No, George Lucas, Noooooo!
Regarding the hubbub about George Lucas adding a “KAAAHN!”-like “Nooo!” in Return of the Jedi, I have a hard time figuring out which I find more head scratching: that George Lucas cared enough about such a small change to bother making it at all, or that the legions of fans are so upset about said small change.
I firmly believe that there are about a million things Star Wars fans should be more irritated with about the twaddle that was ROTJ than this “No!,” especially since it followed the magnificent Empire Strikes Back. Here is a short list that I am hoping you, dear reader, will add to on this slow Labor Day weekend. I originally posted this as a comment on Not A Potted Plant (where the entire controversy was summed up marvelously by Burt in his post title: So What?), but decided to cross pollinate because I feel simultaneously lazy and like I need to get my ass in gear after having been on vacation, and because the thought of people possibly contributing to this list makes me all warm inside, but mostly so I could embed the Patton Oswald bit above – which I think is bloody brilliant.
‘RETURN OF THE JEDI‘ THINGS STAR WARS FANS SHOULD BE MORE UPSET ABOUT THAN DARTH VADER SAYING “NO”:
1. Ewoks
2. Why doesn’t R2-D2 fly around in the forest? How the hell can he roll through the brush?
3. So, his wife dying, his slaughtering of children, destroying whole planets, every other freaking thing he has seen or done, and he’s been OK with being Dark… but when his kid gets shocked with lightning he decides to switch sides? How is that not a total cop out ending?
4. Oft repeated “creatures burping” gag on Tatooine gets old fast
5. The “sister reveal” makes the kiss from the first movie feel suddenly creep
6. Ewoks
7. The thing that eats Bobba Fett. What the hell does it eat normally? It’s in the middle of fishing nowhere.
8. JarJar Binks*
9. In Jabba’s lair, evil robots torture good robots by shocking the bottoms of their tiny little robot feet. Seriously, where do I even begin with this…
10. The engineers who designed the little bird-like Imperial walkers were able to make them impervious to cannon fire, blasters, large explosions… but they somehow have yet to tackle the more advanced and thornier issue of logs?
Please feel free to add your own below…
*Yeah, yeah, technically he’s not in this movie, but he’s so annoying he makes all the other George Lucas movies worse by some kind of JarJar osmosis. Even American Graffiti, somehow.
While this is an issue I have with another one Lucas’ edits I think it is still relevant. Changing the original actor, I think it was Sebastian Shaw, who played Anakin’s ghost to Hayden Christensen at the end. Luke has never seen Anakin as young man, he’s gonna be like “who the f is that guy?”.Report
Didn’t he add in Jar Jar to the old films in the last round of edits? At least in the background?
And I liked the Ewoks, but I saw these first when I was really young, so I was supposed to like the Ewoks.
It’s still way better than the first one. Luke is so goddamn annoying in the first one it’s almost unbearable.Report
You gotta cut him some slack. With the blast shield down, he can’t see a thing.Report
Plus, the whiny brat thing actually worked in the context of cool Han Solo.Report
“7. The thing that eats Bobba Fett. What the hell does it eat normally? It’s in the middle of fishing nowhere.”
Well, as C3PO said, it does digest slowly — at least 1,000 years in the case of Han, Luke and Chewie.Report
Since Fett’s wearing armour, presumably it’ll be a little longer for him.Report
In the Expanded Universe he manages to escape, but his armour didn’t make it backReport
The biggest problem I have had since the prequels came out is thinking back to Star Wars: New Hope. Shouldn’t Obi-Wan have been like, “C-3PO, R2-D2 ! Longtime no see! Remember the Clone Wars? That was some crazy times!” Instead he acted as though he had no recollection of them.
And also, wouldn’t R2-D2 have been in the know about Darth being Luke’s father? Seems like he might have discussed that with Luke during those long hyperspace trips.Report
And Leia being his sister. (Or maybe that’s not a big deal to droids. “Yeah, I’ve dated fem-droids from the same factory. No big deal.”)
Which is another thing that irritates me about Lucas. “Droid” is short for “Android”, meaning “man-like”. It might almost apply to C3P0, but not to something shaped like a vacuum cleaner. Why couldn’t he call them “robots”, like anyone else?Report
C3pO has been memory wiped. R2D2 is george lucas in a tash can a la Oscar the grouchReport
Shouldn’t Obi-Wan have been like, “C-3PO, R2-D2 ! Longtime no see!
The best explanation you will ever readReport
My main problem with ROTJ was the fact that it recycled so many plot points from “A New Hope.”
Indeed, three of the six movies have basically the same ending.Report