Byzantium's Shores: chronicling the misadventures of an overalls-clad hippie

I think I got all of my political outrage and anger out of my system for a short while last week, so I'm ready for more fun, non-angry posting. The sun is out after a rainy weekend, I'm showered and caffeinated, President Bush is on vacation -- all signs point to a lower blood pressure this week. So I think I'll just hop over to AICN and see what's up....

AAAGGGGHHHHHH!!!!

Yup, they've gone and put up new installments of their "Jedi Council" series of round-table discussions (or, in another accurate term, "circle jerks"), here and here. Oh, lordy....

(My original responses to this stuff are here and here.)

I won't recreate my earlier blatherings, because all of my points still stand. I do, however, note a couple of "bullet points":

:: At one point, someone complains that having Wookiees in Episode III is going to suck because it will be like the army of Ewoks in Return of the Jedi. Interesting, given that a pretty common fan complaint for years has been that Lucas went with Ewoks instead of Wookiees in the first place in the earlier film. Sure, whatever. (Lucas was originally going to have Wookiees as his non-technological race that ended up taking down the Empire, but then he changed his mind when he realized that by postulating Chewbacca's technological abilities in the first two films, he had already ruled out the Wookiees as a pastoral race. It wasn't a scheme to sell plush toys.)

Oh, and Moriarty says that Chewie's entrance in A New Hope is "the greatest entrance". Huh-whuh? He's in the background of virtually every shot in the cantina in which he appears!

:: One smart soul makes the point that it's entirely appropriate for Anakin to talk like an idiot teenager, accounting for all the ridiculous lines he has. (Once more, I remind everyone that all of the ridiculous lines in Attack of the Clones come from Anakin's mouth, which suggests design to me.) This point is totally ignored by Moriarty's couch-buddies who want to slag the movie.

(Incidentally, in his comment on AOTC in this year's The Year's Best Science Fiction, Gardner Dozois complains that Anakin spends most of the movie acting like a spoiled teenager. That's because he is a spoiled teenager. O for a point, that I might miss it completely...!)

:: Does every gathering of annoyed Star Wars fans have to lead off with a complaint about Greedo shooting first? I don't like it either, but my God, get over it. I hope that future AICN Jedi Councils stipulate that the first person to complain about this has to pay for the pizza.

:: One of Moriarty's couch-buddies complains about the Jedi in AOTC, saying, "These are some of the worst Jedi I've ever seen!" Welllllll....I'm not sure how many Jedi this guy has seen, because by my count, prior to AOTC, I've only seen three in action (Qui Gon, Obi Wan, Luke Skywalker). Four, if you count Darth Vader. (I don't count any of the ones in The Phantom Menace, because they're councillors and do not act. Likewise with Yoda.) So, exactly where this guy got his "Jedi-judging" street-cred is beyond me.

And besides, here's another "That's a feature, not a bug" moments" that seem to be completely missed by Lucas's detractors. I mean, no less an analytic mind than Steven Den Beste missed this one, so they're in good company, but the thing is: These aren't the best Jedi ever. Not even close. That's the entire point: the Jedi Order has become a shadow of its former glory, which is in large part what allows Palpatine to succeed. So they're supposed to look beatable. Duh.

:: Oh, goody! We're back to the "Let's blame George Lucas for every movie his name's ever been on that we don't like" game. George Lucas is to blame for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (which I've actually come to like a lot, more than Last Crusade, over the years), which is quite a feat given that he neither wrote the screenplay nor directed the film. (He has the film's "Story" credit, and the difference between a story and a screenplay is the difference, to crib from Mark Twain, between a lightning bug and lightning.)

:: "A friend of mine who knows what he's talking about" says that Lucas is scrawling dialogue on a notepad minutes before the scenes themselves are actually shot. Sure....

:: The movies are sanitized in their violence, we are told. Interesting, given that The Phantom Menace gave us an actual spray of blood when Darth Maul gets bissected and AOTC shows a beheading (sans the actual head, but there is a shadow and the headless body slumping to the ground). But more to the point, who gives a shit? Really, who cares if the violence is incredibly lifelike or not? At the end of Casablanca, I don't need to see blood oozing from a bullet-hole in Major Strasser's body. In all those Errol Flynn swashbucklers, I don't need to see Basil Rathbone or anyone else spitting up blood and bile when they get run through. My God, folks.

(Now, I do think that Anakin looked a bit too hale-and-hearty when he awoke from his lightsaber-amputation. That one, I'll grant. But the others? Nah.)

:: And finally, here we have the point where my last bit of respect for Moriarty may have just vanished into the luminiferous aether, when he says this of Episode III: "A lot of this is just going to be a third act of Scooby-Doo where it’s pulling masks off."

Ach, I canna take it nae longer. I need a dram o' Scotch....