Monday
May042015
May the Fourth Be With You
Monday, May 4, 2015 at 9:30AM Happy annual Star Wars day. Since Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (just 228 days away) will make this whole year a perpetual Star Wars Day elsewhere on the net, we'll keep this brief. Here are four unqualified positive feelings about the franchise.
- Nathaniel hearts Leia, Luke and Han (in roughly that order) as much as anyone & forever.
- Jabba the Hutt, Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine, and even Darth Maul are superb villains. Deeply memorable villains are incredibly important to adventure genres such as space fantasy, action, sci-fi, superheroes, etcetera and it's one thing nearly every franchise could learn from this one.
- The Empire Strikes Back is awesome.
- Where would the world of sound design be without Ben Burtt? The world has never forgotten Darth Vader's breath, Chewie's throaty protestations, and R2-D2's beep bop boop beeping and never shall. What a great call Oscar made in 1977 to give him a special achievement Oscar.
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Related:
Last Year's May the Fourth Be With You post
Now you say four nice things about Star Wars in the comments.
Reader Comments (8)
1-In terms of fantasy sagas, Star Wars is only matched by the Middle Earth Films.
2-Emperor Palpatine is my favorite villian of all-time and my favorite Star Wars characters.
3-Making films as great as the Original Star Wars Trilogy is one of the things I aspire to as an aspiring filmmaker.
4-Although I realize they have huge flaws, I don't hate The Prequel Trilogy at all and I think there are a number of good things about them.
1. Carrie Fisher was brought onto the world as a result of this franchise, which is a good thing for all of us.
2. John Williams' score is still a wonder to behold.
3. Star Wars (specifically in regard to its visual effects and ILM) was the first film I ever wrote an academic paper on, which resulted in my eventual major in Film History.
4. Alec Guinness paved the way for Ian McKellen's Oscar nomination (though weirdly they both lost to the partners of great writers).
4 inane things I love about Star Wars:
1. Leia's sass
2. Padme's makeup and costumes in the Phantom Menace
3. Jabba's laugh
4. The sound of the TIE Fighter roaring through space
One of the greatest film scores\themes ever. Thanks for the bikini shot.
(@John T's #1: SHAMPOO!)
1. Saying "Luke, I am your father" in various situations (even though it's a slight misquote) never gets old.
2. Keira Knightley was Sabé in The Phantom Menace!
3. James Earl Jones AND Billy Dee Williams?
4. According to Wikipedia: "Star Wars Theme/Cantina Band" is a disco single recorded by Meco, taken from the album Star Wars and Other Galactic Funk. It hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on October 1, 1977, holding on to the spot for two weeks and peaked at no. 7 on the UK Singles Chart, remaining in the charts for nine weeks. To date it is the biggest-selling instrumental single in the history of recorded music, having sold two million units, being the only one ever to be certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America.
As a child, I had Star Wars sheets, blankets, and sleeping bags.
The puppetry, prosthetics, and make-up in ROTJ are more realistic and fascinating than anything cgi can create.
The Pit of Saarlac still kinda terrifies me.
The scripts didn't treat the audience as imbeciles or smother us in exposition/backstory. We didn't know anything about Boba Fett's history and we didn't need to. It added to his mystery.
1. I didn't care much about Luke when I was younger but every year I love him more and appreciate how awesomely and convincingly Mark Hamill pulled off the bildungsroman task of going from supremely dorky teenager to elegant and pathos-filled master in the span of a trilogy.
2. Each year I also love Leia more when I realize how frustratingly bare the landscape of genuinely interesting or well-plotted women in sci-fi or action vehicles remains, even when directors claim they're super into Strong Female Characters(tm). Then again she does have better characterization and portrayal than most action/sci-fi leads, male or female.
3. Really like that Daisy Ridley looks like an exact mashup of Carrie Fisher and Natalie Portman? Esp if she is who we believe she is.
4. I devote actual time in my life to determining the order of the movies I'll show to my future hypothetical kids. Am leaning toward VI, V, I, II, III, VI.
I was asking this myself last year and I'm asking this myself this year again: Given the internet's general excitement with 'Arrested Development', wouldn't you expect May the Fourth to be celebrated as Cinco de Cuatro rather than Star Wars Day in at least some parts of the world wide web?