The Star Wars Movie

DISCLAIMER: This website has very little, if anything at all, to do with Star Wars. As any good nerd will tell you, the correct spelling of the word this blog is so crazy about is "wookiee". The most famous individual spells its name "Chewbacca".

The wookie I speak of is a completely different creature. My wookie lives with it's girlfriend in a 1987 Camry that is covered in "clever bumper stickers. My wookie has a 3-legged dog that pulls around a cooler of "1 for $3, 2 for $5" Sammy Smith 22s on a longboard in parking lots.

My wookie ends every sentence with "brah."

(For an even clearer picture of my wookie (hehe) click on the links on your right.)

However - pretty super time for me to post my review of the movie, yes? (STOP READING IF YOU HAVE A GIRLFR...I MEAN...HAVEN"T SEEN THE MOVIE)

It was great. However - the f*cking dialogue...Jesus...

"He killed younglings."

This line was used 3 times, and highlights Lucas' incessant need to use his own make-believe words when somthing (anything) else would have been better for the scene, such as "Dude, I went in there and there were f*cking baby heads EVERYWHERE. I totally cried," or "We caught Anakin dipping his light sabre into baby-carriages," which, by the way was conceived by Chiach Solo, and not Family Guy.

Anakin: "I love you."
Padme: "No, I love you more"
Anakin: "No, I love you more."

I swear to god that this is an actual exchange from a major-studio-made full length motion picture that I paid matinee prices to go see. Twice. But once with a girl, alright? So shut up, mom.

Darth: "Yes, my master. Where is Padmé? Is she safe, is she all right? "

The first words to ever come out of Darth Vader's mouthpiece. The evilest dude in the history of anything is asking if his babies are OK? He doesn't instantly wake up and choke poeple? F*ck that.

There is one line, however, that almost makes up for it all:

Yoda: "Good relations with the Wookiees, I have."

To hear Yoda use my favorite word in a sentence that makes him sound (to me) like your buddy's buddy in a Izod shirt who has just taken your $200 assuring you that the molly he just scored from kid selling his baby for an extra is the best ever just warms my heart.

Enough with the words. It is a beautiful looking movie. Even in the scenes with the lines listed above, you can't help but marvel at how nice the idiot people puppets are to look at. The opening, the fulfillment of Lucas's grand CGI-powered dream, is all that is good about special effects. An interesting note about the effects-laden universe the characters inhabit is that the face of the clones is the Asian dude (they all look the same right?) that drives the gun-bot thingie in the last Matrix movie. I've never seen this guy do anything but have half of his body rendered by CGI.

More importantly though, the interaction between our two Jedi heroes is this scene (the only time that Christiansen is tolerable) adds great depth to the pained look on Alec Guiness's face every time he mentions Darth Vader. Ewen McGregor seems to relish this idea, and provides the only feeling we see from any human in the film. His admonishment of the dying Anakin (sorry about those stumps catching on fire, guy!) is capped with him picking up the vanquished's light sabre. This, of course, is meaningful only to nerds like me who remember Guiness, upon giving Luke his light-sabre, telling the future Jedi that his "father wanted him to have (it)."

The most interesting aspect of linking this trilogy with the original is the character of R2-D2. He has seen everything. Obi-Wan is quite familiar with R2, as he was Anakin's co-pilot, so it's interesting that Obi-Wan, whom we now know has been chilling in a cave for 25 years waiting for the Tuscan Raiders to come after Luke, pays him no mind as he plays the "Help Us Obi-Wan" holgram in Stare Wars. The only thing R2 may not know about Vader, a secret we assume is kept only by Yoda, Obi-Wan and Sen. Organa, played by Jimmy Smits in the "piece of wood" acting style. (If you got the feeling that C3PO was around only as R2's interpreter in Menace & Clones, you're right. Besides being the gayest-robot-with-the-most-inconsequential-presence-in-a-movie-of-all-times, he has his memory erased at the end of this film, thus nullifying his presence entirely.)

Overall, a big hooray for George Lucas, whose legendary trilogy hinged on redemption, and his own saving grace after putting his logo on two of the sh*ttiest movies of all times. Also - hooray for movies, which can now have good special effects again, as the Industrial Light and Magic guys can do something besides make Hayden Christiansen piss me off.