Every Star Wars movie after Empire Strikes Back has sucked.

Return of the Jedi was the worst of the original trilogy. Lucas was trying to wrap up everything into a nice, neat package and forgot that the movie needs to be entertaining. There are some entertaining moments in ROTJ, but overall, it’s the weakest link.

The Ewoks are too cute. The dialogue with the Emperor is painful, and the ending part where Vader dies was truly groan-worthy as he endeavored to have a “After-School Special” moment with Luke.

“But there were problems in the first two movies too!” Yes, there were. If you go back and watch A New Hope, you will hear some truly awful lines of dialogue. Luke whines. Han talks about how fast the Millennium Falcon is using a unit of time instead of a unit of speed. And you know what else? Shut up.

Yes, shut up. When you saw the movies, even when they re-released them in the 90s, you didn’t care about the few bad lines. You didn’t care about what a dumb name the “Hyperdrive Motivator” was. Why didn’t you care? Because the movie was still pretty good.

Even when I was watching ROTJ, I could smell the rot.

Then.

Then.

Then Lucas went back. And tweaked them. Which is to say that he added all these little cutaways. Most of them were completely useless. Most of them were designed to get a cheap laugh. Most of them had nothing to do with furthering the story.

Take, for example, the scene with Han Solo and Jabba from Episode 1. The scene was cut from the original movie, and had actually been filmed with an actor playing Jabba instead of the giant slug he became.

But Lucas would not be stopped. He wanted to add the scene, so he was going to add it. And who is going to stop him, after all, he’s George “Swingin’ Dick” Lucas. You gonna tell him ‘no’?

So what do we get? We get a scene which adds nothing to the movie, nothing to the series.

Oh, and I forgot. In the original scene, Han walked behind the actor who was playing Jabba. Now Jabba has been replaced by a giant slug, so Lucas has Han step on Jabba.

Right. Like Jabba wouldn’t have resented that at all. No response.

So after deproving (the opposite of “improving”) the first three movies, Lucas set out to make three more.

Which gave us Jar Jar Binks.

How did Jar Jar get approved? Because Lucas didn’t have anyone to say, “Um George, the Rastafarian swamp lizard thing is not only offensive, but annoying as hell.”

You’ve got the leader of the Gungans who vigorously shakes his head and spews spittle everywhere when he’s excited, upset or happy. Yeah.

My Theory As To What When Wrong

The long delay between the first trilogy and the second trilogy was explained by Lucas’ contentious divorce from his wife. The story went that he didn’t want to give his wife any money from the future movies, and she wanted to say they were products of the marriage, so she was owed half.

I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not, but I can tell you that what ruined the second trilogy was very clear to me:

Lucas had grandchildren.

He made the second trilogy for them.

Don’t believe me? Watch them with a 6-year old. I have. Again, and again, and again.

Little kids love Jar Jar. I’m not sure what the medical explanation for this is, but I believe it has to do with the soft-spot on the top of the head not being hardened.

Ask him which of the 6 movies he wants to watch, and he’ll pick one of the first 3.

The awful dialogue between Anakin and Padme doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

The goofy stupidity of having battle droids that say things like “Roger Roger” and “Uh Oh” doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

The absolute absurdity of having General Grievous, who is 99.99% robot, who has a hacking smoker’s cough doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

When Count Dooku and Yoda face off, and Dooku says “It is obvious we will not be able to settle this with the force, but with the lightsaber” he doesn’t ask “WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?!” because he’s 6.

When you have Chancellor Palpatine saying “No, no, no, no” like some bizarre scarecrow, he doesn’t care.

So if the majority of the movie is entertaining to a 6 year old and annoying to the rest of the population, either Lucas is amazingly stupid, or he wrote it for 6 year olds — like his grandchildren.

What Went Right

The good parts of the second-trilogy is quite simply the battle scenes. Lucas does them well. It’s why the Death Star invasion at the end of the 1977 movie was so good, why the Hoth battle and Luke-vs-Vader in Empire was so good, and why the best parts of ROTJ were the battle scenes.

In the second-trilogy, we get a multitude of light-saber battles, including Darth Maul, whose lightsaber battle with Qui Gon and Obi-Wan is by far the best part of The Phantom Menace, and why the Jedi battles are the best parts of the next two.

Which Brings Us To Today

We went to Clone Wars because of the aforementioned 6-year old, but I was hopeful. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that it was all-CGI. As many others have said, a lot of the second-trilogy was CGI anyway, so why not just go all-out?

What did we get?

Some good battle scenes.

But not enough.

Not nearly enough.

The 6-year old loved it.

I did not.

First of all, the story starts and you’re not given any help figuring out where this movie fits in. If you are expecting it to be after the last movie, you’d be wrong — as you would soon figure out. Eventually I figured out that it was between the 2nd and 3rd movies.

Which, by the way, makes this a… what? Prequel? Prequel to a prequel? I don’t think we even have a word for what this is.

My hope started to die off fast. The voiceover at the very beginning of the movie is so far over the top that it puts us squarely in the ridiculous. It isn’t quite as bad as the “SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! MONSTER TRUCK PULL” guy, but it’s close enough that the comparison came quickly to my mind.

There’s plenty of gawd-awful dialogue that makes you wonder if the writers have ever been in a discussion with normal human beings here on earth. Fortunately, we are not asked to endure any of the bile-chunk laden, vomit-inducing “romantic” language between Anakin and Padme.

But It Gets Worse

I had heard that there was a “new Hutt” in this movie who “speaks like Truman Capote” and I thought “Oh man, people are just getting way over-wrought about this before it is even released.” And then I kind of forgot about it.

Until it happened, and all I could think was “OH MY SWEET BUTTERY JESUS, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] KIDDING ME, RIGHT?”

Let me be absolutely clear: imagined someone playing Truman Capote. Now imagine that the director asked you to “Gay it up a little.” And you did. Now, imagine that he said “No, more. Really really gay it up.” And you did. Then imagine the director kidnapped your family and held them at gunpoint and threatened to scar and/or rape them with a cattle-prod unless you made it so amazingly over-the-top that people would actually lose brain cells as they tried to imagine if you had really CREATED SUCH AN OBSCENE CARICATURE.

Did I mention this character was a Hutt aka giant slug?

The only way this character could be any more ridiculous is if he was wearing a pink-tutu and delivered his dialog in stuccato bursts between thrusts as he was sodomized by The Village People as they sang “I Feel Pretty” in four-part harmony.

Oh, and guess what? He turns out to be a bad guy.

Um “spoiler alert.”

Sorry. Actually I’m not. There’s no way this movie could be spoiled. You could set this movie on fire and urinate on the ashes and not ruin it.

But since the cat is out of the bag, isn’t it nice that Lucas created over-the-top gay caricature “uncle” who turns out to be a bad guy?

Way to be creative there, Georgey boy. So, can we expect that someday you’ll go back and release a “Special Edition” of The Phantom Menace where Jar Jar is smokin’ weed and listening to Bob Marley while cleaning a rifle wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt? Because that would be less-offensive.

Please, let this movie fail

The only hope we have for this to be the last Star Wars movie is if it is a horrible box-office failure. (Or have an asteroid land on George Lucas.)

Please, do your part.

Do not see this movie.

If anyone asks you about this movie, tell them you heard it was horrible, painful to listen to and offensive. Even if you don’t care about the stereotyping (really?), you should care about good movie making.

Star Wars, which was once the pinnacle of science-fiction movie making, became a bad joke with the second trilogy, and is now a bad, unfunny joke — which is to say, tedious.

It needs to end now. It needs to be put into a nice retirement community where it can bask in the glow of What Used To Be, until some new director can come up with a vision of what a great action/science-fiction adventure can be for this generation.

Just keep Lucas the hell away from it, because the stench from the shit on his hands will ruin the whole thing.

Every Star Wars movie after Empire Strikes Back has sucked.

Return of the Jedi was the worst of the original trilogy. Lucas was trying to wrap up everything into a nice, neat package and forgot that the movie needs to be entertaining. There are some entertaining moments in ROTJ, but overall, it’s the weakest link.

The Ewoks are too cute. The dialogue with the Emperor is painful, and the ending part where Vader dies was truly groan-worthy as he endeavored to have a “After-School Special” moment with Luke.

“But there were problems in the first two movies too!” Yes, there were. If you go back and watch A New Hope, you will hear some truly awful lines of dialogue. Luke whines. Han talks about how fast the Millennium Falcon is using a unit of time instead of a unit of speed. And you know what else? Shut up.

Yes, shut up. When you saw the movies, even when they re-released them in the 90s, you didn’t care about the few bad lines. You didn’t care about what a dumb name the “Hyperdrive Motivator” was. Why didn’t you care? Because the movie was still pretty good.

Even when I was watching ROTJ, I could smell the rot.

Then.

Then.

Then Lucas went back. And tweaked them. Which is to say that he added all these little cutaways. Most of them were completely useless. Most of them were designed to get a cheap laugh. Most of them had nothing to do with furthering the story.

Take, for example, the scene with Han Solo and Jabba from Episode 1. The scene was cut from the original movie, and had actually been filmed with an actor playing Jabba instead of the giant slug he became.

But Lucas would not be stopped. He wanted to add the scene, so he was going to add it. And who is going to stop him, after all, he’s George “Swingin’ Dick” Lucas. You gonna tell him ‘no’?

So what do we get? We get a scene which adds nothing to the movie, nothing to the series.

Oh, and I forgot. In the original scene, Han walked behind the actor who was playing Jabba. Now Jabba has been replaced by a giant slug, so Lucas has Han step on Jabba.

Right. Like Jabba wouldn’t have resented that at all. No response.

So after deproving (the opposite of “improving)”) the first three movies, Lucas set out to make three more.

Which gave us Jar Jar Binks.

How did Jar Jar get approved? Because Lucas didn’t have anyone to say, “Um George, the Rastafarian swamp lizard thing is not only offensive, but annoying as hell.”

You’ve got the leader of the Gungans who vigorously shakes his head and spews spittle everywhere when he’s excited, upset or happy. Yeah.

My Theory As To What When Wrong

The long delay between the first trilogy and the second trilogy was explained by Lucas’ contentious divorce from his wife. The story went that he didn’t want to give his wife any money from the future movies, and she wanted to say they were products of the marriage, so she was owed half.

I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not, but I can tell you that what ruined the second trilogy was very clear to me:

Lucas had grandchildren.

He made the second trilogy for them.

Don’t believe me? Watch them with a 6-year old. I have. Again, and again, and again.

Little kids love Jar Jar. I’m not sure what the medical explanation for this is, but I believe it has to do with the soft-spot on the top of the head not being hardened.

Ask him which of the 6 movies he wants to watch, and he’ll pick one of the first 3.

The awful dialogue between Anakin and Padme doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

The goofy stupidity of having battle droids that say things like “Roger Roger” and “Uh Oh” doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

The absolute absurdity of having General Grievous, who is 99.99% robot, who has a hacking smoker’s cough doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.

When Count Dooku and Yoda face off, and Dooku says “It is obvious we will not be able to settle this with the force, but with the lightsaber” he doesn’t ask “WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?!” because he’s 6.

When you have Chancellor Palpatine saying “No, no, no, no” like some bizarre scarecrow, he doesn’t care.

So if the majority of the movie is entertaining to a 6 year old and annoying to the rest of the population, either Lucas is amazingly stupid, or he wrote it for 6 year olds — like his grandchildren.

What Went Right

The good parts of the second-trilogy is quite simply the battle scenes. Lucas does them well. It’s why the Death Star invasion at the end of the 1977 movie was so good, why the Hoth battle and Luke-vs-Vader in Empire was so good, and why the best parts of ROTJ were the battle scenes.

In the second-trilogy, we get a multitude of light-saber battles, including Darth Maul, whose lightsaber battle with Qui Gon and Obi-Wan is by far the best part of The Phantom Menace, and why the Jedi battles are the best parts of the next two.

Which Brings Us To Today

We went to Clone Wars because of the aforementioned 6-year old, but I was hopeful. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that it was all-CGI. As many others have said, a lot of the second-trilogy was CGI anyway, so why not just go all-out?

What did we get?

Some good battle scenes.

But not enough.

Not nearly enough.

The 6-year old loved it.

I did not.

First of all, the story starts and you’re not given any help figuring out where this movie fits in. If you are expecting it to be after the last movie, you’d be wrong — as you would soon figure out. Eventually I figured out that it was between the 2nd and 3rd movies.

Which, by the way, makes this a… what? Prequel? Prequel to a prequel? I don’t think we even have a word for what this is.

My hope started to die off fast. The voiceover at the very beginning of the movie is so far over the top that it puts us squarely in the ridiculous. It isn’t quite as bad as the “SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! MONSTER TRUCK PULL” guy, but it’s close enough that the comparison came quickly to my mind.

There’s plenty of gawd-awful dialogue that makes you wonder if the writers have ever been in a discussion with normal human beings here on earth. Fortunately, we are not asked to endure any of the bile-chunk laden, vomit-inducing “romantic” language between Anakin and Padme.

But It Gets Worse

I had heard that there was a “new Hutt” in this movie who “speaks like Truman Capote” and I thought “Oh man, people are just getting way over-wrought about this before it is even released.” And then I kind of forgot about it.

Until it happened, and all I could think was “OH MY SWEET BUTTERY JESUS, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] KIDDING ME, RIGHT?”

Let me be absolutely clear: imagined someone playing Truman Capote. Now imagine that the director asked you to “Gay it up a little.” And you did. Now, imagine that he said “No, more. Really really gay it up.” And you did. Then imagine the director kidnapped your family and held them at gunpoint and threatened to scar and/or rape them with a cattle-prod unless you made it so amazingly over-the-top that people would actually lose brain cells as they tried to imagine if you had really CREATE SUCH AN OBSCENE CARICATURE.

Did I mention this character was a Hutt aka giant slug?

The only way this character could be any more ridiculous is if he was wearing a pink-tutu and delivered his dialog in stuccato bursts between thrusts as he was sodomized by The Village People as they sang “I Feel Pretty” in four-part harmony.

Oh, and guess what? He turns out to be a bad guy.

Um “spoiler alert.”

Sorry. Actually I’m not. There’s no way this movie could be spoiled. You could set this movie on fire and urinate on the ashes and not ruin it.

But since the cat is out of the bag, isn’t it nice that Lucas created over-the-top gay caricature “uncle” who turns out to be a bad guy?

Way to be creative there, Georgey boy. So, can we expect that someday you’ll go back and release a “Special Edition” of The Phantom Menace where Jar Jar is smokin’ weed and listening to Bob Marley while cleaning a rifle wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt? Because that would be less-offensive.

Please, let this movie fail

The only hope we have for this to be the last Star Wars movie is if it is a horrible box-office failure. (Or have an asteroid land on George Lucas.)

Please, do your part.

Do not see this movie.

If anyone asks you about this movie, tell them you heard it was horrible, painful to listen to and offensive. Even if you don’t care about the stereotyping (really?), you should care about good movie making.

Star Wars, which was once the pinnacle of science-fiction movie making, became a bad joke with the second trilogy, and is now a bad, unfunny joke — which is to say, tedious.

It needs to end now. It needs to be put into a nice retirement community where it can bask in the glow of What Used To Be, until some new director can come up with a vision of what a great action/science-fiction adventure can be for this generation.

Just keep Lucas the hell away from it, because the stench from the shit on his hands will ruin the whole thing.

Note: if you have not seen it, stop reading, because I’m going to give away a major plot point (aka “spoiler”).

After The Joker tells Batman the addresses where to go to save either Rachel or Dent, Batman told Gordon that he was going to save Rachel, but he shows up where Dent is.

How did that happen?

A) Batman thought he was going to get Rachel but was tricked by the Joker.

B) Batman knew he was going to get Dent was but told the Commissioner he was going to save Rachel (perhaps because he thought Gordon would go faster if Gordon thought he was going to save Dent?).

My brother thinks that when Batman told Gordon the addresses, he switched them from what the Joker said. I didn’t pick up on that.

He thinks that Batman went to save Dent because Gotham needed Dent, and he would never put himself before Gotham.

What say you?

UPDATE (2008-07-22): We saw it again today on the IMAX and I’m pretty sure now that Batman really believed that he was going to Rachel. Batman did NOT tell Dent the addresses, and after Batman said he was going for Rachel, Gordon gives his men the address they are going to. There’s not a lot of time for interpreting (i.e. “The Joker said X but meant Y.”)

Rent it.

If you have kids, fine, but they’re not necessary, adults will find plenty to laugh at.

Ethan loved it, we loved it.

Basically no scary parts, but this scene did lead Ethan to ask: “Why did they kill Winnie the Pooh?” (They didn’t, but it was a great scene.)

In a world with a writer’s strike poised to hit a big tipping point (Christmas season bound to bring new TVs but will there be anything to watch?) only ONE media company has the BALLS to step forward and say what every other company won’t even think:

WE HAVE TOO MANY CUSTOMERS.

That company?

BALLBUSTER

Oh wait, I mean,

BLOCKBUSTER

Sure they recently raised their rates from $18/month to $25/month, but that only got rid of MOST of their customers.

Some refused to go.

Something had to be done.

WHAMMO:

[Blockbuster] hiked the prices for its Total Access mail order rental plan. The biggest change comes to the highest-tiered Total Access Premium plan, one which allows customers to have three movies out at a time and get unlimited in-store exchanges. That plan is going from $24.99 to a whopping $34.99 per month.

Ballsy move? You bet.

But is it ballsy enough?

Not for Blockbuster:

In addition, the Total Access Premium plan is no longer listed as an option on the company’s Total Access signup page.

If that doesn’t work, they’re going to move and get an unlisted number.

“People keep wanting us to send them movies, and then they want us to send them more” said Carl Icahn. “We keep trying to explain to them that we just want them to send their money and then take whatever the [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] [expletive deleted] we give them in return.”

Icahn also outlined some changes customers can expect to see in the coming months.

“It’s simple,” he said in an interview late Thursday, “VHS. I don’t know why no one else has thought of this before. We’ve got millions of these bloody tapes sitting in a warehouse and no one is using them. So starting in Q108 we’ll be sending out VHS tapes instead of DVDs.”

(Ok, sure, technically I just started making stuff up at the end there, but the two blockquotes are 100% accurate.)

Best of the Star Wars Trilogy? Empire Strikes Back.

Best of the Matrix Trilogy? Matrix Reloaded.

Any counter examples?

I have vague recollections of thinking the best of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was also number 2, but frankly by the end of that mind-and-butt numbingly long series, who could remember where one ended and another began?

Note that I am excluding series such as Rocky or Jaws or Friday the 13th which went on and on and on, well beyond trilogy status. Obviously the Star Wars series is an exception, as it can either be thought of two trilogies, or as one trilogy plus one set of three abominations which never should have seen the light of day and which, if possible, I would have scrubbed from my memory. In either case, I’m clearly only referring to the original series. If you want to argue that there’s a “better” of three “worst” that’s obviously up to you.

However that reminds me that I haven’t considered the the Scream trilogy. I haven’t seen them recently so I can’t really say which is the best. I do seem to remember thinking that all 3 of them were pretty good, something fairly rare as far as trilogies go

The trailer was dated July 16th, 2001.

Before we go on, take a look (click for the Flash version or download the Quicktime version, which is larger and better quality. The Flash one is clear enough to get the point).

Also available in Quicktime Version (22mb) (Quicktime, better image, larger file).

I’m not sure if this scene was originally intended to be in the movie or was just a quick throw-away scene for the trailer, but it was kind of surreal to see (about 1:10 to 1:15 minutes in).

Frequent readers will realize what a big change this is, as I’ve been a huge proponent of their service.

I just can’t get beyond the fact that they want 40% more and are offering nothing in return. If they would even let me exchange movies for games, that would gave been something.

But something for nothing isn’t a deal I’m willing to make.

He faced a seemingly insurmountable task: satisfy the desires of hoards of geeks and nerds, many of whom had an over-developed sense of pride in the memory of a TV show which was made to sell toys.

Lest anyone think I’m pointing fingers at others, let me “out” myself. I had all, or almost all, of the Transformers toys, including the now-goofy “stick several Transformers together to make one giant Transformer.” My son is still playing with one of them. I watched the TV show.

I, too, was afraid that the Transformers movie would do to that memory what had been done to the Fantastic Four with the first movie (the second was OK), Daredevil, Elektra (what a waste of Jennifer Garner in her prime), and that gawd-awful, what-the-bleepity-bleep-happened-to-this-movie? called Hulk (by far the worst of the bunch. Absolute trash).

About 90 minutes into the Transformers movie, I typed out a message on my phone and handed it to Tracey to read:

This is the best (*!&#@ movie ever!

Except that I didn’t use the random punctuation.

Ok, now after a day to think it over, I realize that The Godfather was probably a better movie, and there are probably some others too — but, BUT! of the memories-of-my-youth-made-into-movies, Transformers ranks near the top of the list. (Spider-Man was good, but I’m still annoyed that Peter Parker had the ability to shoot webs from his — where, exactly? Wrists? — as opposed to the original, where he had to use his brains and make the web, and he had a finite amount of it.)

Transformers was amazing. See it on the big screen. See it more than once. Be amazed at how seamless the CGI melds with real life. Heck, see it to be amazed at how much 21-year-old Megan Fox really didn’t look like any girl you went to high school with, nor does she look like a high school aged girl, and yet you don’t really care.

But after you see it, you — all of you, especially the Michael Bay haters — need to suck it up and say it: That was an awesome action adventure movie, and Bay did a great job with it.

Apparently they just introduced the “Blockbuster By Mail” which offers a $1/month savings if you are willing to give up the in-store exchanges.

I am at a complete loss to figure out why they would offer such a plan. My guess is that they have gotten some kind of complaint from people who either a) don’t live near a Blockbuster store or b) don’t want to return movies to the store. Blockbuster is doing the right thing by offering them a deal, although $1 is probably not going to make any of them very happy. So why do it? My only guess would be the “Shut Up” factor, where they can shut people up who have complained about this by pointing to the fact that they offer a discount for people who don’t want to drop off movies at the store.

Why is the 4 DVDs at-a-time subscription so expensive?

As soon as I saw the $24 price tag for the 4-DVDs at-a-time plan 1 I thought it looked way too high. After all, the difference between 1 at-a-time and 2-at-a-time is only $5 ($10 vs $15), the price between 2 at-a-time and 3 at-a-time is only $3 ($15 vs $18). Why does the price between 3 at-a-time and 4 at-a-time jump $6 ($18 vs $24)? About the only good answer I can offer is because it’s the same price Netflix charges. Here is Netflix’s published list of subscription rates (only the unlimited plans shown here):

• 1 at-a-time = $10
• 2 at-a-time = $15
• 3 at-a-time = $18
• 4 at-a-time = $24
• 5 at-a-time = $30
• 6 at-a-time = $36
• 7 at-a-time = $42
• 8 at-a-time = $48

Again, once you pass 3 at-a-time, it will cost you $6 more per DVD.

Given the $5/$3 scale that we see going from 1 to 2 to 3 at-a-time, I’d expect that the price for 4 DVDs at at time would be no more than $21.

Plans like this follow a usual pattern: the higher up the scale that you go, the better the deal. $20/month for 4 DVDs at-a-time would actually be where I would like to see the 4 at-a-time price point.

Blockbuster could sweeten the $24/month plan in a way that Netflix can’t: add a second E-coupon for free in-store rental of a video game or DVD.

At these prices, Netflix and Blockbuster seem to be pushing customers towards the 3 at-a-time plan. I guess the question is: Why?

Why don’t they want to attract more customers to the 4 at-a-time level? Wouldn’t it be better to have more people at the $20/$21 monthly level than fewer at the $24 level?

I assume they have a reason, hopefully better than matching each other’s price structure. One wonders if there is some kind of supply/demand tipping-point if they had a large group of customers at the 4 at-a-time level.

So, $18/month = deal. $24/month? No deal.