Things You Didn't Know About Empire Strikes Back

Luke's fight with Fake "Force cave" Vader is actually a fight with a Celestial Vader! In the original story, the swamp and the cave disappear, and Luke and Vader lightsaber it out in deep space. Vader even grabs a handful of stars to show how powerful the Dark Side can be. (That scene was apparently sponsored by LSD.)

-- 100 Things You Didn't Know About The Empire Strikes Back [movies.ign.com]

There's some interesting production notes, but the first part is all about the differences between Leigh Brackett's original script and the edits Kasdan made. Brackett's draft is often credited for giving Empire the punch that nearly everything else Star Wars lacks. Interesting to me is that Empire has the lowest body count of any of the movies and yet is the clearly the darkest and grittiest of the bunch.

Bizarre Meets Awesome: Star Wars Told In Assorted Clips

Chicagoist explains the following clip best:

One enterprising group of filmmakers has completed quite a project: remaking Star Wars using 15-second clips that vary by style. The kids put a call out to folks all over interwebz to call dibs on each 15-second scene and then film it; the filmmakers would then stitch together the result into the finished product. In the scene they've posted (below), the transitions are never jarring and their faithfulness to the original film is stunning. In short, we're totally geeked to see this film.

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

Star Wars Fails Engineering

This is awesome:

R2-D2
Sure, he's cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in slapsticky fashion -- and no voice synthesizer. Imagine that design conversation: "Yes, we can afford slapstick oil and tasers, but we'll never get a 30-cent voice chip past accounting. That's just madness."

-- John Scalzi's Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design

Even more awesome, though, is the fanboy responses on Slashdot which fail even more miserably at having any kind of sense of humor about their dear fictional universe.

Game Play: The Force Unleashed

I was actually pretty unprepared for how bad this game turned out. I had thought the demo was pretty fun, all in all, and had read the mixed reviews that hit the net.

The takeaway I should have had from the demo, and certainly have from the game, is what a blatant God of War clone the game really is and how I really wish that if people are going to rip off that format - that they do something different and interesting with it. The Force Unleashed never comes close to this concept.

The good? Production values are pretty high and there are some truly pretty moments in the game. Being a Jedi is always at least a little badass, even when the mechanics get in the way.

But oh, the mechanics. My shelf moment in this game, probably not even half way through, was when the Rancor beast attacks in the middle of the uberswampforest planet. Firstly, I have no idea why the annoying enemies with their odd ability to be invulnerable on a sneeze need to be here when there is, you know, a freaking Rancor beast to worry about. Nor do I know why they seemed to love the idea of getting stomped by said beast. Some kind of cult, maybe? No idea.

I was curious as to why no attack of mine seemed to result in much of anything until I happened to stand in just the right place and saw the Quick Time Event button come up.

Seriously? I'm supposed to be this mutant powerful Jedi who can pull Vader's saber out of his hand and yet I'm completely useless unless I set up the right cut scene? Way too much of this game vacillates in between being monotonously easy (all of said cult soldiers were cut down by the same annoying combo, reports said) and inexplicably annoying because the player doesn't know they're supposed to be waiting to be told what button to push. This is QTE done horribly wrong - intrusive and user unfriendly.

And before I got into more of them, I just shelved the game.

There was a lot of potential to this game that seems to have been lost. Even the story was saddled by occasional poor voice acting and bizarre inconsistencies (for someone who isn't supposed to know anything about Starkiller's missions, the pilot knows a lot about Starkiller's missions). I think I can safely say I enjoyed The Apprentice's involvement in Soul Caliber more than this game.

Probably late in the game here, but if you haven't played this game - might keep it that way. If you're a Star Wars fan, you've probably already played it. If you must, keep it a rental.

For Sunday: Death Star Cantina

Eddie Izzard + Legos = awesome

For Sunday: Clone Wars Animated Trailer

Looks moderately sweet. I still think Genndy did an excellent job, but honestly it seems like anyone does a better job than Lucas when it comes to telling the Star Wars saga.

For Sunday: Darth Vader's Voice

Funny and somewhat interesting all at the same time...

Weinsteins Strike Back - The Fanboys Controversy Starts

Fanboys is a movie involving Star Wars and Kristen Bell. Generally speaking, I would need to know little more about it in order to go see it, but apparently Producers Weinstein have decided I wouldn't see it if it mentioned cancer.

Did I mention it has Kristen Bell?

Oh, and this is choice:

Steven Brill, director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor was brought in to do several days of reshoots to erase any reference to terminal illness. The new scenes were shot during the writers' strike, and the dialog was mostly improvised. The original director, Kyle Newman, and screenwriter Cline were not involved in the reshoots or re-editing. "Have you seen the cancer version of this movie?" writes Brill in an email to an angry fan. "I have. It is unreleaseable. It would be irresponsible to release it."

Because people - if anyone ... anyone knows what is unreleasable and irresponsible ... that person would be the director of Little Nicky and Drillbit Taylor. Cancer? Knowing this guy had anything to do with it makes me less likely to see it. I would take cancer over a screening of Little Nicky any day.

Is The Force Coming To Blu-Ray?

Having already defeated Toshiba's Death Star, the good old AsianMack sent along this link to an Amazon page for the original Star Wars trilogy on Blu-ray Disc.

My current theory is that Amazon employees, especially ones with access to their CMS, like to get drunk just like the rest of us. LucasFilm says it is a clerical error. Lucas dragged his feet until he was good and sure everyone had bought the VHS format at least once before rushing to DVD, and I would think that his love for money has probably not waned in recent years.

Plus - is anyone else afraid what he might do with another chance to mess with his work? I see Jar-Jar talking to an ewok and am cold and afraid.

For Sunday: Fan Boys

Thanks to teh Sterno. And yes, gentlemen, that is Kristen Bell you see there. You can start obsessing in ten, nine, eight...

30 Years Of LucasFilm Christmas Cards

This year’s card by Lorraine LeBer, photographed above, features three rows of die-cut pop-up Stormtroopers holding candles and songbooks. Click on the image to enlarge. But lets take a look at some of the cards from LucasFilm’s past

-- Cool Stuff: 30 Years of LucasFilm Christmas Cards

Lucas Aims For Robot Star Wars Television

George Lucas, the Star Wars creator is looking for writers to help pen a live-action series about the lives of robots, according to a story published Wednesday in Los Angeles Times.

Does this mean C-3PO and R2-D2?

-- Report: New Star Wars show about robots

Adult Swim just did the Robot Chicken and Family Guy Star Wars parodies back to back - pure gold. If this comes to light, I just hope Lucas keeps to a benevolent dictator role and not, you know, writing and directing or anything.

Force Unleashed Characters Video

Gaming Bits has a video feature (via Glinkster) about the characters in the upcoming LucasArts game, Force Unleashed. Now I know where those pretty concept sketches I found months ago were for - this game. Looks pretty darn good and quite honestly everyone seems to be able to bring the fun back into the Star Wars universe as long as Lucas isn't in the front seat.

This is also the game that will bring the oft-wanted lightsaber action to the Wii.

Darth Vader In Tokyo

Hilarious.