The Consummate Tweaker

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I’m not even mad at George Lucas any more. He’s successfully divorced me from all personal ownership or warm feelings I had towards Star Wars and turned the franchise into this weird, abstract pop-culture punchline. No other film or series of films have managed to remain in a constant state of flux like Star Wars has. Lucas should just append the word “beta” at the end of each title. Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back v. 4.38 beta. Fuck, maybe we’re still in the alpha releases and our grandkids will be the first to run a stable Star Wars build. Either way, I’ve quit my job as a beta tester. I’m bored with having my fandom experimented on.

I hope, just for giggles, Lucas replaces Yoda’s voice with the sound of air escaping a ballon, and replaces every instance of Kiera Knightley/Amidala with Natalie Portman/Amidala and vice versa. You know, just to do it. Maybe by the time the whole series is released on holographic suppository, he’ll have done the fans a favor and digitally added a thousand sand-piranha that are constantly eating Jar Jar’s flesh in every scene.

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39 Comments

  1. I find it funny that this comic takes place to coincide with the imminent release of the "Star Wars: The XXX Parody." I can only hope there is no glue in that film.

      • I'm fairly certain that was a reference to a bit Patton Oswalt does about going back in time and murdering George Lucas with a shovel.

      • Htiler, fuck that guy. Remember those really great movies which were subsequently followed up by mediocre movies? Yeah, let's kill HIM.

        • Afdol Htiler, the man who saved a billion Jews in the 40's? What did he ever do to you?

          Now Adolf Hitler on the other hand?

          We'll take care of him on the way back to off George Lucas circa 1992, (Otherwise known as the worst person in the whole wide world.)

  2. Twenty years from now, our kids are going to put our grandkids down in front of their giant holo-televisions and say, "Here are some great movies that my parents loved." And they will proceed to show them Star Wars in full order starting at 1, and ending at 6. The kids will enjoy it, and they won't feel any bitter resentment over who shot first.

    In the long run, is griping about CGI Yoda really worth it?

      • Yes, it matters. New Star Wars watchers deserve to see the original, un-watered down films. It matters who shot first, because it gives a whole different characterization to Han Solo. Han Solo was a morally ambiguous character, and new Star Wars viewers deserve to see it that way, not the ret-conned PC Han Solo that didn't shoot first. Kids deserve something better than the mindless PC pap everyone is serving up nowadays. Does it matter if special effects are updated? Probably not. Better special effects can make a thing more watchable/enjoyable to people who won't watch something with dated special effects. But re-editing in a way that changes something like characterization, plot, overall feel, or something major like that is a mistake. Lucas should have stood by his creation, instead of constantly trying to make "improvements" of dubious value.

        • There's no evidence that Lucas changed Solo because of Political Correctness or outside influences. Han isn't better or worse, just different; and in the end Greedo is still dead.

          That's a thought. Maybe Lucas really went into it saying, "I want to make Greedo an even bigger dick!"

      • They'll replace them with glo-sticks, a la the Wachowski (sp?) brothers from the Matrix.
        And a rave for Jar-Jar and all his Senate friends.

    • No, no, no. The correct viewing order is 4,5,6,1,2,3. If the kids start watching at episode 1, they will not enjoy it as much for 2 reasons: (1) they won't be surprised by Vader's "No, *I* am your father" revelation; and (2) they will know about Jar-Jar from the very beginning.

      • If they follow that order, then the spoiler of Palpatine as the emperor is revealed.

        Does a whole series really need to satisfy one big reveal?

  3. BTW, great comic, Joel. I had trouble breathing for a bit after reading the comic. I'm afraid to look at it again, lest I pass out.

  4. Oy, why always with the fiddling? Why? WHY?!

    Also, favorite wordplay bit of this comic: "F'd-Wing." No, wait, changed my mind: "Millennium Phallus." Dammit, the whole thing is just brilliant. Keep up the good work, Mr. Joel.

  5. With how much people bitched about the weird, off-model puppet from the original release, I find this current round of nerdrage hilarious. Are we really that attached to a Yoda who looks like Roscoe Lee Browne?

  6. "Star Wars beta" shall be an integral piece of my lexicon from henceforth. I thank you for that, Joel. And for all the giggles, too.

    Replacing Muppet Yoda with CG Yoda might be the first "improvement" Lucas has made that I can't really argue with. (And dammit, I love Muppets.) It's amazing that computer graphics have come so far in little more than a decade that CGI can look more "realistic" than a genuine flesh and foam puppet, at least in this instance. Of course, it also helps that I don't give wamprat's ass about him tinkering with the prequels.

    Also, Josh and Eli are about to get yelled at by that cranky old lady who organizes the toy shelves at Walmart.

  7. Oh, also also, when you bang two plastic telescoping toy lightsabers together the sound they make is POK, not PLAK. (Not that I've, erm, ever done such a thing.)

  8. "People who alter or destroy works of art and our cultural heritage for profit or as an exercise of power are barbarians." – george lucas

  9. There's no one there to keep George Lucas's ego in check. His insanity really started after he divorced his wife, Marcia Lucas.

    The interesting thing is that we're seeing something similar happening to Jim Cameron. When he was working with Gale Ann Hurd, he made some great movies. Now that he's got total control over his projects, he's just going nuts.

  10. CGI Yoda (or anything else) will never look better than a physical object. The difference between real special effects work and some 19 year old programming some polygons is the difference between a steak and White Castle. It's a sad imitation of visual effects. It's lazy.
    Even if it looks okay to you now, it will look like garbage in the coming years. Can you look at Jungle Hunt on the Atari now and think "it looks like a real guy swinging on a vine!"? No? Welcome to CGI Yoda circa 2025.

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