At Last the New Weekly Features Will Reveal Themselves

A long awaited update to our weekly features is finally upon us.  This week, with the imminent release of The Phantom Menace in 3D, my thoughts will no doubt continually drift to the film in the Star Wars saga that was by far the most damaging to the death grip with which I held on to my childhood idealism.  Thus, our weekly features are chock even more full of Star Wars references than they usually are.

To start it off, this week’s top five list consists of the changes we’ve “heard” were going to be made to The Phantom Menace as it is rereleased in theaters:

5. Baby Walrusman – With all the buzz sure to be stirred back up surrounding baby Greedo, it seemed a great opportunity to digitally insert another well known rogue from the Mos Eisley Cantina in child form.

4. Queen Amidala’s disguised voice to sound even huskier – Initial reports had Kathleen Turner slated to do some dubbing, but after the failure of Terminator Salvation, Christian Bale’s voice talents became more affordable and the producers decided to have him mimic his deep, raspy Batman to perform the voice-over for the Queen of Naboo.

3. Darth Maul footage – Lucas has apparently been convinced to actually use some of that left over Darth Maul footage so that the most anticipated character of the original teaser trailers might actually appear in the film in excess of five minutes.

2. Obi-Wan’s “Noooooo!” after Qui-Gon’s death will be shortened – In a completely unprecedented move (and in an apparent attempt to flip the bird to those devoted fans who disagreed with the numerous gratuitous Nooooooo’s uttered by the once feared Darth Vader), rather than add another elongated “No” to the film per his modus operandi, Lucas has actually decided to shorten one of the few instances where the word was appropriately shouted.  Instead of screaming, “Noooooooooo,” as his mentor is struck down by Darth Maul, Obi-Wan Kenobi will look at the floor and quickly whisper, “No,” before engaging him in combat.  At first, we had heard he would snap his fingers, move his head side to side and say, “Oh no you di-in’t,” but word has it some advisors got George to rethink that approach.

1. Jar-Jar Binks dies in battle – Hooray!

This week’s cool ass thing you will never own is a Midichlorian-ometer.  Think your child has unusually fast reflexes, the ability to jump extremely high or get you to change your mind about something of which you were convinced?  Maybe they have a high amount of some randomly thought up bacteria, which exists everywhere in a vast galaxy despite each planet having their own unique and singular ecosystem.  Of course, while at least one of these devices used for measuring such levels existed at some point, they were apparently no longer manufactured and the last one disappeared a long (and I mean long) time ago in a galaxy far (and I mean far) away.

This week’s sign you are a nerd is that you will attend The Phantom Menace with notebook in hand.  You won’t be caught off guard by all the changes to be criticized this time around and won’t George Lucas be so angry when he hears of your disapproval after reading your blog.

This week’s nemesis is George Lucas himself.  Despite all the above sarcasm, I do not hate George Lucas for Episodes I-III.  On the contrary, I still see some narrative value in the prequels and, if I were to meet him, I would probably drool and fawn all over him to get photos of myself with arm around his shoulder.  I might even try to deftly pluck and subsequently laminate one of his beard hairs.  The reason he is this week’s nemesis is because he consistently figures out a way to get me to spend money on the Star Wars franchise after I thought it was all over.

This week’s lesson learned is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.  The unwritten converse rule here is, if it is broke, fix it already!

This week’s equation displays which scenes are eligible to be edited in the Star Wars films:

S represents the number of scenes that might be edited and can be found by taking the total number of scenes in all six movies (T) then subtracting from it the sum of the number of scenes containing Jar-Jar Binks (J), the Ewoks (E) and any sort of musical number (M).  Basically, that leaves most of the good scenes.

Finally, this week’s Star Wars quote is, “At last we will reveal ourselves to the Jedi.”

Thanks for reading.  Stop by again soon and prepare yourselves for a lot more Star Wars rants.