Just think of the boundless potential. Ewan McGregor needs advice. Who's gonna give it? The fella from Darkman? Who'd trust that shifty motherfucker? Best turn to GG, who'd maybe do a shit right there on the grass. Maybe he could stick a light-saber up his arsehole. Maybe he could run up to Yoda, punch him in the face, and then do a shit, right there on the grass. Or perhaps he could storm into the Jedi Council, grab the ET's by the throat, and sing a song about shagging gypsies. Then he'd do a shit, right there on the grass.
I'll leave the finer details up to you.
2 - Replace Jake Lloyd with Kirsten Dunst. Let's not fool ourselves, Mr. Lucas. GG would be great, but would he be enough? No way in Hell. What you need to do is cast Kirsten as Anakin Skywalker. She's played a kid before, loads of times in fact. Didn't you see Interviewing Vampires or Small Soldiers? Didn't you see fucking Jumanji? I know you did, because you got the idea for the shitty CGI monkeys from there, and then used it in the super-duper version of THX.
Not only can Kirsten play a child, but she plays a grown-up brilliant too. You wouldn't even have to change actors between films, and then have Ewan saying "Anakin this" and "Anakin that" every five words just so we know this lanky motherfucker is the annoying kid from the first one, except older.
Also, those scenes where Anakin flirts and says stupid, stupid shit to Natalie Portman would be so much improved. They'd probably be everyone's favorite scenes, Mr Lucas. The only thing that would make it better is if Kirsten played Natalie Portman, too. I know this is possible, since Jean Claude Van Damme has done it. If Van Damme can do it, Mr Lucas, then Kirsten can, and much, much, much better.
3 - I think it's very confusing for audiences who may not know that Ewan McGregor is meant to be Alec Guinness. To fix this, I think you should have Alec Guinness pop up now and again in CGI, giving Ewan advice, and saying things like "You will come to learn these things as you grow, since I know them, and you're playing me, except back in time. It makes sense, Ewan."
Article comments
1 - Joel Caris
Damn it, Duke, those are the fucking Star Wars movies I want to see. Brilliant.
Except, while I love me some Kirsten Dunst, I wouldn't replace Natalie Portman with her. I'd keep them both in there, on screen, together, in about the dirtiest ways I could imagine.
Now that would be a shit hot Star Wars movie.
2 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
joel, i can only hope Mr Lucas shares your good sense. Maybe he could replace Ewan with Kirsten, then.
and i do believe there should be some more Uncle Tupelo on the soundtrack.
3 - Joel Caris
I don't know Uncle Tupelo, but I'm going to trust your judgement on this one. I think John Williams can make room for a bit more variety.
4 - Eric Berlin
Kirsten Dunst, Star Wars, Uncle Buck, and well-timed use of ASAMFP -- all in all another classic post, Duke.
My take: dump Portman, keep Dunst, add the chick from Lost, dump Uncle Tupelo, add all old-school Sonic Youth and Pavement soundtrack.
Now, that's just me.
5 - alienboy
Great post!
Let's face it, the original Star Wars was always the best and the whole idea of turning it into a 9 movie epic always sucked, bigtime.
Lucas is a passable storyteller with a nasty control freak side to his personality, a classic case of a little success going a long way to ruin another personality.
Lucas doesn't have the depth to produce Sci-Fi on an epic scale, and even if he did, there's a host of classic SF novels that would make far better epic stories.
Plus which, he's way too uptight about copyrights and control and is meanly legalistic, which is always boring and tedious.
Why hasn't anybody made movies out of the epic Asimov Foundation books or even something really old school like the EE "Doc" Smith "Lensman" series?
Anybody else got any epic Sci-Fi they'd like to see mande....
6 - DrPat
Yeah! David Weber's Honor Harrington series. Not classic yet, just damn good.
Or maybe Elizabeth Moon's Deed of Paksennarion. Post LOTR, that would do really well. Needs a Valkyrie kind of blond to play Paks, though, no Kirsten Dunst. (Sorry, Aaman...)
7 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
hmmm, i don't read much epic SF type stuff, so i don't know what i'd wanna see. Certainly there are some Philip K Dick things i'd like to see done in a more Charlie Kaufman manner, as opposed to the Action Extravaganza approach. The one where the fella finds out that the bible has been mistranslated for thousands of years, and that the word GOD actually refers to a kind of magic mushroom. That's be something worth seeing. With Kirsten as the magic mushroom, and also the person who discovers said revelation.
8 - Eric Berlin
I'll be super-uber-amped if ever Stephen King's Dark Tower series is turned into filmdom. It would take some super-epicness a la Peter Jackson times seven (seven books you see) to pull it off proper like.
9 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
i must have a look at those Dark Tower things one of these days. certainly i love his regular ol' horror bunkum. I'd love to see a proper version of The Dark Half. romero's sucked, incredible as such a sentiment may seem. It would need to be as hilarious as it is grotesque.
And i do believe Terry Gilliam and Terry pratchett need to get some work done together. That would be utterly wonderful.
10 - Wxyz
Suggestion for The Duke (and others who's "lives" revolve around movies):
1. Go to park and play a sport. There are rumors that this helps your body and keeps you healthy.
2. Go on a date. Ask a woman or man to go a place for dinner or recreation. Just dont go see a film. Esp. a Lucasfilm.
3. Replace your Star Wars DVDs with novels. I suggest novels by Richard Wright,William Faulkner,James Baldwin or John Grisham. And the novelization of the Empire Strikes Back DOES NOT count.
4. Go out and help someone. There are plenty of people on Earth who need help. You can start with yourself.
and finally
5. Make your own movie. All you need is a camera and talent. Well...you can buy a camera.
11 - Eric Berlin
"Wxyz": Working on your punctuation is also a wonderful pastime, don't you agree?
What's your elitist coolguy ass doing slumming it on a pop culture blog anyway?
12 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
WXYZ.
I just wanted to thank you so, so much for what you did. Would you believe i was just about to watch a movie? can you BELIEVE that shit. I was just about to put in this flick by the name of Persona (it's this cat Bergman, but what does it matter. i mean come on, it's hardly a NOVEL. unless maybe foreign movies are ok. sorry, foreign "films". does it help if it's black and white? how does this elitism work, anyhow?) when i thought, wait a minute, what was it WXYZ advised?
I remembered, and what i did was i picked up a novel. It was a novel by John Grisham and it was fucking shit. I set it down, and went ahead and read some Shakespeare. turned out to be that one about THE RAPE OF SOMEBODY OR OTHER. i didn't like it very much. So then i thought does any book at all count, or does it have to be a good one? cause really, if just any old book counted, well then that would be fucking stupid, to be honest. Really, that'd be like assuming the best Woody Allen picture is inferior to, say, The Turner Diaries. I'm sorry WXYZ but i can't bring myself to assume that kinda nonsense.
And then i figured, well, i'll go do that other thing. Get a date, maybe. So what i did was i went and had a five year relationship, got engaged and then watched it crumble to fuck. Thanks a fucking bunch WXYZ.
And then i noted that probably, if caring about film is an incredibly pointless pursuit, then really, Plato, Socarates, all those fuckers who waxed on and off about drama and catharsis and so on, they were just wasting their time. And inadvertendly, the wasted MY time, since i went and picked up a couple of their books on your reccomendation.
Then i thought about the people i had councelled here and there. That reccomendation was pretty good, WXYZ, and thank fuck the folks who in turn helped sort me out read it also.
In conculsion, thank you for making my life that bit more meaningful. And to think, i could've been watching Citizen Kane or Crossfire or some shit while all this was going on. I could've been writing another one of those NOVELS you mention, like the three i did a while back. I could've been doing all sortsa shit. Thank fuck my existence is summed up in its entirity by this here hilarious post, so that you were able to correct it bit by bit.
Thank you.
13 - Temple Stark
No Aaron, thank U. :-)
I could understand if was talking about (most) TV, however. And I'm a great books kind of guy. But, not all the time.
14 - HW Saxton
Did Wxyz really just put John Grisham on
par with William Faulkner,James Baldwin
& Richard Wright ??? Ya gotta be fuckin'
kidding right Wxyz ? Thats like putting
Jason Bateman on par with Orson Welles
or Garth Brooks on par with Hank W. Sr
or any number of ridiculous analogies.
Besides all that why can't someone enjoy
Cinema going as much as a football game
or reading O'Henry anyway? Dude ya lost
me in your muddled "Logic".
15 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
heh you're welcome Temple. ;)
I like reading also. Reading the story of Viz Comic at the minute, very inspiring, and there's also a history of the taliban on the go.
it's WXYZ's assumption that someone who would take the time to give opinions on films must be unaware of any other thing in the culture around them that pissed me off some.
16 - Aaron, Duke De Mondo
"Did Wxyz really just put John Grisham on
par with William Faulkner,James Baldwin
& Richard Wright ???"
HW, that stumped me too. but then what the hell do i know?