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| - by Elfpants |
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This is a statement of intent: I hereby surrender my official badge of geekiness. I abandon nerdhood, say farewell to being a feeb, and bid adieu to lifelong pursuit of a guest spot on Beat the Geeks.
I didn't go see Attack of the Clones. That's right. You heard me. I never had the slightest intention of going to see Attack of the Clones. I had no interest in it, I was not the least bit excited by it, and I find myself constantly fighting the urge to mock it. Come on. The bad guy's named "Dooku." The last time I felt threatened by Dooku, I was babysitting an infant who had a weak stomach and a fondness for Gerber's Strained Peas. And rule number one of escapist fare is that if the bad guy makes you snicker, the whole enterprise (pardon the pun) is screwed. Now, to be honest I've never been a huge Star Wars fan. I saw the original Star Wars in the theater when I was just a lad, but even amidst the whiz-bang-zoom amazement of it all, my fuzzy young mind was awhirl with questions about the film. Questions like:
You get the idea. There's lots of little questions like that. (Why didn't the commanders of the Rebel Alliance get their rebellious asses off the planet that was about to be blown to flinders? How exactly did those Stormtroopers walking around the Death Star's hangar with the doors open breathe? What exactly was Leia a Princess of, why was she in the Senate if she was a princess, and how did her hair manage to do that?) But it was still fun, still enjoyable and still a source of myths for us young, impressionable geeks-to-be. Luke may have been a whiny git, but Darth Vader was cool, said nicely threatening things, and disintegrated the annoying old guy in the bathrobe with a serious display of Jedi fu. Landspeeders were cool, the cantina was loaded with neat aliens (Hammerhead was my favorite, though since he seemed to have no mouth, I never quite understood what he was doing in a bar) and the Death Star blowed up real good. What more could you ask for? I even went out and bought Splinter of the Mind's Eye, the first authorized Star Wars novel, in which Luke and Leia go chasing after something called the Kaiburr Crystal before dropping Darth Vader down a well2. Then we got The Empire Strikes Back, which taught us a few new lessons, namely that Luke really is that whiny, there are in fact black people in outer space, and even in another galaxy, it's not wise to mess with the little wrinkled dude with bad grammar because he knows kung fu. The siege of Hoth was undeniably exciting, if moderately nonsensical -- in my next life I want to be an arms dealer in the Star Wars universe so I can introduce the Rebels to the concept of "land mines3" -- and the character development was genuinely interesting. And though Luke's oft-mocked "Nooooooo!" may be the single most-parodied line in the history of science fiction cinema, The Empire Strikes Back is a genuinely good film. It made, I am not ashamed to say, a fan of me, and thus at the tender age of 13 I hauled my father out of bed early so we could catch Return of the Jedi on its first day of release. And lo, there were Ewoks. Now, I've read somewhere that the Ewoks were originally supposed to be Wookies. I've also read that they were inspired by Lucas' time working on Apocalypse Now, and that they were intended to represent the local farmers overwhelmed by the Vietnam War4. I've also heard that they were created solely to sell more action figures. It doesn't matter. They're Ewoks. They're cute and fuzzy and cuddly, and they can throw rocks that knock out heavily armored Imperial stormtroopers. Never mind Luke in black pajamas duking it out with Dad, never mind the fact that the Emperor does a purple lightning Louganis down the central power shaft of the Death Star, never mind the speeder bike chase that made for one bitchin' video game -- they're Ewoks. And suddenly, I found myself hankering for the smell of scorched fur and roast biped meat. Not even the sight of Carrie Fisher, narcoticized to the gills and stumbling through the Wookie-infested "Life Day" celebration on the Star Wars Holiday Special5, could ever erase that deep-seated hatred of cute, fuzzy, gullible critters taking out the Empire's crack troops and then settling in to sing the Teletubbies' greatest hits. But the Emperor fell, the Death Star blew, and the good guys won. The trilogy was over, the prequels and sequels hidden in the mists of time, and only the continuity guy on Lucas' staff, courtesy of West End Games, knew what the hell was going on behind the scenes. Someone wrote some Lando Calrissian novels. Brian Daley wrote some Han Solo ones. So on and so forth it went, and then suddenly, from out of the blue, there came the news. The new trilogy -- the prequel -- was coming. I admit, the thought of it was exciting. The thought was simple: Now, George Lucas had CGI. He finally had the tools to finally tell the story of a galaxy in flames, of armies of millions of clones stomping off to war against noble, outgunned jedi knights, to show starfighter chases without obvious matte lines. Howard the Duck would be forgiven; Willow would be forgotten6, and Radioland Murders would be allowed to rest quietly in its grave of obscurity. And instead, weesa gotsa the Phantomsa Menacesa. Really, honestly, what more can you say? That left Episode II as, pardon the expression, a New Hope. It would be the one where Lucas would pull it all together, get his bearded head out of his woolly ass, and give us a movie worthy of the thrill that had been Star Wars. We nodded sagely over our keyboards, discussed it fervently online, and agreed: The Phantom Menace was such a clunker that Lucas had -- absolutely had -- to realize that he couldn't cruise any more. And that brings me to why I didn't go see Episode II. Oh, the title's a large part of it. Like the rest of you, I heard "Attack of the Clones" and cringed. I mean, clearly the Phantom Menace of Episode I was the script -- practically nonexistent, and yet it doomed the entire enterprise. But "Attack of the Clones?" We were promised an epic story of love, betrayal, interstellar warfare and Jedi fu, and what do we get for a title? "Attack of the Clones." For God's sake, it's a combination of "Attack of the Killer Tomatoes" and "Killer Klowns from Outer Space." How the hell is anyone supposed to get excited over that? And this was what we were supposed to hold our breath for. But then it got worse. The details leaked out. There was going to be, as noted, a bad guy named "Dooku." He'd be out there running around with Darth Sidious, whom I kept on expecting to get sidekicks named Darth Vincible, Darth Competent, and Darth Ept. But no, Lucas' knack for names seemed to have finally deserted him, and we got Dooku, and a minor jedi named Fisto. One can only presume that the latter spent his time hanging out with Artoo Dilldo and Lubis Vagisil on the planet Bendover. And then we got the trailers. Some of them looked fascinating. Some of them looked ominous. And some of them included young Anakin Skywalker, his hair moussed to N'Sync perfection, kvetching that gosh darn it, he ought to be all-powerful. Now, while this moment did clear up the question of where precisely Luke got his whiny bitch gene from - it came from Dad, obviously - it told me in no uncertain terms that I did not want to pay good money for the privilege of spending two hours in this weaselly mama's boy's company. Yeah, it's just one moment. Yeah, he swings a mean lightsaber. But the fact that Lucas' marketing boys thought this, of all the saber-toting, clone-blasting, Natalie-Portman-costume-ripping moments in the flick would pull my interest, sent me running for the metaphorical exits. Because if there are two things that George Lucas couldn't write to save his life and toy rights, they're dialogue and romance. And here we had both, tied up in one simpering pretty boy package. And not just any pretty boy, no. This tousle-headed midichlorian-toting dreamboat is nicknamed "Ani." As in "Little Orphan" (apt, since "there is no father" and Mom gets pointlessly bumped off during the film). As in "Leaping lizards, Obi-Wan, I think I’m going over to the Dark Side!" (Pardon me for a minute. Dooku. Dooku. I just had to say it a few more times. Beware, it is evil Dooku!) But even with all that -- even with the tooth-grindingly annoying knowledge that Jar Jar would still appear -- I was still seriously considering seeing it, until I ran into the fanatics. You know the fanatics. They're the ones who like the movie. They really like the movie. They like the movie so much, they want everyone else to like it too, and if you don't like it, then God help you. They will ask you. They will pester you. They will harangue you. And then, when you finally snap and say something like "Look, I'm not going because it's well known that midichlorians eat believable dialogue and crap out CGI," they get insulted. Deeply, personally insulted. Because it's not enough that they enjoy the movie. The fact that someone else, somewhere, didn't enjoy it somehow manages to gnaw at their own enjoyment of the film, rendering it less than perfect. And like religious fanatics since the dawn of time, they go forth to either forcibly convert or slaughter the heathens who say things like "Why did Lucas name that character after either a spice, a medieval weapon or a spray used to ward off muggers ineffectively?" Ultimately, for the fanatics, it's all about doubt. The fact that someone -- maybe even someone they like and respect -- didn't like the movie they adored so much makes them question their own judgment. And because they are so bloody terrified of the possibility that they might be a little bit wrong, they'll move heaven and earth to convince you that you MUST love the film. Why? Because when they're alone in the middle of the night, when the action figures have all been put in their places and the Boba Fett alarm clock has been set, there's a still, small voice that whispers to them that just maybe, the movie wasn't that good. You know what, kids? Every so often, the voice is right. Yoda's still a muppet, Anakin's a whiny git, and George Lucas is making it up as he goes along. And besides, who wants to see a movie that's liberally smeared with Dooku? |
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