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This Date in Star Wars History
Happy birthday, Jimmy Smits! Leia’s adoptive dad Bail Organa, played by Smits, shows up in both Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith. And was presumably blown up in Star Wars. Sorry, Jimmy.
Life on “Tweet”-ooine
Han Solo had the Falcon's keys in his pocket when he was carbon-frozen. Good thing Chewie keeps an extra set under the sun visor.
— Ordinary Star Wars (@OrdinarySW) July 5, 2014
Star Wars Swag Bag
Death Star Ice Sphere Mold – click the pic!
Trivia Time!
Yesterday’s answer: Captain Piett
Today’s question: Whose last line in The Empire Strikes Back was, “Can it be done”?
Force Feature
Wow, Attack of the Clones. Of the prequel haters I’ve come across, this is the one that seems to draw the most intense emotion.
Remember, Lucas has a job to do with these movies: Rise of the Empire, fall of the Jedi, Anakin’s conversion to Darth Vader. And hit story points like the Clone Wars. The fact is, Lucas found a fine way into the story. Late teenage Anakin, living a completely ascetic life, thrown back into contact with a hot older woman that he’s been fantasizing about for years. It’s a perfect setup, and, I’m not gonna lie, I can kinda relate.
The emotional execution, however, is horrendous. No two ways about it. Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bulloch in Speed was more believable. I’ve seen entire seasons of the Golden Girls that were more believable. And Lucas should have known better. Where was Larry Kasdan when you needed him, George? You could have talked him into putting off Mumford and Dreamcatcher, couldn’t you?
Instead, we got Jonathan Hales as a co-writer. Why? Not because everyone was saying what an awful writer Lucas was, I don’t think. He stopped caring about what you or I think a long time ago. In fact, I think he purposely gave Jar Jar the job of voting Palpatine his emergency powers as a big and pointed raspberry to all the critics.
So why Hales? His only significant credits to that point were on the Young Indiana Jones TV series. The die-hard fans said Hales was just there to be a “Yes” man, and it’s hard to disagree, because the dialog and character development didn’t get better with him by Lucas’ side. It got worse, SOOO much worse.
But like I’ve said before, since Star Wars belongs to you and me, let’s focus on the positive, shall we? First off, Christopher Lee. Just wow, he makes for a compelling villain. Between this and the Lord of the Rings movies, he’s going to be indelibly stamped in the minds of movie watchers for generations to come. So effortless, so confident, he just owns it.
Second: Obi-Wan versus Jango Fett. Come on, that was a blast, right? Great fight on Kamino, fun asteroid field chase. And how many years have we been hearing about how loaded Slave I is with concealed weapons? Well, THAT didn’t disappoint in the slightest, except for not giving us more of it.
Third: Okay, somehow both a Clone Army AND a whole array of military weapons were created without anyone knowing about it. But when they showed up…man, that was fun. I’ve always loved the spaceships and vehicles in Star Wars, and for me, this was outright awesome. Come on, you know you love yourself some Star Wars battle scenes, right?
Yoda, though…I wanted to love it, I wanted to love his lightsaber battle with Dooku bad, and I watched it with a Hollywood audience that wanted to love it, too. From the moment he walked in the room, I was like, Oh, HECK yeah, here we go! And then the lightsaber came out, and you could feel the whole theater ready for Yoda to throw down.
And then he started spinning and bouncing all over the place, and I was going, Whaaaaaa? I REALLY needed the movie to have done SOMETHING in advance to suggest that this was possible from a guy who’s more than 800 years old and been slowly walking around with a cane for the past two movies.
Still, as unbelievable as it was, I still kind of love it. You know how you have one movie that you like, that no one else around you likes, but you love it anyway? Attack of the Clones is like that for me.