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Star Wars Fun Fact
Surprising and little known Star Wars tidbits, usually related to today’s Force Feature.Today is my 14th wedding anniversary! I’d be nowhere on this earth without my wonderful life, business, and parenting partner, Lani Voivod. That’s me and her with our two kids and dog, before we were off to Boston Comic Con together last month. Honey, thanks for 14 tremendous years, and for another spectacular 14 to come, and then some!
Life on “Tweet”-ooine
A featured dispatch from the Star Wars Twitterverse!My favorite butter pic.twitter.com/01Hm56PNy7
— Darth Vader (@DepressedDarth) August 20, 2014
Star Wars Swag Bag
So many fun, quirky, and awesome ways to bring Star Wars into your daily life!R2-D2 Kitchen Timer – click the pic for more info!
Trivia Time!
Test your knowledge of the Star Wars universe!Yesterday’s answer: Five
Today’s question: What’s the last movie George Lucas directed?
Force Feature: George Lucas, Yutz or Yahweh?
Exploring the many worlds of Star Wars, in the imagination and in real life!Yesterday I said thanks to George Lucas because he gave me something wonderful I could share with my son, which added a few very treasured memories to my life.
And I got to thinking that, overall in the podcast, most of my mentions of discussions of Lucas have been along the lines of, “Why, God, why?” Because there are things that absolutely drive me crazy about his choices with Star Wars. And they basically fall into two categories.
1. The changes. Oh, for the love of Pete, the changes to the Original Trilogy movies drive me nuts. Referring to the unaltered versions, Lucas has said something like, “Sorry you fell in love with a half-completed film.” Half-completed! Arrrgh! There’s nothing half-completed about any of them!
And what’s worse is that it looks unnatural in places. When you see Han dodge Greedo’s point-blank shot in the Cantina, does it look like a natural movement, or like some weird jump in the film where suddenly Han is in one spot, and one frame later, he’s six inches to his right? Yes, I know, it’s not “film” anymore, technically, but you know what I mean.
Also, and I’m not a big Godfather guy so I can’t give you the perfect analogy, but can you imagine a petty crook stomping on Michael Corleone’s leg and not getting killed immediately? If Han stepping on Jabba’s tail is Lucas’ idea of a completed movie – again, with the bad edit where Han’s at ground level in one frame, and he’s a foot higher in the next frame – well, there’s no point in arguing it, so let’s move on.
2. The wrong team. So there are people better versed than I am about the movie biz, and how producer Gary Kurtz helped make Star Wars and Empire so awesome. And I almost never hear anything one way or the other about Howard Kazanjian, the guy who produced Jedi. But Rick McCallum, the producer of the prequel trilogies, draws a huge amount of anger from the Original Trilogy fanbase for being a yes man to Lucas instead of serving the story.
And speaking of story, the writing, the writing, the writing and directing. Bad dialogue, woodenly delivered. There are diamonds in the rough, like Palpatine telling the story of Darth Plagueis, but otherwise, there’s hardly any of the spirit of the Original Trilogy movies in the prequels. Though like I’ve said before, I’d rather have bad pizza than no pizza, and I feel the same way about the prequels. I like ‘em, even though they feel very paint-by-numbers to me.
That all said…you know why I gripe about these things, and why people get so up in arms about it that Han Shot First t-shirts are bestsellers, and one company has even made a t-shirt that says “Blank Lucas,” and I’ll leave it to you to fill in the blank, since this is a family-friendly podcast?
It’s because he created something that we love beyond all reason. Do we often stop to thank him for that, amidst all our complaints, as valid as they may be? The guy created a universe that has resonated powerfully with billions of people for nearly forty years and counting. What an incredible achievement!
And, upon entering the later years of his life, he’s assured that the magic of that universe won’t die with him. It’s been passed to the next generation, put in the stewardship of very capable people who also deeply understand the power of story. What more could we ask for?
So George, on behalf of all my fellow Star Wars fans, thank you for bringing something marvelous into this world, and helping us all find something marvelous inside of ourselves that we wouldn’t otherwise know without you.