LogFAQs > #945734200

Star Wars Ep 1: Jedi Party
I'd never heard of this before. At first I was worried about having to watch a a thirteen-minute video, but it went by very fast. The retelling of PM by casting the Jedi as heroin-addicted party crashers is brilliant, and it has a lot of great jokes, like the table sheen one and Obi-Wan just spinning a lightsaber. The best part is, of course, the lightsaber dance, which is genuinely artistic and cool. I actually went and bought the song on iTunes because it's actually fun. "We have the highest midichlorian count / Which means that you have a lesser amount" is the best dance club music I've ever heard. I want to emphasize how this is genuinely, not ironically, better than the actual prequel movies.

One last thing. There was a random comment on the video where a guy points out that this video includes Palpatine saying he's going to hire Sand People to babysit his kids, which means that a joke video from 2013 is as good at writing Star Wars as Disney.

Kir Kanos
One thing you notice about fan fiction is that fans tend to pick up on minor elements in the movie/show/whatever and expand on them way beyond what the creators intended. Sometimes, this even happens in official stuff made by later people who aren't the original creators. You ever watch Lower Decks? There is nothing original in that show, it is 100% reuse of old ideas.

My point is that I had zero difficulty believing that "Palpatine's red-robed guards you see for five seconds" got a giant expanded backstory in the EU, even though I have never thought about those guys ever.

The Force
I'm gonna let you in on a secret: Star Wars is not a complex or interesting universe. It has like six generic sci-fi ideas that it stole from Dune, and it just uses and reuses them. The single exception is the Force, which it stole from Chinese philosophy and changed the name from "Chi."

Without the Force, Star Wars falls apart. Combining chi with science-fiction was a stroke of genius. I complain about Lucas a lot for having an infinite supply of terrible ideas, but the Force as a concept is probably the single cleverest and most interesting element in all three Star series. Can you imagine Star Wars as just a generic sci-fi universe about wars and stuff without the mystical elements? It would have a tenth of the legs it does.

By the way, losers, George Lucas was right about Darth Vader balancing the Force by killing Palpatine. The idea of the Force isn't that Light and Dark exist in equal amounts, it's that everything is connected, and the Dark Side of the Force unbalances that by its very existence because using it is like twisting the world to be all about yourself. Lucas was 100% in the right on this one and deserved none of the mockery he got. I hate Disney Wars calling it "the Light Side." What they call "the Light Side" is the default, the only element that exists, the natural state of things, and the Dark Side an aberration. It just displays a complete misunderstanding of the coremost element that makes Star Wars what it is.

Bomberman Hero
Get ready for the hottest of takes: Bomberman sucks. It has always sucked, and will always suck. Bomberman does not deserve the B-list status he has. He's barely a step above trash like Bubsy in both design and gameplay. Sakurai did nothing wrong.

Corran Horn
Look, you guys, there's a limit to what I can say about obscure EU characters I don't know about. Give me a break here. I read Horn's Wookiepedia article, and he seems fine. "I never give up, no matter the odds" has never appealed to me much, to be honest. "I have infinite willpower and will never stop trying." You get that a lot in anime, too. You know what I always think of when I see that? That one episode of the Twilight Zone where some astronauts die, but their captain has a never give up mentality and traps them in an infinite loop of pain and anguish because he just cannot accept failure.

Anagram
A complete ****ing loser.

Jacen Solo
This is an EU character I at least knew a bit about before looking him up. I don't hate the idea of Han's and Leia's son turning to the Dark Side like his grandfather, but it seems a bit... uninspired? I can imagine a young man slowly being driven to accept any cost in a painful war until he loses sight of the good in things and falls to the Dark Side, but I don't know, hasn't that story already been told in Star Wars? Hell, it's been told outside of Star Wars.

Is it weird that Kylo Ren has such a similar backstory, but his life ends in a completely different way? Is "Han and Leia's son turns evil" just such an obvious way to take things? I guess it must be.

The Star Trek Wars
I find this nomination to be extremely dubious, but I'll allow it. The idea of Star Trek turning into a religion and having to be banned is kind of funny. There are a few good gags in the sequence where Nichelle Nichols explains what the Star Trek Wars were, especially the sign that says "Welcome to Nazi Planet-Episode Land - Formerly Germany," but ehhh... A lot of Futurama is cleverer than it is funny, to be honest. I like the episode overall, but this scene is merely okay.

Millennium Falcon
Along with the Enterprise, this is the spaceship. All lesser spaceships pale in comparison. It has the perfect "piece of junk" design, meant to look like it's falling apart but still functional, like it's seen a lot of action but is still holding together for now. Everything looks like it has a use, like the satellite on the surface and the cockpit.

The importance of the Falcon isn't just that it's a spaceship the heroes use to get from point A to point B. It's specifically to contrast with the mystical elements of the Force. Luke's training begins in this messy, physical location that's made of metal and plastic and artificial stuff, and Han Solo, the embodiment of that, laughs at him. Luke learning about the Force in this location really pushes the idea that it's above this crude physical matter, and that Han Solo just doesn't get it -- which is why he only cares about money, and why he lives surrounded by things (as opposed to Obi-Wan, who lived in a simple house in the desert and wears robes). This ship shoves so much subtext in your face that it almost becomes text-text, it's such a brilliant and efficient use of cinematic resources to tell you more about the main characters and what they stand for.

Also I think the shape is cool.

Vua Rapuung
How angry were EU fans about the Disney takeover? They must have been furious.

The idea of a guy from a high caste learning something he's not supposed to, and being turned into a member of a lower caste to get rid of him is interesting. So is the idea of having to put aside your hatred of your enemies and work with them to clear your name, that's always a good plot. Unlike Ganner Rhysode, who I said sounds like a solid supporting character, this sounds like he has more main character potential. Although, seeing that he dies to protect one of Han Solo's children, I'd guess he's still merely a supporting character.

---

Not changing this sig until I decide to change this sig.
Started: July 6, 2005