme's chest, and we'll have a two-hour presentation alternating between those scenes, and it'll be bigger than... well, bigger than Star Wars.

But not this time. This time will be just as bad as the last two times. But go anyway, because then you'll know it's well and truly over. And think about it... when was the last time it was okay for theaters to sell tickets to a train wreck? Never. So go, just so you can tell your grandchildren you were there, and they can look knowingly at each other and nod, and understand exactly why you're so messed up.

*See? I'm so vexed, I ended a sentence with a preposition. WTF?
**Although the red goes nicely with Vader's all-black ensemble. Queer Eye for the Sith Guy.