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Thursday, May 21, 2009

Film / Nerd Wesa Wisha You A Bombad Ten Year Anna-Varsy

Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, May 21, 2009 at 11:09 AM

e106/1242926979-jar-jarbirthday.gif Drew McWeeny points out that Jar-Jar Binks has just turned ten years old. (That awful, awful Star Wars prequel is now one decade old!) He uses this dark anniversary to make a case that is, in his graduate-of-Ain't-It-Cool-News kind of way, very succinctly put:

...prequels are a narrative dead end. Period.

Please. Please. Please.

Stop giving geeks what they ask for.

"I want the Clone Wars!"

No. No, you don't.

You think you do. But you don't.

"I want the Terminator Future War!"

Again... no. You really, really don't.

It's Pavlovian. You're watching some good science-fiction movie you love and they mention "attack ships on fire off the belt of Orion" or some such thing... like "You're older than the Zarkon Battlefields," and you end up liking the movie a lot, so you end up watching the movie a lot because that's what geeks do. And by the 43rd time watching it, and half-watching it, and watching it with friends while talking, and wallpaper-watching it, you hear that line again... "You're older than the Zarkon Battlefields"... and you think in passing, "Man, I'd like to see the Zarkon Battlefields." And then it becomes a thing, an itch you feel like you need to scratch.

No. No, you don't.

I haven't been reading McWeeny's new website up until now, but I'm going to start paying attention. It's a really smart essay (again, especially for someone who used to post on Ain't It Cool News all the time) and you should read it all.

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Comments (12) RSS

Oldest First Unregistered On Registered On Add a comment

I won't defend Jar Jar, but I will say that Star Wars III is the best movie out of the two trilogies.

Posted by Betsy Ross on May 21, 2009 at 11:28 AM

Both versions of the Clone Wars are actually pretty well done--the version with the shorts is very Kurosawa, and the version on Cartoon Network is a great generation-bridger: plenty for an aging fan *and* his kids to enjoy. It's also girl-friendlier than most SW fare.

I agree with BR that ROTS is terrific; I'd rank it second-best of all six after ESB, myself, followed close by ANH.

I realize people think TPM is bad, but once you watch it with KIDS you realize who Lucas was targeting because they LOVE it, including Jar-Jar. They think the original movies are slow and dull, by contrast. It's eye-opening. I personally am over my Jar-Jar hatred.

Posted by Simac on May 21, 2009 at 11:36 AM

You know for all the people who think Star Wars is so much better than Star Trek; well the new Star Trek movie blew all those Star Wars prequels straight to hell.

Posted by Cato the Younger Younger on May 21, 2009 at 11:46 AM

Betsy Ross: you are terribly, terribly wrong.

To the list of examples in the original article, I can only add: "No, you didn't actually want to read about the Butlerian Jihad either."

Posted by Doctor Memory

on May 21, 2009 at 11:47 AM

@1 you're nuts! Everyone knows Empire is the best. You must be a crazy teenager.

I hate it that filmmakers need to ruin everything. They're going ahead with Ghostbusters 3. DID YOU PEOPLE SEE GHOSTBUSTERS 2?

Posted by Rotten666 on May 21, 2009 at 11:49 AM

@Cato the Younger Younger

Seeing is how the new Star Trek WAS just Star Wars in a shiny new wrapper, I fail to see how that can be true.

Posted by Akbar Fazil on May 21, 2009 at 11:51 AM

At the screening I went to, the audience booed at the end of Revenge of the Sith. 'Nuff said.

Posted by keshmeshi on May 21, 2009 at 12:14 PM

Go watch Up.

It's way more fun than Jar-Jar ever has been.

Trust me, it's great.

Posted by Will in Seattle

on May 21, 2009 at 12:54 PM

actual people post to Aint [sic] it Cool News? I thought it was some kind of randomized anagram scrambler that generated the "comments"

Posted by Just Askin on May 21, 2009 at 12:57 PM

@1: Um, they answered the question of the best Star Wars movie during the movie Clerks.

Duh.

Posted by Original Monique

on May 21, 2009 at 2:10 PM

ZOMG!
Revenge of the SIth was not only the worst SW movie, it's one of the worst movies ever anywhere. I'd rather watch Phantom Menace a dozen times before ROTS.
The dialog is horrible even for Lucas. Neither the plot nor characters make sense.
Just bad, bad, bad, bad.

Posted by Indy on May 21, 2009 at 3:53 PM

McWeeny was the whole reason I bothered reading anything over at AICN, so I followed him to Hitfix, where he is the only person I read. His LOST recaps are always good.

Posted by YogiWan on May 21, 2009 at 10:53 PM