| I love Star Wars, you love Star Wars, we all love Star Wars – but not every bit of it. There have been many moments (most of them recent) that have made action-figure hoarding fan boys like us cringe. How could something so cool go so wrong? Oh well. If there’s one thing Star Wars fans love more than the movies, it’s complaining about them. So let’s get to it.
Each questionable element on this list is followed by the name of the movie in which the offending item appears. Got it? Good. Here goes.
· Midi-Chlorians (The Phantom Menace): Aaack! Sputter! You mean to tell us that the Force is a byproduct of germs? Outrageous! Furthermore, it’s suggested that Anakin Skywalker was the result of a virgin birth, sired by micro-organisms? Preposterous! My own theory is that mama Skywalker got knocked up by a wandering Jedi, who then used that Jedi mind-trick thing to ditch her and run off. ("Never here was I. Make me Belgian waffles, you will. Yeeeesss.")
· Mos Eisley, v. 2.0 (Star Wars Special Edition): One of the things we all loved about the original Star Wars (1977) was the attention to detail. Decades later, creator George Lucas would show us all that there was such a thing as way too many fucking details. Just look at Mos Eisley, the locale housing the famous cantina. The place is a simple, seedy frontier town in 1977, but it’s a ridiculous sprawling mess in the special edition. There is no stillness here – the entire town is awash with clumsy Jawas, beeping droids, Storm Troopers riding giant lizards… hell, there’s probably a steel band and a cabaret in there, too, if you freeze the frame long enough to see them. And what’s the deal with that crashed spaceship sticking out of the middle of town like a dart? What the hell is that thing still doing there? Jawas live in this town, man. That ship would have been stripped clean and made into racing pod parts the next morning.
· Obi-Wan Kenobi’s noisy lizard ride (Revenge of the Sith): Honk! Hoooonnk! Yeesh, how can anybody ride this thing without gulping down a bottle of Advil? Obi-Wan’s mission calls for stealth and delicacy. So what does he do? He saddles up a 16-foot-long iguana that barks and squawks at deafening volume every second step. Good one, genius. This is an example of what can go wrong when 814 different special effects artists are working on the same movie. Nobody is trying to make the film work as a cohesive whole. They’re all just trying to get noticed, so they can get work later by pointing out their grandstanding computer-generated creations. "I made the 444th alien senator on the right, you know. The one with the rainbow-coloured Afro wig holding up a "John 3:16" sign. Did ya see it?"
· Jar Jar Binks (The Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith): Oh, like you didn’t see this one coming. Hating this computer-generated buffoon has become a global pastime. When I saw The Phantom Menace in the theatre, nobody in the audience laughed at his pathetic antics. Nobody. We all just sat there, gargling bile in a state of quiet rage. And this was during the film’s opening week, folks.
· Die already! (Return of the Jedi): The Emperor can shoot lightning from his fingertips. Cool. The only problem is, it doesn’t do shit. He keeps shouting, "Die! Die!" and blasts away, while Luke Skywalker writhes around in mild discomfort. Surely if he simply pulled out a gun and shot Luke this many times, even with a weedy little derringer, the lad would never have recovered as quickly as he does here. Perhaps the Emperor’s powers have weakened with age, and nobody wants to tell him. "No wait… I can do this! Take that, um, and that. Ha ha!" You’d think that but for a sudden and unconvincing change of heart, Vader would have just rolled his eyes and finished the boy off himself while leaving the old coot in a rocking chair with a cup of Ovaltine.
· Greedo shoots first (Star Wars Special Edition) Decades after Han Solo iced Greedo in cold blood (cool!), Lucas rethinks the popular character in a way that makes no goddamn sense. Now Han lets the creep squeeze off a shot that misses from two feet away before retaliating. Um, what? The fan community responded with immediate scorn, with one enterprising Internet filmmaker making a brilliantly satirical "Greedo shoots first, second, third, fourth and fifth" version, in which Han and Greedo’s entire conversation is punctuated by frequent poorly aimed laser blasts. Hilarious! The re-tooled DVD release makes Han and Greedo shoot simultaneously, which solves nothing.
That fucking pear (Attack of the Clones): Never was a romantic subplot more schmaltzy, or the computer-generated effects so blatantly intrusive, than in that scene in Episode II in which Anakin and Padme share a hovering (and obviously non-existent) piece of fruit. Blech.
· Dead Ewok (Return of the Jedi): Oh no! A teddy bear died! You bastards! I’ll kill you all!
· Riiiiise. Noooooo! (Revenge of the Sith): The moment we’d all been waiting for turned out to be the final unforgivable indignity. From the trailer, the rise of Darth Vader looked like it was going to be just about the coolest thing ever. There was the breathing, the helmet, the Emperor hissing "Riiiiise" and James Earl Jones returning to do the voice. British film magazine Empire was even bold enough to nominate the rise of Vader, sight unseen, as one of the best moments of the entire series in their June 2005 issue. Then the movie came out. Whoo boy. Vader stomps about in a daze like a stoned Frankenstein monster and lets out an absolutely laughable "Noooooooooo!" Jeez, Vader, you colossal goober. Way to ruin our cherished childhood memories. |
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