My kids convinced me to pop in Return of the Jedi. They've only seen it once, and that was a long time ago.

So I watched parts of it with them. In the end, all I could do was end up being slightly peeved... I mean really, how did I ever allow myself to think that RotJ was acceptable/ on-par with Star Wars or the Empire Strikes Back Ewoks fighting storm-troopers (but they're soooo cudly)!. Jabba the Hutt being attracted to a naked Carrie Fischer (That's so assinine I can barely fathom it. I so abhor inter-species sexshual atraction in films ... seriously, I can SAFELY say I've NEVER been turned on looking at a slug... so why would a slug be turned on looking at a human).

Truthfully, there are too many things to piss and moan about in that movie... but now that I've said it I feel a bit better.

Imagine me standing in front of a large group of gen Xers and saying: "Hello, my name is Mike Campbell and for a long time I thought RotJ was okay."

You may have noticed that the title of this entry was something to the effect that Lucas was a dink, not just RotJ. Let me answer that implied discrepancy with The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones. 'nuff said.

What really bums me though, is that if he wasn't able to do it correctly with 6, 1, and 2... how'd he get 4 and 5 to work so well. It really bums me to think that the first two films he made may have been good on ACCIDENT And yeah, i KNOW, they're not brilliant pieces of film... but they're still damned awesome movies, and they worked VERY well. (I still remember sitting as a slack-jawed 5 year old in the theater watching the opening scenes of Episode IV (that and literally watching it 100+ times a few years later when it came to HBO/Cinnemax/Showtime)... but I digress. I mean really... how did he get everything (especially the force) to work so well in the first two movies

Joseph Campbell's influences must have been what caused the first movies to be so good And perhaps that's the problem: for Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back (this is all conjecture on my part) Lucas was the learner, the apprentice-- looking to a master to guide him. For Jedi, Menace, and Clones Lucas had become the 'master' and had surrounded himself (probably inadvertantly) with lackeys who tried to please him instead. (I still wonder what the HELL was going on during the story-boarding of Clones when Lucas said something like: "then R2-D2 will sprout wings and fly around the foundry after pushing 3P0 onto a conveyer belt...". WHERE was somebody bold enough to say: "Hey, um, think of the continuity issues here... if R2 had had boosters all along, do you really think he'd've been eaten by the swamp-thing on Degobah"... but no, instead an entire room of kiss-ups said: "Yeah, wow... great idea George... we'll get to work on that right away...").

And don't get me started on RUINING the force with midichlorians. Before I could happily suspend my disbelief ... the force was real/tangible/noble/powerful. Now it's just a bug that has been quantified, empiricized, and rationalized away. Come on... what cynic out there didn't immediately think... hmm, an organism eh What's to stop somebody like Darth PinHead from concocting a midichlorian cocktail/steroid-injection to make himself into a total bad-ass i.e. no need to build character, seek for what is noble, practice, become one with something greater than yourself (or take the quick route, and tap into the dark-side)... no, now you just need to have the right dna/bug-quotient.

So hey Lucas... why not make all the Clones clones of somebody with more midichlorians Or for that matter, if they've already been 'altered' why not fix'em up good with lots o' good midichlorians

It's the destruction of the force that bugs me most. And NO.. I NEVER entertained the notion (well, maybe as a pre-Ten-year-old) that Star Wars was Sci-Fi... I love Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back because they're space operas with DAMN cool special effects and a BELIEVABLE Sci-Fi-esque backdrop.

Anyhow, that about sums up my frustration, and my strange -- yet pointless -- need to expound upon it. Well, I think the other thing that STILL kinda bugs me is that I I still want a REAL Speeder-Bike too (damnit). (that and it makes me a bit Verklempt (in a bad way) to call Lucas a dink)