Taking a Machete to the Star Wars Films

This week, several friends of mine (who don't know each other) used Facebook to link to an article in which a blogger named Machete pontificates on the proper viewing order for the Star Wars films. Before I read it, there would have been absolutely no question in my mind on the subject: IV, V, VI... and best stop there. (But if you must, then IV, V, VI, I, II, III. Not I, II, III, IV, V, VI, as Lucas himself would now have you do.)

But then I read the article. And I suggest you take a moment and go read it too.

I have to admit, the "Alternative Suggestion" makes a lot of sense to me. Entertainment audiences have become quite accustomed to non-linear narratives in the last decade or so. They've become particularly adjusted to the flashback structure, and extra-particularly adjusted to the "flashback which provides context for the main narrative." So yeah, I'm now thinking, if you must watch all six movies, I do have to wonder if the best order for it might not be IV, V, I, II, III, VI.

But what to make of his eponymous "Machete Order," in which the writer suggests that the narratively superfluous Episode I be jettisoned entirely?

Well, on the one hand, I can't argue with some of the points this Machete makes. Episode I is fairly inert in terms of story. The movie does play at best like a prequel to the prequels, putting pieces onto the board that is "the Clone Wars" without actually kicking that story off in any meaningful way.

But, on the other hand, I think Machete is being blind to what a terrible movie Attack of the Clones was. Seriously. That is by far the worst Star Wars films. Ask anybody what the "good parts" of The Phantom Menace were, and you actually can get a handful of different answers that people don't really have to hedge about:

There's the podrace. Machete dismisses it as a prolonged action sequence that doesn't advance the plot. First, that's false. At the very least, it lays the groundwork for Anakin's natural ability as a pilot. Secondly, the poster child for "prolonged action sequence that doesn't advance plot" was delivered to us at the end of The Matrix Reloaded. And thirdly, it's unfair to be so dismissive of a sequence that should have earned Ben Burtt an Academy Award for his amazing sound design. Seriously, every audiophile I know uses this sequence from this film to test a new home theater setup. It's genius work.

How about the lightsaber duel? Best duel of the six films in terms of choreography, and in terms of defining each participant with a signature fighting style. Also, the death of Qui-Gon (which Machete is quick to dismiss) does serve as a narrative echo for the events of Episode IV -- the master must die so the apprentice can come into his own.

Or what about... well, okay, I might be tapped out on the "good parts" of Episode I. But seriously, name me one good part of Episode II. (And if you say the Yoda fight, you're wrong. I find no entertainment in watching a CG whirling dervish fight a CG-augmented, frequently stunt-doubled 80-year-old man.) And even if you could come up with one truly good Episode II scene, would it really be worth sitting through the hackneyed dialogue and wooden acting of the Padme-Anakin courtship scenes? If only there were a way you could omit that film from the narrative, then I think Machete might be on to something with the "leave one movie out" approach.

Basically, I think Machete is just reflexively responding to the fans' thirst for blood when it comes to midichlorians, Jar Jar Binks, and Jake Lloyd. Yes, those things sucked about The Phantom Menace. But Attack of the Clones sucked worse even without any of those things.

So I think I can't complete the journey as Machete proposes. Though I do at least thank him for the suggestion of the Lost-style viewing order of IV, V, I, II, III, VI.

A Leap in Logic

I won't say "not to nitpick," because of course, this is totally about nitpicking, but...

I saw this ad on a web site this week:


It seems a little off to me to be advertising this product right now, in this month of February in particular, in a year that in fact has 366 days.

That is all.

(Tagged "holidays," because Leap Day should be one.)

Chew On This

I didn't have time tonight to write the post I'd been planning, so instead, you get this absolutely disgusting story about a man who rolled nearly 100,000 pieces of chewed nicotine gum into a vile ball.

On second thought, maybe I did have time to write the post I'd intended. I'm pretty sure I'm not sleeping well tonight, thinking of that.

The Internet Uprising

Today, Wikipedia, Google, and other online web sites (both large and small) were staging protests against two bills before the U.S. Congress: SOPA and PIPA. The bills are meant to attack piracy, but do so in such a draconian manner as to risk compromising core principles of the internet.

I was going to join several of my co-workers and write my own commentary on the issue. I felt myself in an interesting place as an employee of a company that provides entertainment that could be pirated, but that also relies on the internet for distribution. Thoeretically, I could have sympathies for both sides of the issue -- and I knew with every fiber of my being that the proposed legislation was wrong, wrong, wrong. I was going to use my time and space to implore people to take actions against the bills as recommended by Wikipedia: contact your local congressman.

But the day is waning, and some funny things have happened before I could get to writing this post. In a nutshell, the protests worked. Apparently, the sponsors of the bill were absolutely deluged with complaints today, as one by one, they all announced a withdrawal of support for their own measures. So, crisis... well, perhaps not "averted," but certainly "forestalled." It may well still be worth contacting your congressman to tell them they'd better fly right on this issue in the future, but it's not "all hands on deck" aboard the Good Ship Cyberspace.

So instead, a few random thoughts on the fact that the protest did apparently work.

Much has been made in recent years of how much money has infested American politics, how beholden politicians are to the rich people (and now, the corporations -- thank you Citizens United and the Supreme Court!) whose vast wealth gets them into office. And fundamentally, that hasn't really changed overall. But right up until literally yesterday, the sponsors of this bill had been unwavering in their message about SOPA and PIPA. They believed that any opposition to their measure was coming from an insignificant minority, from the very pirates they thought the bill would stop, and they were dismissing this opposition as anything from malicious to stupid. The money of Hollywood movie studios, most concerned about piracy at the moment, was ringing louder in the Congressional ears.

And yet, today, phone calls and e-mails from actual citizens made a difference. That's something that many people thought couldn't possibly happen anymore, and I was turning into one more than I care to admit. So, score one for representative democracy.

...I guess. Not a big score. After all, the desired outcome here was for Congress to "do nothing," and gridlock is really what they excel at.

I just wish there were some other important issues that people would get as worked up about as the internet. Maybe then some real improvements could happen.

Fear Itself

I'm not in a particularly creative mood today, so I'm going to link to this fun article on the "Nine Greatest Nerd Fears Today."

I will editorialize with these two comments:

1) These feel more like "geek" fears to me than "nerd" fears. I think if it's in pop culture, it is by definition not nerdy. Nerd fears would be more akin to finding out that the new game you were excited about was coded in a programming language you don't like or something like that.

2) For my money, their list would be considerably closer to accurate if it were in the reverse order. I know my #1 is the one that starts off this list, anyway.

Nausea

The makers of the Vagisoft blanket are at it again with this new item:


What's more awesome? The fact that somebody thinks the world needed horrible pants to go with all those horrible holiday sweaters? Or the fact that they flat out call them "Nauseating Holiday Pants?"

Poetic Tragedy

I saw another good Facebook ad recently. Not Vagisoft blanket good, but still worth sharing. This time, I had the presence of mind to snap a picture:


Other than being dressed in a Jedi robe, that guy doesn't look a thing like Obi-Wan Kenobi -- Alec Guinness or Ewan McGregor. But then again, this is apparently the "REAL LIFE" Obi-Wan, so I guess this must be about the guy George Lucas based the character on, right?

I'm actually not against the fan-fiction aspect of this. An improvised Star Wars story, eh? That's pretty much what George Lucas was doing too, wasn't it? (Oh!!!)

But "Poetic Tragedy?" To me, that kind of sounds like it's going to be improvised in Shakespearean verse or something. Which would kick it to a comedic level that could be entertaining... but the oh-too-earnest fanboy picture suggests to me that's probably not the case.

I could have clicked the link for more info, of course, but I prefer imagining my own scenarios.

Mashed Blog Entry

I didn't really leave myself time to write a proper blog post this evening, so I'm going to just fill with a link to:

Wax Audio.

I think I've said before that I'm generally not a big fan of mash-ups. I don't like it when the two songs don't get used equally -- when it sounds basically like one song with a repeated phrase from a second song annoyingly spliced in. And some of the mash-ups at the above site do fit into that category.

But some of the others you'll find there are pretty damn sweet. I'll leave it to you to explore and find the ones you like. Enjoy, and I'll try to be back with a review of some thing or other tomorrow.

Dirty Laundry

You know those ads on the right edge of your Facebook stream? (Well, if you check Facebook on your mobile device more than a computer, maybe you don't.) Usually, they're totally forgettable and riddled with spelling errors. But occasionally, one sticks.

For about a week there, Facebook was advertising to me the Vagisoft Blanket. Don't worry, you can click the link; it sounds dirty, but it isn't.

If it just ended with the goofy name, I probably wouldn't have remembered it or mentioned it. But some of the copy in their ad (and on their site) is just too precious.

For example, they claim the blanket is softer than "a freshly laundered bunny." Really, do you "launder" bunnies or "wash" them? (Or perhaps you dry clean them?) If you were to launder a bunny, I would think the inside of the machine would look like a slasher movie afterward; softness doesn't really enter into it.

It's also softer than "the anus of a silkworm." I certainly wouldn't consider that a particularly soft place. I wouldn't want to touch it to check.

But bravo, Betabrand, whoever you are. You got my attention.

George Lucas' (Re)Vision

We're just a few weeks away from the release of the Star Wars films on Blu-ray. I had decided months ago that I would not be buying them, when it was confirmed these would not be the original versions of the films. Now that we're close to the release, it's coming to light that they're not going to be the special editions, either. George Lucas has decided to go in and tinker with the films yet again.

This news has sparked off a fresh round of condemnation from Star Wars fans. Most of the entertainment news sites I visit regularly have run their own version of a story about it; here is one.

Yes, Lucas has decided to take the stupidest moment of Episode III (of the entire six-film series, possibly), a moment widely mocked by fans and emphatically dissed by me at the time, and "bookend" Vader's story by echoing it at the climax of Return of the Jedi. I can understand why a man who worships at the altar of Joseph Campbell thinks this change is a good idea, but no thank you. But then, I wasn't buying the Blu-rays anyway.

But rather than focus on any specific change here, I want to talk about the notion of the changes as a whole. There are some (not many, but some) who defend Lucas' right to change the movies as much as he pleases, since they're his creation. And it seems that many fans are willing to concede that point, so long as they're given the option to buy either the original, unaltered films, or the latest Lucas edit.

This new batch of changes has given rise to a splinter opinion -- that Lucas should be free to change Episodes I-IV as he wishes, but should keep his hands off Episodes V and VI, which were helmed by other directors. He may tinker with his own creative product, they argue, but should leave the work of others alone.

Personally, I disagree on all of this. I think George Lucas should leave his filthy hands off the movies, period. And my reasoning comes in the form of a question: what sort of art form do we think movie-making is?

Authors don't routinely go back and re-write their published work. Sure, there are examples of successful writers publishing "unedited editions" of books they were forced to cut down early in their careers, but they aren't actually writing and changing the material after the fact -- they're simply revealing the original vision. Countless writers who have had their novels adapted by Hollywood have remarked on cases where they saw improvement on the source material. George R. R. Martin made such comments about certain scenes in the first season of Game of Thrones; Charlaine Harris has professed her love for characters on True Blood she didn't invent herself in her novels; the list could go on and on. But that's just the way it is with writing novels. You don't get a "do-over."

You know what does get revised after release? Video games. They get patched as a matter of course. I do believe video games are an art form too (of course I do; I'm in the industry), but consider what a video game patch does. It fixes bugs. When it's revising gameplay, it's usually because the gameplay was bad the first time around.

So, Mr. Lucas -- do you think you're making a video game? And are you trying to tell the world that you think you made a bad game that needs to be "patched?"

Of course, with the rise of e-books, we're reaching a point where writers could conceivably patch their books if they wanted to. But I really think you have to ask if this is a case where technology allows people to do things we shouldn't do. You could make the argument that this use of technology isn't destroying civilization; it's not an atomic bomb or anything. But to whatever extent you believe that a civilization is the sum of its art, then I'd argue that retroactively changing art like this is destroying civilization -- an incremental death of a thousand cuts.

Movies are products of their time, warts and all. The good ones are praised because they hold up over time in spite of the flaws, not because they were without flaws. And as this is my primary argument, it applies even to someone who thinks that every change George Lucas has made to the Star Wars films has been an actual improvement.

Not that such a person actually exists. At this point, I believe the best thing that could happen to Star Wars would be the death of George Lucas. The creation needs to be saved from its creator.

Charting My New Addiction

I've recently discovered a totally awesome web site. If you're a fan of movies, this will upend your world... as in, to a degree where I should probably be warning you away from the site rather than guiding you to it.

It's FlickChart.com. You set up an account, and the rest is simple. It shows you two movies, side by side. Click the one you like better. Two more movies. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. It tabulates all your choices, and bit by bit builds your own personal favorite movies list.

I've been in the process of rebuilding my own top 100 movies list, so needless to say, this web site is exactly what the doctor ordered. And it's crazy addictive. They have a mobile-phone-optimized version of the site, and that's become my new replacement for Angry Birds. Instead of pulling out my phone for a game when I have a few spare moments, I rank movies.

The thing is, FlickChart does make for a really good game. Over a recent lunch hour at work, my friends and I just sat there discussing movies as it presented matchup after matchup. Most of the time, the choices feel like no-brainers. But occasionally you get a really fun and difficult one -- two movies you love desperately. Or two horrible movies; you'd gladly never see either of them again. But you must always pick one.

It can take a long time to really smooth out your favorite movies list into something that feels accurate. For example, the first two movies it ever showed me were two I found average at best. Still, I had to pick one. And thus, "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" became my supposedly #1 favorite movie for a long, long time.

Fortunately, you can take the reins a bit more to smooth things out. You can enter movies by name to incorporate them into your list. You can click on a movie already in your list to re-rank it in a "lightning round" comparison against several other movies on your list.

And the filters options are pretty amazing. You can have it display only movies from your list (or parts of your list). Movies with certain actors, from certain genres, from certain years or decades, and more. When you mark that you haven't seen a movie, it puts it on a separate list that's ranked in order by the votes of the site's entire user base. Basically, it's an ordered list you can use for your Netflix queue.

Hey, did I mention that at the touch of a button, you can add movies to your Netflix queue?

You can also compare your lists with those of friends also using the site. If you start, and want to connect with me, send me a friend invite -- my user name is the same as the name before the ".blogspot.com" in my blog's address.

If you'll excuse me now, I'm going back to my newest addiction.

The Long Khan

Sometimes, I use my blog to share meaningful insights, or provoke deep thought. Occasionally, I just share silly stuff like this:

KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

The above link goes to "The Long Khan" -- a web site devoted to the moment in Star Trek II where Admiral Kirk screams his adversary's name endlessly into a communicator. Not "endlessly" enough, say the folks behind the web site. You can upload a video of yourself screaming "Khan!!!" and have it spliced into a sequence of other Kirk-loving screamers to form (in their words) "the longest Khan in history."

Enjoy.

(No, I didn't upload a video of myself.)

Invitation to the Dance

It's a banner day for fans of A Song of Ice and Fire! Earlier today, George R.R. Martin posted on his blog -- a space normally reserved for whining about NFL football and how hard writing is -- that he finally finished writing A Dance With Dragons. (He'd taken to referring to the book as "Kong," hence the reference.) So holy crap, it looks like that July 12 release date might just be true after all.

In other news, ski season in hell opens today.

This totally trumps the Game of Thrones-related link I had been planning to share today. Apparently, two yokels down in Florida got in a fight this last Sunday night over the latest episode of the series. An argument over who is "going to win" climaxed in a guy tossing his cousin out a window. (Perhaps an homage to young Bran Stark's fate at the end of the first episode?)

Here, as with Charlie Sheen, I'm not even sure what "winning" means. Who's going to win the struggle for the Iron Throne? I would think it fairly obvious that with four books down and more to come, no one has yet "won" in the world of Westeros.

But at least we'll soon be a thousand-plus pages closer to finding out.

Save a window. Read a book.

A Game of Phones

From a web site earlier this week (that misidentified the game being played as Magic: The Gathering), here is a humorous overuse of technology:



Each of these iPhones is displaying a card from the Game of Thrones TCG, making this deck even more expensive than any TCG deck short of maybe an all Black Lotus Magic deck.

I would ask why. Whoever did this would probably respond, "why not?"

(Small) Time Waster

I haven't really got anything to share today, so here, go play The Five Minute MMORPG. You have leveling! Killing things!

Lag!

Just like a full-fledged MMO!

Obligatory Charlie Sheen Post

I sort of feel like I'm supposed to do some obligatory "isn't Charlie Sheen just batshit crazy?" post here. But I don't think I have too much to say on the subject other than "isn't Charlie Sheen just batshit crazy?" So let me offer a few highlights of the Charlie Sheen related humor I've seen over the past week.

First, there's Jimmy Fallon's surprisingly "winning" impersonation:



Then there's the moderately entertaining Dath Vader/Charlie Sheen mashup:



But in my mind, the champion of Charlie Sheen humor I've seen is this quiz: Sheen, Beck, or Qaddafi, a surprisingly (and distressingly) difficult "game show."

Enjoy.

The Hits Keep Coming

It turns out I wasn't the only one to think that last night's Academy Awards ceremony was a giant dud. A great article this morning over at Movieline offered up the 9 Most Scathing Reviews of the ceremony.

I especially like #9, for being a more succinct and biting commentary on James Franco's cardboard delivery than I could manage. And also #8, for someone having the courage to say what I couldn't bring myself to last night: Kirk Douglas was creepy and awkward. I didn't want to disparage a survivor of a stroke, but there were many facets of the discomfort in watching him besides just that one.

Look, Up in the Sky!

Everybody is all a-twitter (and a-Facebook, and a-blog, etc) about the lunar eclipse. It's tomorrow, technically, except that by the time most of you read this, it will have already happened.

There's much being made of the significance of it. Or, I should say, the coincidence of it, since no interstellar forces are going to rain frogs upon us or anything. It happens that this total lunar eclipse falls on the same day as the winter solstice. Many internet folk are therefore proclaiming it "truly the darkest day of the year." Personally, I think that would be more accurate of a winter solstice coinciding with a new moon. Still, the "it's only happened once before in 2000 years" is kind of cool.

But really, regardless of the timing, I just happen to think lunar eclipses are pretty cool. You can actually look at them, for starters, unlike those far less observable solar eclipses. And they typically result in that cool "blood moon" effect that's just neat to look at -- and that probably made our distant ancestors cower in their caves in fear.

Anyway, I'm going to step outside for a moment (bundled up, of course) and enjoy it for a while on this perfectly clear night before I head off to bed.

Dear Google News Feed...

Hyphens matter. (Click image for full size.)

Happy Thanksgiving