Joshua TylerWritten by Lightsaber Livin
I always feel a little guilty whenever I spend any of this space talking about Star Wars. It’s such a cliché, over-discussed geek topic. I try to avoid it. It keeps sucking me back in.To point, new Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of Sith trailer debuted recently. As usual, it was brilliant. George Lucas may not be much of a writer or director, but he's a masterful marketer and knows how to cut one hell of a trailer. What irks me is not trailer itself, but fan reaction. The number one Star Wars fan comment about new film? "I can't wait to see all lightsaber battles." In fact, Star Wars fandom has somewhere along way become completely obsessed with lightsaber battles. In response, so has Star Wars. All anyone cares about is which characters can be shoehorned into convenient mano a mano battles with laser swords. When did that become embodiment of Star Wars? When did Star Wars become Celebrity Death Match? The first three movies contained a sum total of three lightsaber battles. They were cool, because they weren't overused. In each case, Lucas created, operatic weapon of elegance was used as part of emotional culmination of each movie. The battles were significant, and important. Now they're just a part of "action pack" of stuff thrown into new movies to make Star Wars fans drool. With new movie potentially being rated PG-13, more than ever fans are crying "Blood blood blood!"
| | Official Movie Website MiscogonyWritten by Joshua Tyler
All right, I've got a complaint. It goes out directly to all you sneaky marketing types who THINK you know exactly what public wants.Official movie websites...have you tried to look at one lately? Its torture! After looking at many of them, I have come to conclusion that majority of them are designed exclusively for people with DSL connections who aren't interested in knowing anything about movie whose website they are looking up except perhaps to confirm that movie does indeed exist. Case in point: The new Highlander: Endgame official website. The first thing you'll notice upon going to URL (and I recommend you don't) is that website takes total control of your computer and decides to block out any other windows or toolbars you may have had up. The sheer arrogance of this little programming "feature" boggles mind. Evidently marketing geeks who designed site are absolutely certain that their website is THE most important thing in your entire life. Next you will notice that entire website is in flash, with no option to go to a non-flash site. Again, marketing dorks assume that everyone in world has a cable modem. The truth is that most people have dialups and if you have a dialup connect it will take a good 15 minutes of loading before you can enter site. So since stinking site has taken over your entire computer screen and you can't do anything, you get to spend 15 minutes staring at a blank screen. Lovely.
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