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Enough
Star Wars To Drown A Pony
Hey Hey! It's
your favorite borrowing from an internet forum guy, Dan Delaney!
Dave and Ethan, a powerhouse comparable to a vibrating penis novelty toy,
have written two bogus-rad essays about Star Wars. Please, contain
your applause until I write an update...
My English Paper. That I
turned in. For a Grade. [Part 1]
By:
Ethan
It was about Star Wars. Got a B+.
Recall the story of Christ. Imagine that through a complex magical ritual,
you have the opportunity to witness the birth of Jesus, stay with him his
whole life, and be at his side when he dies. Rather than age though, you
remain in a sort of limbo, living on for over two thousand years,
experiencing every single moment of inspiration and faith caused by the
life of Jesus Christ. Every second of every day you wait for his return -
an incredible miracle as holy as it is miraculous. You believe every
promise that you have heard of the second coming, and none look more
forward to the wondrous event than you. Low and behold, after some time,
Christ fulfills the scriptures and returns. However, this is not the Jesus
you know. Rather than the title of savior, this Jesus demands to be known
as "Jesus - Emperor of Earth, Lord of Fear, ruler of the
Unholy". He rules the world with an Iron fist, more malicious than
any previous dictator. Every day he demands more laws, imprisoning all who
dare challenge his wrath deep under the earth where they forever toil in
the acid mines. Imagine the disappointment which would hit your soul at
this time. Imagine the crushing blows of sorrow and depression that would
envelop your heart in the moment that you realize that every promise has
been broken, every expectation denied. It is this sorrow - this sheer loss
of respect for everything right in the world which I felt during my first
viewing of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.
To say that I looked forward to the long awaited prequel of the original
Star Wars trilogy is an understatement. I pined for the day that I might
experience this piece of cinema, the way one pines to collect their
millions of dollars in lottery winnings. However, I now curse the day that
I finally experienced The Phantom Menace. It was as if director George
Lucas had come to my door and punched me in the heart, threw my stereo,
computer, and TV out the window, and lit my cat on fire. Not only did
Lucas create an unbelievably awful piece of film which would forever be a
hideous blemish on the beautiful face that was Star Wars, but through an
embarrassing series of continuity errors, managed to mess up the original
story.
The Phantom Menace featured wacky looking aliens in bright, ridiculous
suits and cheery beautiful CGI landscapes, none of which have any place in
the drab, industrial, original Star Wars Universe. I loved the mood that
the original trilogy created - everyone loved it. For years I have
fantasized about slashing hardened imperial slave traders with my
lightsaber, liberating the otherwise helpless rebel fleet. On the other
hand, I try to think about the Phantom Menace Universe as little as
possible - I want nothing to do it! There exist no real villains, aside
from the goofy, awkward alien leaders of the Trade Federation. There was
Darth Maul, the main bad guy of the story, though I must say that with his
four lines of dialogue throughout the entire movie, he didn't quite strike
me as what you would call a developed villain. You could even go further
and say that he didn't strike me as a character at all, but I suppose that
that's the price that Lucas had to pay when he decided it would be a good
idea to (and I'm really not joking) cast the stunt coordinator as a main
character over an actual actor. I suppose that this did make the final
fight scene a bit more interesting, so I'm sure Lucas just decided that as
long as the guy could do flips in the air, it didn't matter if he couldn't
act. Luckily we don't need to fear his appearance in Episodes 2 or 3, as
Lucas brilliantly kills him off at the end of The Phantom Menace, leaving
no room for any development, plot twist, or relation to any of the
original movies.
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Ironically a race involving these pods would've made a lot more sense.
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It
may have been tolerable if Lucas had merely just botched the new
story. Unfortunatly, as stated earlier, he took the liberty of
ruining pieces of the first three movies. In what some would
call a "brilliant plot twist", though what most refer
to as "a stupid, idiotic excuse for an idea", Lucas
explains that The Force - the magical power behind the Jedi, is
really just tiny beings in the Jedi's cells that communicate
with them. No magical powers, just tiny organisms. There is
absolutely no mention of this in the original trilogy, and even
plenty of times when it is described as a magical thing. It is
left unexplained how microscopic organisms can grant powers of
telepathy and telekinesis, though I'm sure any explanation would
have followed the theme of the rest of the movie, and been
stupid. Lucas then goes on to promptly ignore all descriptions
of Anikin Skywalker from Episode 4 and make him a hateful
annoying 11 year old. You think Lucas would pay closer attention
to the various times that Ben Kenobi made references to Anikin
as his friend throughout Episodes 4, 5, and 6, and possibly
develop a sense of kinship that the two could share, thus
increasing the audience's concern for the two characters and
setting the stage for inevitable tragedy in later films - but he
didn't. Oh well. At least their friendship wasn't a crucial plot
element in Episode 4 which, in light of the new events of The
Phantom Menace, doesn't make any sense.
Rather than the wonderful piece of cinematic history that
Episode 1 had the potential to be, it instead turned into a
terrible disappointment. Cliché plot twists fueled poorly
developed and annoying characters - many of which were simply
computer generated images - in an embarrassing attempt to tell a
story full of holes and continuity errors. Episode 2: Attack of
the Clones, holds its own sad story of disappointment, as I'm
sure Episode 3 will as well. Perhaps one day Lucas will realize
his awful blunder, and remake the three prequels in a way which
they were supposed to be done. Until then all we can do is wait,
and pray that he doesn't mess up Chewbacca.
My
English Paper. That I turned in. For a Grade. [Part 2]
By:
Dave
I haven't gotten mine back yet. (We decided to
buttsex it up and both write papers on Star Wars) Mine's on
Episode II. I started rereading it, but halfway through I got
bored and quit. Feel free to follow my example -- or just not
read it at all.
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Nothing washes down the "death sticks" like a nice glass of Windex.
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It happened like a bad Christmas. Beginning with a thrilling
joyous anticipation – the certainty that what approached would
bring childhood’s most vividly beautiful dreams to life – it
built and built for years. Long had I yearned for it, the
release of the Star Wars prequels. My disdain for Episode I had
failed to sway my beaming optimism; I could not give up hope –
not yet. After all, George Lucas had given me such wonderful
gifts in the past: A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, Return
of the Jedi, they gleamed in my memory like precious gifts of
early Christmases, gifts whose value never grows thin. But that
inevitable disappointing holiday must come to all, and for me it
came down in a tempest of failure. I tore open the wrapping
paper to find no shiny new bike or smiling puppy dog. Reaching
into the crumpled mass I found only the most treasured teddy
bear from my upbringing, its head ripped cleanly away. In a
dumbfounded turn for explanation, I found no loving family
members to explain this monstrosity. Instead, the ones I had so
recently called dear and close had become unfriendly strangers.
The tree began to rot before my very eyes, and the Christmas ham
came to life for blood-red vengeance. Before I could stop to ask
what had happened to the holiday I loved so much, the mortifying
images had encircled me and moved in for the kill, and I stood
defenseless against them. Such was the essence of Star Wars
Episode II: Attack of the Clones.
A logical person would likely question my comparison of Episode
II to the aforementioned worst Christmas ever. How could
Episodes I and II, made by the same man – in the same saga, no
less – be so unlike to the original trilogy? I only wish I
knew; I’ve spent countless hours contemplating that very
question, (I wish I were kidding.) and no conceivable answer has
come. The only conclusion I’ve drawn that makes even the
slightest bit of sense involves Lucas making pacts with Satan in
exchange for his creativity. Unfortunately no evidence has
surfaced to back this up, so I am forced to forget the how and
the why behind it and just focus on where Lucas went wrong.
Evidence for this problem has not proved so difficult to gather.
Where he went wrong on the whole cannot be traced to simple plot
problems, hollow characterization, overblown special effects,
story inconsistencies, disgustingly clichéd dialogue, or
low-brow juvenile humor, because frankly Lucas delved deep into
each of these areas and made sure to emphasize all of them as
noticeably and as often as possible. The plot resembled that of
a bad teen drama mixed with an hour and a half of overused
Bug’s Bunny antics, executed by the movie’s pathetic
attempts at characters. The histories of two of the greatest
characters from the original trilogy, Darth Vader and Boba Fett,
somehow managed to simultaneously destroy themselves in front of
a horrific background of computer generated imagery. Lines like
“Around the survivors a perimeter create,” and “This
party’s over,” turned the dialogue into a viable Roman
vomitorium for the ears. No, Lucas’s failure could not be
linked to some simple poorly executed aspect of filmmaking; his
malfunctioning work ran deeper, more personal. He adopted kids.
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I don't know about you, but this is certainly how I pictured him.
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Indeed, I said it.
But, surely I can’t mean such a dreadful thing, can I? Oh yes. I plead no
temporary insanity here; my statement evolved from hours of pre-meditation.
Before my condemnation, at least hear my argument. Then judge me as prophet
or cretin. George Lucas created The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the
Jedi as a lonely, single man. His wife left him shortly after the making of
A New Hope, and thus he created the brilliant story that followed. During
all this time he had the prequels sitting in the back of his mind, but when
his first trilogy concluded he took a break, a long break: in the end his
tragic flaw. During the break he remarried, and the prequels slid further
back. Afterwards he adopted children, further still. Lucas sat in the stew
he’d
created, allowing its soothing scents to fill his lungs of inspiration.
After years tied down to his new children, he finally dusted off the idea of
making prequels for his original movie. But time had taken its toll on the
brilliant new trilogy-to-be. New values encompassed his point of view as he
wrote the new scripts: the desire to make children laugh, to use as much new
technology as possible. His mind had skewered itself on the unforgiving love
for his new children. Before long we, his old forgotten children, the fans
of the original movies, now watched in horror as the child oriented
eye-candy danced across the silver screen, taunting us, mocking our murdered
high expectations.
Am I against adopting children, marriage, love, happiness? No. But at what
cost should they come? Family cannot be put before everything. After all,
there are movies to be made!
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