In a Galaxy Far, Far Removed

Now that the temporarily complete Star Wars wank saga has been shat onto the public's ever-loving lap, to the thrills of toddlers and fanboys everywhere, viewers are starting to calm down from the whiz-bang video game effects just enough to wonder what in the hell the whole thing was all about. And besides, did they really need to have so many goofy aliens? Ever the thankless public servant, I've decided to take on this unruly bitch of an assignment, for better or worse. I'm thinking worse.

I say "temporarily complete" because we all know it's only a matter of time before Lucas releases a special, spiffed-up Electroshock Edition of the hexology, or reneges on his promise not to make the entire thing a nine-part endurance test as originally planned. Of course, Lucas now says in finest W. Bush fashion that the six-parter is what he'd planned all along, which almost certainly guarantees another three movies in a decade or so. These will inevitably start production after Lucas is done filming the latest Indiana Jones sequel, which will primarily focus on Indy escaping from a retirement home with King Tutankhamen's prescription medication in his fanny pack.

Of course, Lucas now claims he will devote the rest of his career to directing small-budget indie fare like his directorial debut, the techno-bummer THX-1138 in 1971. But since George has had complete creative free reign for virtually his entire career and has still spent the last 30 years making popcorn movies and designing stereos, we'll believe he's going to make My Dinner with Andre when we see it.

Great Dreck, but what about this Star Wars crap? That's you talking, btw. Okay, I'm on it.

The central concept one needs to understand about the Star Wars world is "the force," which is a mystical ability something like a cross between ESP and cheating. The Jedi Knights (not the dance troupe from Brooklyn, the other Jedi Knights) are masters of the force, which allows them to fly around like gay ballerinas or Caucasian Chow Yun-Fats and trick people into kicking their own asses. The force also has a light side and a dark side, and just like chicken meat, the light is more popular. But there are enough freaks who like the dark side to keep everything interesting, again like chicken meat. The darkies are more politically-correctly known as "the Sith" because they were named by a guy with a lisp.

The force also bestows some time-bending abilities, making more recent events in the saga seem like they happened before the older ones, which explains why R2-D2 could fly in Attack of the Clones but only had the functionality of a Roomba vacuum cleaner 20 years later in Empire Strikes Back, when he/it fell into the swamp in Dagobah like a big retard.

The downside of the force is that it makes Jedi generally very forgetful, which explains why Obi Wan Kenobi doesn't recognize C-3PO and R2-D2 in A New Hope even after spending so much time with them in the "first" three movies. The dark side of the force is the same, since Darth Vader doesn't recognize the droids either, even though he built C-3PO as a child and had used R2-D2 as a toy box for years.

For all its downsides, however, the force in highly convenient since it gives the Jedi something to blame whenever they fuck things up, like when Qui-Gon Jinn kidnaps a young hick named Anakin Skywalker from the rough and tumble desert planet Tatooine (known then as the galaxy's largest tattoo parlor), setting off an Amber Alert across the southern half of the galaxy and bringing about the destruction of the Republic and the entire Jedi order. But Qui-Gon believes Anakin will bring "balance" to the force, which only makes sense if you forget that there were like a million Jedis and only two Sith at that time, but then again maybe Qui-Gon knew what was coming and was just really dedicated to the idea of fair play.

Anakin would grow up and knock up a queen, though don't get too excited: it wasn't a drag queen. We're not that far into the future. But eventually all the dirty diapers drove Anakin bonkers and he flips out and kills everybody, like in Carrie, only not as fun. Anakin would then change his name to Darth Vader to fake out the extremely apathetic law enforcement agencies of the day.

So bitchy Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi hides Anakin's son Luke on Tatooine, where Darth Vader would never think to look since that's the planet he was from and where his childless in-laws lived and only an idiot would hide Vader's son from him there.

The central bad guy in the Star Wars universe is the Emperor, a truly smelly character that songsmith John Lennon prophesied in the Beatles hit "Mean Mr. Mustard" almost 40 years ago. When he's not turning Jedi to the dark side or napping in his oversized chair, the Emperor enforces the unfortunate stereotypes about the elderly this country has been suffering from for years, with entire generations believing everyone over 80 is thoroughly corrupt and all-powerful. The Emperor himself doesn't really do much in Star Wars, he just kind of sits around, being evil, and waits for the Jedi to fuck everything up in his favor.

The Emperor's counterpart in the white meat corner is Yoda, a powerful Muppet sewn out of force-heavy non-flammable materials, who looks exactly like an old frog's scrotum and talks like ABBA. Yoda excels at Jedi parlor tricks and making shit float, neither of which turns out to be of any help when the chips are down. But this hardly matters since the Emperor proves pretty useless anyway, getting thrown down a well by a malfunctioning robot gimp and forgetting how to fly at the end. Only then does he see the folly of the Sith's policy of overly-exclusive membership, since even one more Sith, call him a trainee or Sith-Lite or whatever, could have prevented all of this from happening and won the battle for evil forever.

But that kind of thing makes for lousy cinema, unless you're Terry Gilliam.

Let's see, what else? There's a bunch of crap about people having eight different names each, which you'd do better to ignore entirely. Christopher Lee has a turn as the B-movie villain he's been preparing his entire career to play, but in the end he's inconsequential except for the hilarious CGI frontward-flip he does at the beginning of Revenge of the Sith due to the Sith's paralyzing fear of stairs. Oh, also: the Sith can make lightning out of their fingers. This is important to remember if you're ever having a Sith barbeque and you can't get the charcoal to start. That's about it.

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