Saturday, February 10, 2007

properly disgusted, late in coming, but proper nonetheless

This afternoon during Ryan's nap, i reclined on the couch and clicked on our old friend HBO to find Return of the Jedi minutes before the ending. I figured it would be nice to step back to that simpler time, back before Jar-Jar Binks when special effects were special because they were parts of a movie, not the entire movie.

Let me replay the incident here for your benefit:

Ah, the ewok village on Endor

love those ewoks.

Wedge is still around, you old dog.

Now Lando, that Billy Dee Williams is suave.

Leia should never have gone with that ewok-combed-out look, not good, go back to that Tatooine Jabba-barge metal bikini thing, that was quality.

Now there's pre-baldness Luke, gazing at the spirits of the great jedi: Ben, Yoda and middle-aged recently dead Darth


Wait one minute, WTF is Hayden Christensen doing in this film? I hit pause and rewind, you can imagine the disgust Amy and i felt. The scene was memorable because having only just met the helmetless-Darth/dying Anakin a few moments before, you were forced to imagine him healthier and less mechanical in what appears to be the standard issue uniform for citizens of Tatooine. Nope, George Lucas in an orwellian device the likes of which i've never imagined was possible, overlayed the older actor with an image of Christensen for the 2004 dvd release.
Why would you do this? This is so much worse than Ted Turner's colorizing the classics. Does everything really have to come back together this completely George? I'm still surprised that he didn't stick Han Solo's dad into episode III somehow, or maybe a little baby Lando Calrissian somewhere.

Anyway, i googled it and some hardcore fans point out that young Anakin was good, older Anakin was bad. Which is a load of crap, he was always bad, he only turned a little good at the end of Jedi. It's like a paltry ploy to say "Hey, look! kids born in the late 80's, that guy from my latest movie invented time travel too."

Why didn't he take it all the way and come up with a teenage Yoda and maybe Ewan McGregor too. Or wait a minute, Luke never knew young Yoda, young Ben or young Anakin for that matter. He should have dubbed in Luke saying, "Yoda, Ben, who's that other guy?"

Maybe it's all just a big hallucination that Luke's suffering from, after going into the Medicine Man Ewok's hut, and smoking the "wacky weed" out of that dead stormtrooper's blood-stained helmet.

Or how about this, all six frickin episodes have been a dream sequence a la Wisdom and now Luke wakes up back in the oil bath on Tatooine with an embarrassed C-3P0, who's showing Uncle Owen where he touched him on a small droid doll.

Ok, maybe i took it too far there, but it's equivalent to my disgust.

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