yess!! first post! oh yea and im skippin skool (hope my parents dun read dis) when star wars comes out!!

While I'm not gonna skip work or anything to see this movie, I must admit that I do intend to see it this weekend. I just want to see the fight between Obi Wan and Anakin!

From the reviews I've seen I'm pretty sure it's not worth skipping work for. And let's face it, drilling a hole in one's foot is worth skipping work for.

From the Guardian review:

"Dramatically weightless... I looked blearily around the cinema and sensed thousands of scalps failing to prickle. We had all been bored into submission long ago... pointlessly long and artificially complicated... the most unconvincing evil act you can imagine, an event weirdly neutralised by the bloodless unreality that surrounds everything... A range of scandalously dull secondary characters - people such as Senator Bail Organa, played by Jimmy Smits, and Samuel L Jackson as the fiercely uninteresting Mace Windu. They are acting as if on some kind of medication... a heavy blanket of self-consciousness descends, under which they must act out the stilted myth on which depend the hopes and expectations of millions of fans... All too clearly a product of George Lucas's overweening production giant Industrial Light and Magic: no magic, little light, but an awful lot of heavy industry."

Why oh why must my pessimism about George Bloody Lucas always prove well-placed?

When it comes to emotional reactions, self-fulfilling prophecies have a lot of power.

Oddly enough, Cinema Blend gives it an outstanding review. I still won't bother for a few weeks if only to avoid the crowds.

I have begun hanging around my local movie house, awaiting the premiere of "DL2- Deep Llamas Down Under". I pass furtively by on a daily basis, and stand in line to see other films, only to walk away, loudly complaining upon my faux surprise that DL2 hasn't arrived yet. It's great publicity- tends to draw a crowd, plus a few uniformed gentlemen who insist that I cease and desist. I think the last announced date for the true premiere here in the states is June 1st, but that's subject to change based on the whims of Earl J. and Fernando, Los Hermanos Llamas. I can't wait; really looking forward to the radioactive flashlight duel between "Jonny Llama" and his arch-nemesis, "Dark Aereola", in the Caverns of Death scene. Ya mo be there

the only way I'll see any of the star wars movies is when they play on channel 9.

Well, considering it's getting an 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, I'd say it's worth skipping work or school for it, if you're really a big Star Wars fan.

What is (are?) "Star Wars"?

I like this Yoda. He is like a little green booger, but he talks too funny. "A booger, I am", he says. Ha ha ha. I like him- he is silly. Rrrraoul

You're right, Alex, they're all cornball publicity stunts.

The real news story would have to be about how much money moviegoers are going to lose because they get suckered into overpaying to see a second-rate sci-fi retread.

Would someone tell me where Lucas gets these gawd-awful names for all his characters?
Puh-leeeese!

Regarding the names, a lot of them are meant to be bad puns or inside jokes. He also has an affinity for names that are alphanumeric. (OB1KNOB).. Usually the really bad ones are the 'minor' characters.

Regarding the movie itself, I'll be seeing it in.... eight hours. I'll reserve judgement until then, but everything I've heard up til now has been 'Good. Not great, but good.'

I know one of my employees who's asked for the day off ahead of time and I think one other will try calling in sick.

Me... I'll wait till the later part of the weekend. Or next week.

Star Wars is basically a kid's show. If they admit this, then the kids will not want to see it. Therefore they put out publicity that airs on "news" shows saying how concerned parents are of the "dark and violent" film. This makes the kiddies want to see the kiddie show even more. Moreover, it keeps adults from admiting to themselves that Star Wars is a show for the pre-13 year old crowd. My local paper and at least one national news show have featured stories about "worried" parents. Total BS. I bet they spend more on publicity than on script writers.

Everyone has bought into this being the last Star Wars. Imagine their surprise in a few decades when Episodes 7, 8, and 9 com out as originally planned.

edrio - Think about it like this, in the 77 when the first installment appeared, kids saw it. NOW, those kids are ADULTS who want to finish (or start - George Lucas you BASTARD!) the series. SOOoo...adults are seeing it b/c as CHILDREN they were hooked. DUH. So the fact that adults want to see it is not surprising at all.

It's obvious to me that it's directly being marketed to multiple demographics. You can get a lightsaber spoon out of a kid's cereal, there are Star Wars ring tones for the teens & 20s, and for the adults, well, that's just simple - the memory of a movie watched long, long ago, in a dark theater, far, far away.

My guess? Jeff Tweiten's web site is a publicity stunt for JULIE ROBERTS that Country gal. There's no real information on Tweiten, and Star Wars sure doesn't need any extra PR.

Hmmm.

Lucas gets the names the same place any writer gets character names--he jots them down whenever random chance or research turns one up that sounds nice. (You should see some of the crap in my short stories notes folders.)

Obi Wan is actually Japanese for "great belt", which is most likely a reference to the martial arts that Lucas got most of his inspiration for the Force from in the first place (lots of the metaphysical theory is borrowed straight from Aikido, I've heard).

Mas Amedda is something you tell your latino gardner when he asks what you want in the backyard, of course.

Bib Fortuna allegedly came from a caterer on the set of either Return of the Jedi or Empire. Lucas asked why a key grip had gotten down on his knees, and the sandwich man replied, "He beg for tuna..."

Darth Vader=Dark Father.

Lots of the others are just made-up words that are meant to sound exotic. If you've ever played DND and tried to come up with names for elves, you know just the boat Lucas found himself in, only he didn't fall back on the infamous Axbeard/Leafmoon pattern....

Why pick on Lucas? Why not ask where Tolkein got his names? (well, his research was more in-depth, but still)

Barghest, are you having us on?

Dunno bout the other names, but Darth Vader supposedly a mangling of the German for "Dark Father" because of the whole Nazi/stormtrooper thing, I believe.

And while Obi is the Japanese word for 'belt' (not just martial arts, also the wide belt that one wears when wearing a kimono, etc), and there is a character pronounced "wan" that means talent or ability, I have no idea whether the story is true but it at least sounds plausible.

OK, Barghest, I guess I'm going to have to work on my rhetorical questions. I didn't really mean, "Where does he get those names?" In most cases, it's pretty obvious what kind of lame joke he's trying to make. And that's my point. What I meant to ask was, "How can anybody stand watching a movie so stuffed with hideously dumb names?"
Oh, by the way, that last sentence was another rhetorical question, everybody. You don't have to answer it. Really.

A joke, on this site? Say it ain't so!

Hairy's list of "Rejected Stars Wars Droid Names": IC-UR12, RU-12, I-B12, UB-AP-NS, YB-AP-NS, IB-AP-NS, IC-UR-PNS, DO-UB-AP-NS, 1A-NU-PNS, 2PNS-R-OK... zzzzzzzzzz

Fuck the star wars haters, right in the ass.

Japanese is a complex language (I'm sure this isn't news). The word Wan can mean several things depending on which kanji is used to make the sound, but one of the more straightforward translations is Ten Thousand. In Japanese and Chinese culture, this is how you say A Great Many or Everything: the Ten Thousand Gods of Shinto, or golly, your mom must have made Ten Thousand dumplings.

It's easy to see how you can go from Ten Thousand to the meaning of A Lot to the meaning of Really Great and Super. For instance, Wan Hu is Chinese for Ten Thousand Tigers--which is a way to say that one has great courage and ferocity.

If you take the Obi to mean a belt with the implication that the belt in question is a martial arts belt, and thus a symbol of accomplishment and wisdom, then Obi Wan means Ten Thousand Belts, or alternately, Very Great Wisdom and Accomplishment.

Aren't Asian languages neat, with their idiomatic cross-pollination of symbolism? It's so poetic.

Ask me about the Chinese aphorism "Killing a chicken in front of a monkey" sometime.

Mas, of course, is Spanish for 'more', and Amedda is a popular species of front yard shrubbery. I don't really know if that's where Lucas got it, but that's the joke that's been going around in geekdom for a few years now.

The Beg for Tuna story is supposedly true but hasn't been confirmed. I first heard it in the pages of Toyfare magazine, actually.

Darth Vader isn't mangled German, it's Dutch. (Whether you want to say that Dutch is just mangled German is up to you.)

...And what is the translation of "golly" into Japanese??

And my hubby is determined to get our kid to call him Vader. (But it's not like Darth's name at all, it sort of rhymes with water. V-ah-der)

I know a guy who named his son Anakin back in 2000. We're all a little worried the kid might, just might, have a hard time in school because of it...

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