Would you rescue a princess with THIS man?

Oh Han, where did you Kessel Run to?

What we do in life – echoes in eternity.
— Russell Crowe as Maximus, GLADIATOR

Just how did Han Solo come by his beloved Millennium Falcon? (He told us in Episode IV he won it gambling.) And how did he get his trusty blaster? (Uh, I guess he either bought it, stole it, or was gifted it.) And why – oh why?! – does he call Chewbacca “Chewie”? (I guess it’s a nickname – ?) That wasn’t so hard. You can go now— oh, but wait! – Why not watch a WHOLE MOVIE that explains all these totally mundane things?

YEEEAH!, said no one from this galaxy, or any galaxy far, far away…

Thus, SOLO: A STAR WARS STORY hits us square in the indifference nerve with the impact of a Wookiee knocking over a game of holo-chess. The irony is: if we take it as “A Star Wars Story” it comes off as hubristic, redundant and a little naff, but if we just dispense with our expectations, preconceptions and nerf-herding, and take it as an exciting heist movie in space, it’s pretty darn hubristic, redundant and a little naff…

Poffbacca and Han Poffo get the drop on you!

Join young Han Solo (Alden Ehrenreich) as he loses his girl, Queero (Emilia Clarke), joins the Empire with the intent to steal a ship and fly back to her, hooks up with master thief Beckett (Woody Harrelson) to rob a train, finds Queero working for the gangster who hired them to rob the train, Vos (Paul Bettany), allies with Chewbacca (Joonas Suotamo), beats Lando Calrissian (Donald Glover) and does the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs. Leaving you not as excited as you probably would have been if you were 10. And leaving Han Solo not as familiar as he used to be just 2 hours and 15 minutes ago…

For all you Movie Maniacs who find fault with every little aspect of, not just SOLO, but all the newer STAR WARS movies – pesky little things like plot and motivations and narrative flow – Congratulations! You’re growing up. If you keep in mind these movies are for kids, you won’t suffer so many aneurysms wondering how a giant squidworm can live near a black hole that no one goes near and still have a regular food supply…

We loved every STAR WARS movie as a kid because we never bothered with logic, inauthentic headmasks (cough—Mos Eisley!), or whether to go SJW before or after we masturbated to Princess Leia in that slave bikini.

In SOLO, the main things we Movie Maniacs are watching for are elements that might compromise Han’s character in EPISODE IV: A NEW HOPE (us Movie Maniacs remember when that movie was called simply “STAR WARS”). For example, when Han said to Luke, “…I’ve never seen anything to make me believe there’s one all-powerful Force controlling everything. There’s no mystical energy field that controls my destiny!” it means this movie has to avoid Jedi, or if there are Jedi and they do something mystical, Han should not be aware of them, nor should any of his actions or plans be affected by them. SOLO gets that right.

BUT THEN…

Han arcs from selfish to altruistic in the third act. But – but – isn’t he that lovable rogue whose only motivation is money? Ideally, by the end of SOLO, we should still see Han as we saw him in the first two acts of NEW HOPE, when Luke tells him he’ll receive more wealth than he can imagine, and he replies, “I dunno, I can imagine quite a bit.”

The train heist keeps that greed dynamic alive (featuring the criminal stylings of Thandie Newton, and Jon Favreau as the voice of a CGI ape-thingy; and I love the design of the mirrored monorail – one set of cars above the track, one set of cars below!), but then SOLO gives Han the same arc as in NEW HOPE, where Han goes from smuggler to helping resistance fighters (led by Erin Kellyman here). Thus, in NEW HOPE, when Han takes his reward and flees, it is now NO SURPRISE when he comes diving out of the sun to save Luke in the final Trench Run. For it is not the act of a man discovering his inner hero, nor the audience discovering that Han is heroic and not cowardly or selfish, but Han just doing something congruent with his altruistic character that he reveals here. (See how one movie made over 40 years after its source movie affects that source movie so adversely?! Another argument for maybe writing and producing something original once in awhile, Hollywood!)

Disney, Lucasfilm, Admiral Ackbar, whoever is to blame: that’s why people hate your film – because there are subliminal monkey wrenches like this scattered passim.

OR – Will Lucasfilm argue that in the planned sequels to this film [snigger – good luck with that!] Han gets butt-hurt so badly that he becomes hard and cold and merc? (That still doesn’t negate his intrinsic principles, which, once seen here, can never be un-seen.) It surely looks like they’re setting it up that way, with Han’s treacherous bimbo playing every side of the fence, eventually skyping with a guy wearing KISS makeup named Maul. (Fanboys ejaculate, “Oooh! Aaah!” and slap their thighs in recognition.)

But not only is Han’s character ruined/revealed, his emotional drive – his reason for striving – is completely negated about halfway through the film when he reunites with Queero in Vos’s den of thieves. Goal achieved. Now what? But then Han, whose goal was finding Queero, now seems completely unmoved by the fact that she is Vos’s bottom bitch. She confesses to Han that to retain her post, she “has done things.” (That’s Disneyspeak for Balthuvian gangbanging.) And then Vos blithely sends her on a heist with this strapping young fella whom she claims she knows from the past. Is Vos being the idiot sending his girlfriend, or is he playing her against Han?

And yet Han, besides trying to snog her in the cape closet, seems pretty ambivalent that Queero is onboard, not trying to be with her every moment and touch her breasts and kiss her thighs and try to re-ignite her desire for him, like any red-blooded rogue would. Ironic that in a plot about heisting a chemical so kinetic it will blow the knickers off a Balthuvian gangbanger, there is absolutely zero chemistry between the leading man and leading lady.

At least Han shoots first here.

a bacca’s backstory

The mighty Chewing Tobacco.

Chewie, on the other hand, is the unwitting beneficiary of a great character build in SOLO. If you liked him before, you’re gonna love the more energetic Joonas Suotamo in the role of “young” Chewbacca (he’s only 190 years old here), pummeling and blasting and rowwrrrring his way through Empire troops and gangsters alike…

In a mudpit where he is thrown to be dismembered, Han meets the towering fuzzball named Chewbacca, whose name was already a contraction for Chewing Tobacco, but which Han contracted even more into “Chewie,” disrespecting Chewing Tobacco’s wish that the contraction stop at Chewbacca. Chewing Tobacco has been imprisoned by the Empire and has been eating humans thrown to him as sport! So, uh… are we now meant to watch all the other STAR WARS movies while monkey-wrenching that Chewing Tobacco has been a people-eater all along?! Han only escapes Chewing Tobacco’s jaws because he implores him in Chewing Tobacco’s native Wookiee tongue. And people thought Superman saying “Martha” was stupid…

After that, Chewing Tobacco basically goes anywhere Han goes – rescuing miners, heisting hyperfuel, into the shower—wait, what? But really, who needs this crap on why Han nicknames Chewie? – I wanna know how Solo learned to speak Wookiee-ese!

a glover lover

Donald Glover is smooth criminal Lando Calrissian (channeling Billy Dee Williams like a pimp), who cheats at cards, wears capes, writes insurrect songs about America, and loves himself some robot tail. And he owns the fastest ship around – the Millennium Falcon. Han, Beckett and Lando inexplicably team up to steal the Falcon from impound, even though Han lost the card game– I dunno, I think the scriptwriters collided in the hallway and got their pages mixed up— and we meet Lando’s bottom bitch, a female droid named L3-37 (voiced by Phoebe Waller-Bridge with her SJW setting dialed up to Obnoxious C-Word).

“I’m too sexy for my double-necked heebee-jeebus.”

Always yapping about “equal rights” for robots (even though the meaning of the word “robot” is slave, and the reason for creating droids in the first place was to aid people unquestioningly), at one point, L3 removes the restraining bolts of a number of droids going about their droid-y tasks, which prompts the droids to cheer and rebel because they’re, uh, “free.” But what are they going to do with their “freedom”? They’re programmed to perform only the exact tasks that they’re doing now. They weren’t built with a plethora of options on what to do with their lives! Now was this an isolated incident or do all droids possess this desire to be “free” and have they been serving people begrudgingly since their invention? How then, can you trust that they are doing their ONE JOB correctly?

Think, filmmakers, think! What you do here, echoes into the SW Universe, from The Prequel Trilogy to The Original Trilogy, from The Clone Wars to the modern trilogy in progress, which I think is called The Whiner’s Trilogy.

L3’s fate is disturbing. She gets shot down while mouthing off (that’s the fun part), and Lando cannot bear to part with her, so instead of saving her CPU, or downloading her hard drive into another robot, he takes her program/her essence/ her computer vagina parts/ whatever, and implants them into the Millennium Falcon. Y’see, what the filmmakers are trying to do, Movie Maniacs, is give context to the line Future Han barks at R2-D2, something about connecting him “and letting him talk to the Falcon.” And that fembot’s essence is meant to be the “soul” of the Millennium Falcon. Heebee-Jeebus! That’s an even nuttier retcon than midi-chlorians. So the activist screaming for freedom and equal rights is force-fed into being trapped in the wiring of the Falcon. Irony, or just desserts? Ask a Social Justice Warrior. Be sure to wear ear plugs.

my kessel runneth over

Physics Nerds: They fixed the Kessel Run Anomaly. Kinda.

In A NEW HOPE, Han boasts, “It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs.” As wrong as that phrase is, it has embedded itself in Earth culture. It’s been debated and dissected and elevated to importance, but let’s face it, STAR WARS creator George Lucas, in his brazen ignorance of spacetime vernacular, put that line in as throwaway jargon in what was then his second ever film, because it sounded science-y. The film would probably be quickly forgotten, along with its cheesy dialect consisting of “parsecs” and “droids.” How was he to know STAR WARS would become such a cultural behemoth, with every detail pored over with a fine-tooth Wookiee-brush?

The Kessel Squidworm: Eating people in less than twelve parsecs…

A parsec is a measurement of DISTANCE, not time; short for PARallax arcSECond; approximately 19 trillion miles.

Thus you can see how irrelevant it is to boast of your ship’s speed by citing the distance it traveled, but not the time it took to travel that distance. It’s like boasting how fast you drove across America by saying, “I drove the United States in 3,000 miles.” The correct phrasing should have been something like, “It made the Kessel Run – which is 12 parsecs long – in under 15 hours,” or something to that effect. The velvety voice helps.

In SOLO, Han must deliver a shipment of radioactive material to a refinery, before it deteriorates to the point of explosion. Thus, it behooves him to find the quickest route. When a character says, “That can’t be done in under 20 parsecs,” they’re talking about Distance – taking the long way ‘round a black hole – but it still sounds vaguely like they are talking about Time, which is the writers’ fault. Or the writers’ intention. (That is, maybe they kept the dialogue ambiguous to try to retcon our memories; to say that Han ALWAYS meant distance, but we elven folk didn’t understand what he meant. If that is the case, I say – fuck off! We got ears!)

There IS a shortcut – through a wormhole with a GIANT SQUIDWORM living near it that devours ships – and that shortcut happens to be a distance of only 12 parsecs. Due to his ticking clock cargo, Han MUST attempt it. So why not clarify by saying, “In 20 parsecs the material would degrade and explode over that distance; either we find a shorter route – or we die”? Simple. Yet apparently too hard for these pudknockers to comprehend.

So now that the squidworm in the wormhole has been destroyed, it means EVERY ship can make the Kessel Run in under twelve parsecs, no? Making it more appropriate to state the Falcon was merely the FIRST ship to do so.

sending a boy to do a han’s work

The rogue Hannibal Solo.

Poor Alden Ehrenreich. In a role made famous by Harrison Ford in 1978’s STAR WARS, Ehrenreich is a flimsy simulacrum of the young Han Solo. Because we’ve already seen young Han Solo – AND HE LOOKED LIKE HARRISON FORD! There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with Boy Alden – he can act and take a punch and will probably set many teen girls’ hearts aflutter with those dreamy eyes (and when he fires his blaster, it’s like we’re looking at Harrison!), but he lacks that indefinable quality that Ford oozed like Corellian wine: charisma.

Ehrenreich doesn’t carry the movie LIKE A BOSS. He’s just one of the characters.

Also, how does one rebound from all that bad press?! Before the release of SOLO, frenzied reports of the filmmakers being dissatisfied with Ehrenreich’s performance and hiring acting coaches – acting coaches?! – for him. How do you even walk out the door let alone swagger and quip and make love to your leading woman?

Then there is the fan outcry that Anthony Ingruber wasn’t cast as Solo, on the strength of his striking Han impression, and the fact that he was already on filmmakers’ radar as a young Harrison Ford –having played a young Harrison Ford in AGE OF ADALINE (2015)!

Cinematography and production values are stellar, and we can see the detail in the world-creation during the landspeeder chase, with many shots being actually outdoors – a condition that most tentpole movies forget exists these days! Yet we can never begin to comprehend the production problems that would arise with the firing of the original directors (Phil Lord and Christopher Miller), and the hiring of veteran monolith Ron Howard to bring the production home under the watchful eye of Lucasfilm president/producer Kathleen Kennedy. With enough SJW shit to apparently keep her happy. Now, not only were writers Jonathan Kasdan (son of Lawrence) and Lawrence Kasdan (writer of EMPIRE and RAIDERS, father of Jonathan) colliding in the hallways and mixing up their pages, they were also colliding with Richie Cunningham pulling the disjointed threads together to try to make sense of their mixed up pages.

“What’s this Vermilion Dusk shit?”
“That’s the name of Vos’s outfit.”
“Really? Sounds like the name of a Fleetwood Mac cover band. Change it!”
“Okay, Sir Ron, how about Crimson Dawn?”
“Tons better! Sounds like a bunch of environmentalists from the 1980s. Kathleen’s gonna love it!”

For Wookiee lovers and nerf herders.

END

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to your every bondage and discipline need.

Mutation Elation.

They gave superheroes a new reason to be super.

X-MEN is the sometimes brooding, sometimes kick-ass, mostly campy filmic incarnation of a Marvel Comics series that added a new dimension to “super” heroes. It doesn’t quite outline the first generation of Professor Xavier’s “X-Men” but it comes close enough to raise the hairs on our bushy berserker sideburns.

In Bryan Singer‘s X-MEN, the internecine struggle between mutants of two differing ideologies reaches a zenith when Magneto (who hates humans) tries to turn the populace of New York into mutants via a big special effects machine, and the X-Men (who protect and pity humans) are there to stop him in their tight black leather.

Poffesor X

Unlike regular superheroes who were from off-planet (Krypton, Thanagar, Asgard) or whose powers came from outside forces (an intergalactic lantern, a radioactive spider, gamma rays), or who were just righteous bros in fancy panties (Batman, The Punisher, Iron Man), the Uncanny X-Men’s powers came from WITHIN; “cursed” with mutant genes, they each exhibited various powers that placed them beyond the pale of homo sapiens. Creators Stan Lee and Jack Kirby (1963) had hit upon an umbrella reason behind “super powers” that could be applied to any powers at all – no more need for contrived “origin tales”! He can grow more arms if they’re lopped off — uh, how? He’s a MUTANT – that is all ye know and all ye need to know. And this rationalization became so popular that it embedded itself in comicdom’s consciousness. It needs no explanation in mainstream media. My bushy sideburns leap for joy.

Within this new rubric, an irony – being mutants, these heroes were reviled by “normal” humans, even as they protected those humans from threats, the main threats coming from other mutants. An undercurrent of bigotry infuses every X-Men episode, inadvertently mirroring societal ignorance.

And director/co-writer Bryan Singer has reverently brought all these facets to life in X-MEN. It helps to have an almost perfect cast.

Sir Patrick Stewart, eternal Shakespearean, born leader, calm as stones, is telepathic Professor Xavier (aka Professor X); his brains are his brawn; from his school for mutants, some rise to become X-Men, defenders of justice, humanity, and low gas prices for the JP-7 fuel in their guzzling X-Jet. From his snazzy wheelchair, he Makes It So.

 

Famke Janssen, square-jawed Euro supermodel, is Jean Grey (aka Marvel Girl in the original 1960’s comics); another telepath, in this movie still honing her abilities, which include hotness in tight spandex and not being able to wipe Toad’s jism off her face.

Halle Berry, salubrious milk chocolate, is weathergirl Storm; sunny with a chance of bad dialogue.

James Marsden, Teen Model mannequin, is laser-eyed Cyclops; in the comics, the tactician leader of the X-team, here, a vanilla love interest for Jean, and occasional eye-juice ejaculator. Oh, he does get to give some orders, but only after Wolverine says it’s okay.

Shawn Ashmore is Bobby Drake (aka Iceman, here an Ice BOY), trying to woo his chick Rogue without actually touching her. As if mutated virgins don’t have it hard enough…

Young Anna Paquin is baby-faced Rogue (what the–?! I know, I know, fanboys: Rogue doesn’t officially enter X-Man canon until 20 years after their inception, but here she is the brunt of the plot). Her mutant power sucks… the life force out of others. She cannot touch anyone without incapacitating them as their powers flow into her. Which gives the term “unsafe sex” actual meaning for the first time in its revenue-coined history. Rogue is immediately drawn to Wolverine’s musk, and uses her life-leaching-touch thingy as an excuse not to tongue Bobby Drake.

“Not so fast, Bub. You didn’t read the “claws” about pissing me off!”

And then there is Wolverine. Australian beefcake Hugh Jackman is the mysterious Logan (sporting “Wolverine” dog tags) with adamantium skeleton and triple-claw swagger. The X-MEN movie is about Wolverine. Really. No matter the movie title and the fact that this jampacked movie brings so many comicbook heroes to life, a conscious dramatic decision was made to make this feral scrapper with the shrouded Special Forces history the focus of this X-MEN movie.

Consider: Wolverine/Logan is given all the nuances of character that only lead roles boast, while all the other heroes are merely shallow tropes. It is his throughline that is resolved (trying to discover his past); it is his power struggle with the purported “leader” Cyclops (for primacy and the girl); it is his heroic action that saves the day; he is the only character with a redemption arc. It is Wolverine whose eyes we are seeing through as he wakes in a strange environment (the X mansion), it is he who speaks for the skeptic in all of us when Xavier introduces the X-Men with their code names “Storm” and “Cyclops” (Logan: “What do they call you? Wheels”?); he and Magneto are the only characters with “introduction scenes”; and let’s face it – though surrounded by models, he’s the best lookin’ mutant for miles.

We meet Wolverine doin’ what he does best: scrappin.’ We don’t so much meet him as drink him in: shirtless, boozing, chomping a cigar as he takes down a contender in a filthy pub cage match. And the most amazing part: his hair! How did they smoosh it into that pointy-v we know and love from his brutal graphic novel adventures? When he snikt’s his adamantium claws out, it is in the best gunslinger tradition, holding off two men on either side of him. Then he saunters out of the bar with his v-shaped mullet all sassy. Except for his over-6-foot frame, Hugh Jackman is EXACTLY how we envision Wolverine. Not since Christopher Reeve as SUPERMAN has there been casting so awe-inspiring, so pitch perfect, so like-a-glove. An adamantium-clawed glove.

Film actually goes against canon in making Logan so touching. When Rogue is trying to run away, he consoles her: “Give these geeks one more shot. The Professor understands people like us.” Which only makes her untouchables ache for him even more.

There is no Angel and no Beast (two of the original X-Men), but there is — Magneto.

 

Sir Ian McKellen, also Shakespearean giant, also Japanese garden calm, is iron monger Magneto/Erik Lensherr. Now we know the comicbook Magneto is a muscly maroon mantoy, but even the visual miscasting of doddering Sir Ian cannot impede him taking the metal-bending role to the delicious limits of Dr. Zachary Smith and making it his very own, at one point tut-tutting Wolverine, lamenting, “Oh, dear boy…”

Loquacious, regal, crafty, the only mutant to use his abilities to their fullest tactical extent, Magneto is the morally ambiguous “bad guy” who mistrusts humans, especially Senator Kelly (Bruce Davison) who wages congressional war on mutants. Magneto’s plan is not so much evil as vengeful: to mutate every human in New York to make them realize there is nothing to fear from mutation. Through him, we feel the analogies to Nazi Germany and modern-day Amerikan Republicans: “Women and children, whole families destroyed simply because they were born different from those in power.”

Magneto may be old, but he’s an Old Dog; what can we make of his right-hand man being a right-hand svelte blue nude chick? Rebecca Romijn-Stamos, wet dream, working blue, is shapeshifter Mystique. What better use for your right hand?

Rounding out the evil cabal are the appropriately named Tyler Mane as liony Sabretooth and Seth Green look-alike Ray Park as the tongue-twisting Toad (he was Darth Maul in PHANTOM MENACE)

The opening scenes of X-MEN are powerful, almost sinister, deadly serious and set a tone for the movie that the movie itself cannot match. A YouTube comment says it all: “If the whole movie was like this, the movie would have been epic.”

In these opening scenes, we see a young Erik Lensherr in a concentration camp discovering his latent powers over metal. And we meet shirtless Wolverine like Eastwood with claws. Then it gets progressively campy. Magneto turns Senator Kelly into a water puddle (an aqua-man, if you will – or if DC Comics will let us); the X-Men mill aimlessly through Act Two, where we discover most of them can’t act too. There is a magnificent display of Dr. Smith’s telekinetic powers over police cars and bullets, and the final ill-contrived climactic scenes illustrate how limited the writers’ imaginations are, as all these beings with various super powers stand around and get their butts kicked.

The final “showdown” is laughable, as the X-Men debate how to get fifty feet up the Statue of Liberty’s arm to rescue Rogue: “Storm, can you fly me up there?” “I don’t have that kind of control!” “Don’t take the shot – you might hit her!” “Jean, can you steady him?!” “Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” Eventually Cyclops takes charge and gives orders on how to do it. And Wolverine agrees, so they do.

END

Hairstyles from the 70s, 80s and 90s all in one movie!

A Legend Unravels…

Twenty years ago, I liked Michael Jackson. Everyone did. Twenty years ago, I liked STAR WARS. Everyone did.

Poff Maul

Look what happened to Michael Jackson. Look what happened to STAR WARS.

Both these entities were done in NOT by lack of funding, backstabbing competitors or unbalanced advisors. Ironically, they brought their downfalls on themselves through a surfeit of funding which removed them from any competition and tipped them into insular universes within their own strangely shaped heads.

All that said, STAR WARS: EPISODE I – THE PHANTOM MENACE is simply amazing. It is absolutely astounding how much nothing this much money can buy.

Now remember, PHANTOM MENACE was birthed into the world long after the STAR WARS canon entered world vernacular, like red corpuscles in the Earth’s bloodstream. So it is all the more painful to see the cancer of The Prequels eating our childhood dreams away.

George Lucas (Mr. Insular himself) writes and directs and ruins as he goes. If he had just surrendered his chokehold on his writer’s pen and precious director’s chair, we wouldn’t have this facsimile of a movie sullying the legend that he himself brought to life 20 years ago.

an even longer time ago…

Qui-Gon Jinn Movie opens with two Jedi Knights, young “padawan” Obi-Wan Kenobi (Ewan McGregor) and his “Master” Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson, with a THUNDERDOME mullet), on a diplomatic mission to resolve a Trade Federation dispute. Immediately, we are lost: not only because George Lucas thrives on cloaking the simplicity of his stories with obfuscating politics, but because no one will admit that the Jedi translation of “padawan” is “bitchboy.”

Obiwan Kenobi Qui and Obi immediately get into trouble, like a couple of intergalactic Gilligans; lightsabers sizzle, robots frizzle, and the two flat-faced aliens who sent the robots realize they are neck-deep in shizzle. This opening sequence is actually the best part of the movie, as we get to see real Jedi in action – their prowess spoken of in three films and only marginally displayed by neophyte Luke, smug Darth and doddering Alec Guinness.

Jar Jar Binks Master and Bitchboy then flee the T-Fed conference after blowing things up and land on a planet where they meet Jar Jar Binks (voiced/mo-capped by Ahmed Best). Proof positive that George Lucas hates his fans.

Queen Amidala Meanwhile, Natalie Portman is learning her lines to play Queen Amidala, reciting them without a shred of emotion, and Lucas is filming all her rehearsal takes in funny wigs. (At least, I hope those are rehearsal takes.)

Mace Windu I don’t know what Jules Winnfield is doing here…

Anakin Skywalker Qui, Obi and Jar crash-land on Tattooine (something to do with the hyperdrive that no one ever fixes properly) and meet an irritating slave boy called Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and his virgin mother (Pernilla August). And here, ladies and gentlemen, is George’s greatest casting mistake ever, even worse than non-actor Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, even worse than non-actor Hayden Christensen as teen Darth, even worse than that non-actor Empire extra with the phony looped dialogue, “Holding her is dangerous. Word of this gets out, it could generate sympathy for the rebellion in the senate” – here is the future Darth Vader, a puling, smartmouth, blond American non-actor kid who looks like a refugee from a ’70’s sitcom, playing the icon that haunted our nightmares as we slept on our Star Wars bedsheets.

Is anyone buying this?

Invoking the Jesus myth, Anakin’s mother simply blurts to Qui one day that she “just got pregnant” with Anakin – you’d think she’d save the high maintenance girlfriend talk until after dinner and drinks, but I guess she really had the hots for Qui and his Steven Seagal ponytail and wanted to come clean with him about her divine stretchmarks.

By now, Liam Neeson is not even phoning it in – he’s faxing it, his eyes so glazed over with boredom he never once focuses on all the imaginary CGI shit around him, his inflection never rising above audition level.

Qui-Gon discovers the irritating kid is blessed with a lot of little animals living in his blood, called midi-chlorians. Rather than produce whiter whites – which is what they sound like they do – these midi-chlorians contribute to that mystical power that runs the galaxy – The Force. *I* didn’t say it. George Lucas did. George tells us that the more midi-chlorians in your bloodstream, the stronger The Force is in you. So in EPISODE V, when Yoda speaks to Luke about The Force imbuing the rocks, he was talking about the rocks’ bloodstream? And when Ben Kenobi and Yoda speak of The Force binding the Universe together, they mean billions of these little animals floating around in space? I get it now, George. Really, I do.

We could only watch in helpless horror as George Lucas takes apart his toy and tries to put it back together again, like a retarded Rain Man.

If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?
— Anton Chigurh, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN.

At a Jedi Council, which looks more like an AA meeting for fanboys in funny masks, Qui-Gon tries to sell the midi-chlorians story about young Anakin – but no one’s buying it. They’re on a higher plane of universal consciousness – Prophesy. And we see that it really worked out well: with all their vaunted prophesies and foresight on Anakin being their “Chosen One” who would “bring balance to The Force” – he becomes DARTH VADER!

Oh, and I’m the asshole for being sarcastic?

Darth Maul Padding ensues with a pointless “pod-race,” and the Jedi win the slave boy’s freedom. Before they can leave the planet with him, they are attacked by Gene Simmons – my mistake, it wasn’t Gene, just someone from the KISS Army, Darth Maul (Ray Park). Pissed about something – maybe that KISS did that reunion tour without him. Is this guy’s red-and-black makeup meant to be his skin pigmentation? Only the Geek Squad knows for sure. We might feel sorry for Darth Vader having to intercourse his hyperbaric chamber every morning for his daily dose of breath mask – but think about this guy: every morning, waking at 3 a.m. just to “get his face on” for his badboy jeepster image. Do his co-workers snigger behind his back when he walks down the halls of Darth Center?

Chancellor Valorum Terence Stamp is Supreme Chancellor Valorum and by the looks of his fabulous robes, he’s either an intergalactic senator or a drag queen. Constant puss on his face because —

Senator Palpatine Senator Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) is allowed to act feyer than him and is plotting to take over the confused political idiotocracy that they rule over from their hovering frisbees. Political intrigue ensues, our eyes glazing over like Qui-Gon’s in front of a green screen. The Darth boy annoys the crap out of us. R2-D2 goes Action Trashcan Hero. C-3PO is naked. Samuel L. Jackson (as Jedi Mace Windu) tries to sound Shakespearean and still sounds like Jules from PULP FICTION – seems you can take the pimpmaster out of the PULP, but you can’t take the… And Yoda floats around on a hover-chair like some hedonistic Bob Dylan, quoting platitudes until we vomit like abandoned children.

Yoda Y’know, Yoda is a prick. When we met him a long time ago in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, he tells us the Way of The Jedi is asceticism, simplicity, balance… So why does he live in a giant palace floating around on a hover-chair in EPISODE I? His very tenets – the tenets of his cackling religious order – are recanted in this movie. I see all the other Jedi walking, Master Yoda – even if you are saving time with the hover-disco, wouldn’t it be more in keeping with your Holy Order for one of your Bitchboys to backpack you? Seems walking or backpacking are too good for Master Yoda – until the Empire burns his frilly palace down. Let’s face it, you little green hypocrite – you were only living in a cave in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK cos you were on the lam from the Empire which YOU tell us is “evil.” Suuure, I’d consider the people who burned down my palace as evil – but that’s only half the story. Did they burn it down in the first place because you were tyrannizing the secular folk who would not bow to your precious Midi-Chlorian Religious Rule? Hmmm…

“hokey religions and ancient weapons…”

Darth KISS versus Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan! While John Williams‘s cosmo choral music ratchets the tension, Darth Maul, who studied with Jedi Master Little John of the Sherwood Forest Star System, brings it with a double-sided lightsaber quarterstaff.

It is here that Qui-Gon must die. Not because Darth Maul’s midi-chlorian count was higher (which is obvious if he bested Qui-Gon), not because it served the plot, but because Liam Neeson’s fax machine ran out of paper. Neeson showing his utter contempt for this project by not allowing Lucas to use his spirit form in any further prequels/sequels. Kenobi and Yoda appear to Luke every time he stubs his toe, to offer sage advice on how to rub the lotion on its skin or it gets the hose again, yet when Kenobi was a young man in need of spiritual guidance, Qui-Gon, a supposedly powerful Jedi Master, can’t bother to scare up the ectoplasm.

But why do Qui and Obi insist on battling Maul – an obviously superior dueler – with lightsabers when they could have just as easily used a blaster on him? The Jedi ethos seems to purvey that – as in HIGHLANDER – a Jedi should not and cannot be killed unless he is swashbuckled to death by a beam of light. Or do they insist on using this obsolete lightsaber technology due to a misplaced honor code?

Han Solo says in EPISODE IV, “Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster any day.” Proven time and again throughout the series: Obi-Wan himself uses a blaster against General Grievous in REVENGE OF THE SITH (and then complains, “How uncivilized!” – that “uncivilized” blaster could have saved us ten minutes of padding with the lizard-riding and redundant quadruple-lightsaber swooshing); also in SITH, Jedi across the galaxy are brought down not by lightsabers, but by blasters. Easily. Midi-chlorians on vacation that day?

If there’s that much “honor” among Jedi, why do so many of them turn to the Dark Side? And upon turning to the Dark Side, why then bother using the “honorable, civilized” lightsaber? You’ve already turned to the genocidal, dishonorable Dark Side – d’ya think killing kids with a lightsaber is more “honorable” than with a blaster?

non-aiming robots

Meanwhile, down on the planet of wimbleys or something, a completely illogical land battle is taking place between Jar Jar Binks’s Gungan race of agrarian ostrich-riders and Imperial robots who can’t aim. Illogical because the Empire’s firepower can obliterate the Gungans and they insist on taking the battle down to Gungan level by employing ineffectual ground troops – those absolutely useless, waste-of-evil-taxpayer-dollars “battle” droids. (Like these futile drogues who never hit anything even know what “battle” is.)

These things are robots – shouldn’t they have AIMING MECHANISMS? For economic purposes, shouldn’t their guns be built into their arms, with re-loadable magazines slotted into their bodies? At least those rolling droids have built-in guns – but what’s the point if the guns are programmed for “Fire Arbitrarily in General Direction of Enemy and Hope for the Best”? (And no, I don’t know what those rolling droids are called, but I’m sure you can find out on the Star Wars Information Line at 1-800-NO-GIRLFRIENDS.)

After we realize the movie has degenerated to every single pixel onscreen being a special effect, we take a nap. When we wake up, everything has worked out fine in the end, just like a big fat family sitcom in space. With no one ever figuring out just who or what the “phantom menace” actually is.

No two synopses for PHANTOM MENACE can agree on what PHANTOM MENACE is really about, except that it introduces to cinema the most annoying kid in the world and claims he’s Darth Vader. What can really be learned from these Prequels, except that there was a lot more sky traffic – and the Empire seemed to have cleared up that problem by EPISODE IV.

Big Government. Who needs it? We do. If they can clean up sky-traffic like that, go right ahead and keep phantom menacing me, midi-chlorians, maxi-chlorians, ultra-chlorians, I don’t care – as long as I can get across town for a Hefeweisen with a buddy without busting a blood vessel stuck in the belly of a steel snake and giving the finger to ten jerks who drive as if they owned the skies like the Trade Federation…

And like Big Government, PHANTOM MENACE talks too much, dazzles with special effects, overdoses on misdirection – and says nothing.

END