Just like everybody else, let me show you the new Star Wars trailer.

I think… it may not be too bad.  I think that maybe… just maybe… they shot George Lucas with tranq rounds every time he looked like he was about to wander onto the set.  I think that it may not suck.

Please, God, don’t let it suck.

Moe Lane

PS: Pause it at :24.

The Mouse to release a *proper* Star Wars DVD?

If so, then everything is proceeding as I have foreseen.

But I’ve been burned before on this story, so we’ll have to wait if I’m foreseeing properly this time.  Gotta get it right some time, surely?  I mean, it’s not like they’re gonna wait until Lucas is dead before they sell us the thing that we all wish to buy.

George Lucas shut out of plot for Star Wars: Episode VII.

This first got mentioned in comments here and has since been reported via Twitter: George Lucas has nothing to do with the plot to Episode VII. “When [George Lucas] handed over his iconic franchise he also gave the studio his plotline for Star Wars: Episode 7… Disney, however, did not use any of the 70-year-old filmmakers ideas for the new installment.”

…Yeah, I know.  how can we possibly live with this disappointment?

The inevitable ‘Star Wars VII Trailer, George Lucas Special Edition version’ post.

You have our collective permission to keep George Lucas away from the editing room on this one, Disney. We might even forgive you if your security staff – well, no, you shouldn’t break people’s hands. But don’t let him ‘help’ any more than you possibly can, because it will inevitably end in this:

Inevitably.

Via Do-Gooder Press.

I imagine that this is how a unreformed junkie feels.

You look at it, and you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8MYUyYUJ78

You know how this ends: with you in a dark room, ready to go bang the gong again.  You can tell yourself stories.  But you know that you aren’t strong enough to hold out. Just once more, for old time’s sake.  What’s the harm?  I’m not that person anymore.  Only… you are.  And you’re about to go prove it to everyone.

It is… your destiny.

Via @BrianFaughnan.

Moe Lane

[PS: I should note, by the way, that it’s almost certainly not an official trailer. We know this because it hasn’t saturated, and I am using that term in as literally a sense as I can, the Internet.]

Let me solve the ‘original Star Wars is not available’ dispute.

I have absolutely, positively, I respect these people utterly, no problems with those who are reconstructing the original Star Wars movie frame by frame because George Lucas is a frustrated would-be auteur who can’t stand the fact that he will go down in movie history for creating the greatest space opera of his century.  But the man is a would-be auteur who got bought out by the Mouse.  For an insane amount of money – and if Disney didn’t lock down the redistribution rights to George Lucas’s cocktail napkin scribbles in the process, well, I can’t believe that Disney didn’t do that.

So, here’s how it can play out:.

  • Disney collectively realizes that enough people will pay cash money for the original Star Wars trilogy to justify a DVD set.
  • Disney collectively realizes that those same people will visibly not care if Disney breaks George Lucas’s hands if that’s what it takes to get access to the original footage.
  • Disney releases the dang movies.
  • George Lucas whines about it, and goes back to obsessively trying to edit his epic space operas into something that doesn’t burn his soul.

I think that this is reasonable.

Via… hrm. :clickety click click: Ah, Hot Air Headlines.

Your Glorious Fourth epic Imperial agitprop for the day.

I have been reminded of this classic piece from 2002, making the case for the Empire.

STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, “Attack of the Clones.” There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas’s series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

It’s a difficult leap to make–embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia–but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas’s off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.

Continue reading Your Glorious Fourth epic Imperial agitprop for the day.