The “Christmas in the Stars.” collaboration comes to a close. (sad face) It was so awesome to work with so many good friends from around the Star Wars fan-site community. We finish with “Ghosts of Christmas Past?” a story from our very own Aaron Goins.
Enjoy!
-Riley Blanton – Founder, Executive Editor – starwarsreport.com
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I remember it like it was yesterday. It was Christmas Day. I can still feel the energy. All the kids had received amazing Star Wars gifts and I was no exception. I had gotten a Luke with lightsaber, the new bad guy, and even a Millennium Falcon!
My family had made it kind of a tradition to go see a movie the afternoon after opening our gifts. This year we decided to go see the new Star Wars movie. Of course we did. It had been years since the original Star Wars had come out and this new one was all anyone was talking about.
I had already seen the movie a few times because it had been out for a little while by Christmas, but this day was the perfect day to see it again. My family didn’t mind taking me again because they knew how big of a fan I was. Also I think they really wanted to go because the movie was that fantastic.
I remember sitting in the theater next to my dad with butterflies in my stomach like I was seeing it for the first time. When the opening crawl came up… was that a tear in my eye? No… it was just a movie.
But this was Star Wars! Star Wars was back!
It had everything I loved about the original and more. Some old characters I loved and new characters I was going to love. Even R2-D2 was back! Space battles, aliens, mysterious bad guys, and oh my goodness that final lightsaber battle. And the cliffhanger! I can’t believe they just left us hanging like that!
I walked out of that theater already planning on seeing the movie again and wondering what the next one was going to be like. This was the best Christmas ever and it was a great time to be a Star Wars fan! Star Wars Episode VIII couldn’t come fast enough.
Wait… am I remembering this correctly? Oh… this is the future…
Sorry, this comment has nothing to do with what you wrote. Sadly, I didnt even read what you wrote (I saw a picture of a dr who cardigan and i was out). Instead, i would like to discuss the horror any true starwars fan knows.
“The Phantom Menace” Menace
“The Phantom Menace” is the most
notorious and revolting movie in the history of all science fiction motion
pictures. Throughout this well written and organized document, I will
continually prove my previous statement by presenting you all of the flaws I
have personally and impersonally come across through my lifetime. I will begin
by explaining to you what “The Phantom Menace” is all about (with just a few of
my personal notes in there), then I will illustrate you this very real horror
by revealing its perpetual displeasures, and then its undying habit of
destroying characters possible potential.
“The Phantom Menace” is a science
fiction legend that is supposed to take place 32 years before “A New Hope”. It
starts with an evil trade federation with an army of battle droids, which are a
horde of dimwitted robots, invading a small peaceful planet known as Naboo. The
Jedi, guardians of the Republic and peace, don’t appreciate the trade
federation attacking their allies so they decide to send two sole Jedi’s to
face the threats cowardly leader (titled Nute Gunray) who is a terribly made
costumepuppet creature who has a big hat and an annoying accent. These Jedi’s
names are Qui Gon Jin (played by the second most beautiful man on earth, Liam
Neeson), and Obi Wan Kenobi (whoever plays him is not important, he isn’t Liam
Neeson). They fail to capture him and wind up landing on Naboo with their foes
army right behind them.
Exploring the
lush jungles of the planet, they come across a digitally animated monstrosity
of a Star Wars character, who is named Jar Jar Binks (we will discuss this
issue later). They end up saving Jar Jars life and are treated in return with
the burden of hearing the worst voice ever to be created (Jar Jar’s voice). Qui
Gon and Obi Wan ask that since they saved his life, if he could just take them
to his city of not as aggravating but definitely still annoying Gungans (Jar
Jar Binks’s alien species). Jar Jar agrees and takes them to his underwater
bubble metropolitan of irritating accents. Turns out, Jar Jar was previously
banished from his city for being such a klutz and ruining everyone’s life. Fortunately
for Jar Jar, unfortunately for us, Qui Gon does a Jedi mind trick on the king
of the city, Boss Nass, and is able to prevent the him from executing Jar Jar
and also gets Obi Wan, Jar Jar, and himself a ride in a submarine like ship to
the more civilized and normal accented surface city of Naboo, where humans
dwelled instead of the Gungans. Turns out, the whole place is being bombarded
by the droids and they had to get the horribly dressed princess out of there as
soon as humanly possible. After they depart the planet, their ships
“special engine” fails and they were forced to land on my favorite desert
planet, Tatooine.
There, they discover a bratty, pint-sized, eleven
year old slave boy named Anakin Skywalker. Anakin and his mother, Shmi, are
both slaves to yet another digitally animated, annoying accented extraterrestrial
named Watto, who happens to own this “special engine” they oh so sought after. For
some peculiar reason, none of them can manage to pay for it, so they make
little slave boy Anakin, or “Annie” as Jar Jar would frequently call him,
participate in a race to buy them the engine, and his freedom. Succeeding in
that very race, he leave his only family member behind, his mother, and “Annie”
goes out to save Naboo, flirt with a girl who is far too old for him, and
become a Jedi at some point in time. They are about to leave when suddenly,
they are attacked by the one of the only good things that come from this movie,
Darth Maul. After kicking some tails, this red and black horned sith of pure
awesomeness decides in his mind, “Hey, as an alternative to slaughtering all of
these saps here while they are impromptu, I’d rather combat them back on Naboo,
exactly the place they’ll anticipate me.” So he heads out of there in his own
ship and the good guys come to an agreement and said, “Let’s all go back to
Naboo because he’ll be there and the droids will be there”. So they all went
back to Naboo.
The princess decides that the only way they’ll
defeat the battle droids is if they have the “grand army” of the Gungans
(sheesh). So the princess has a meeting with the Gungan king about having his
military assist her. At first, the very racist king says that the Gungans think
that they treat their species like trash. Even though the Gungans don’t intermingle
with the humans, the princess decides it is best not to argue why he’s
completely wrong and kindly says “your right, we’ll treat you better”.
Apparently that was good enough for him and he lends his utterly unserviceable
soldiers to fight the droids. In the climax, Qui Gon and Obi Wan battle Darth
Maul, which ends with Qui Gon getting stabbed in the tummy by Mauls light saber
and Maul unrealistically gets cut in to two by Obi Wan, the less important, not
as experienced, Jedi. All while this is happening, Annie turns out to have had
plenty of experience with flying star fighters while he was a slave on Tatooine
and destroys the droid control ship by himself, thus saving all of the Gungans
nearly doomed lives. And that is the disgraceful story of “The Phantom Menace”.
Now we will
get to the displeasures. Firstly, “The Phantom Menace” disgustingly overuses
computer generated characters and the ever so obnoxious computer generated
special effects. The way I remember it, the original Star Wars saga had no
computer generated characters and still were able to make way more interesting
and creative alien individuals. I don’t understand why they decided to make all
of those animated characters while in the old movies they just made extremely
cool looking costumespuppets (remember Mos Eisley Cantina?) and looked almost
ten times better than the digitally animated characters. Speaking of digitally
animated characters, I’d like to discuss my next topic, most likely the most
hated science fiction character ever to have been created.
Jar
Jar Binks. He is definitely the worst thing that happened in this movie. When I
was first watching this film, I saw Liam Neeson, and I thought to myself, “Hmm,
he’s in it, so it can’t be too bad”, but then came along Jar Jar, and I knew
that the film could only get worse at that point. He is a perfect example of
why digitally animated characters shouldn’t be in almost-live action movies,
and trust me that is something you don’t want to be a perfect example of. He
also talks like a childish buffoon who’s been injected with adrenaline and pure
stupid. Here is an example of his speech, “My forgotten, da Bosses will do
terrible tings to me TERRRRRIBLE is me going back der!” He is constantly
messing things up and running into stuff. And most importantly, he does not
stop chatting.
Another irritating aspect of the
movie is the little slave boy, Anakin Skywalker. As soon as he makes his
appearance in the movie, he does not stop whining and making imprudent
comments. I guess since he was a slave, we can give him some leeway for the
whining. Well, I thought that at first also, but even after “The Phantom
Menace” he continued to whine and complain through “Attack of The Clone Wars”
and “Revenge of The Sith”, which is completely unacceptable. How can a whining,
sniveling brat like “Annie” become the evil and notorious dark lord of the Sith
we all have grown to love, known far and wide as Darth Vader?
And now, I shall discuss the undying
habit of destroying characters possible potential. The first character I would like
to talk about is the villain of the movie, dubbed Darth Maul. Darth Maul is
most unquestionably not the most obnoxious, or hated character of “The Phantom
Menace”, but is actually quite loved and considered by many as bodacious. I
consider this desperado both of these things, but I also see him as the most tragic
person in this film. Yes, he is most certainly the finest thing that happened
in this movie, but he only has approximately around 13 minutes of screen time
in it, and right after he bests Qui Gon in a light saber duel and guts the poor
Jedi, he somehow gets cut in half by the nowhere near as talented padawon Obi
Wan Kenobi. It just seems completely unfair to Maul, he was such a mysterious
and ominous looking villain, and he is disemboweled before anything about him
is revealed.
Now,
what is the cause of this abomination to all of Star Wars, who is to blame for
the madness? Well, sadly it doesn’t take much to find out who is responsible
for the tragedy named “The Phantom Menace”. The cause to this atrocity is no
other than the famous/infamous George Walton Lucas, Jr. You see, good old
George had a splendid idea a little more than thirty years ago that would spark
the minds of children for generations to come. He was doing good, finished his
first three movies, and then stopped. Then, 22 long years later, Mr. Lucas
thought to himself, “Hmm, I did pretty well back then, maybe I still got some
juice left in me”. Despondently, he didn’t. His next three Star Wars movies were
appalling and each of them starred the disreputable Jar Jar Binks. He has not
stopped getting his rightful ridicule since those heartrending days.
You can’t just simply decide to just
not watch any new Star Wars films, they contain the words Star Wars in it, and
all of them comprise of light sabers and blaster guns. Something about those
three things in a movie automatically give you the unstoppable urge to watch
those films, regardless of how bad they are. My advice to you if you happen to
run into any of the recent Star Wars films that you don’t own is to drop all of
your stuff and run as far away as you possibly can, then keep running. You
could also simply grab the film and snap it over your knees, but depending on
if the owner of that film understands your situation, he or she will praise you
to the end of their days, or ask for you to pay for the destruction you caused
and dismiss you right away. So you may ask yourself, “How can this be stopped
from happening? What’s to stop George Lucas from doing it all over again?” Well
my friends, I assure you the dilemma has been avoided, and Disney has saved the
galaxy once more. On the joyful day of Tue, Oct 30, 2012, Disney had purchased
Star Wars and all of Lucasfilm for a monstrous price of 4.05 billion,
apparently, that is the price to stop his madness from continuing.
Now you may be contemplating, “What’s so good about
Disney owning it? How do we know that they’ll do a better job?” Well, it’s not
like they could do worse, I mean, it’s as if George Lucas purposefully made a
terribly aggravating movie, but rest assured they’ll make an exceptional, if
not, great film. History attests it. You see, a very similar situation happened
just three years ago with my favorite super hero comic manufacturers, Marvel.
Marvel was teamed up with Sony and had just finished the horrendous trilogy of
Spider-man. Then Disney frolicked over with a basket full of money and
purchased Marvel. Ever since then, Marvel has only crafted marvelous films
(Iron Man 1, 2 & 3, Thor 1 & 2, Captain America 1, & Avengers).
This may mean nothing to, I don’t know, a 3 year old. But to the average human,
success instantly clicks inside of our head. If Disney could help Marvel
recover from its terrible crash into failure, why wouldn’t it be able to help
Star Wars rebound? So true Star Wars fans, worry no more, and sleep easy
tonight knowing that Disney had stopped his tyranny, and is going to take care
of our dearly treasured and cherished Star Wars.