the crimes of george lucas ('90s on)

far and away

like 30 years of terrible internet memes

woah hang on there were internet memes 30 years ago?

OK, so I'm actually at Star Wars Celebration, where that clip premiered, right now (although I wasn't at that panel) (also STFU Whiney). That show is basically going to be Robot Chicken except with actual long form story lines and regular animation. It's Seth Green and his whole crew doing it.

Anyway, what I was going to say is I went to a panel this morning to discuss and preview season 5 of "The Clone Wars" animated series, with Dave Filoni and Joel Aron, the supervising director and VFX supervisor. After they talked for about 45 minutes and showed a bunch of clips, completely unscheduled, George Lucas showed up, and the entire room went absolutely apeshit. Fans may grumble a lot, and obviously this is a crowd more predisposed to react positively, but you'd have thought God Himself had walked onto that stage,

PS little kids fucking LOVE Star Wars, if they want to make more kiddie shows for them it's no skin off my back.

Now I'm going to go watch Dennis Muren and John Knoll talk about the 3-D conversions for the movies.

Nice one, Phil! :)

That show is basically going to be Robot Chicken except with actual long form story lines and regular animation. It's Seth Green and his whole crew doing it.

I'm trying to think of a show pitch that I could possibly have a more viscerally-negative reaction to. Maybe, like, an educational show for toddlers hosted by The Situation.

The secret beauty of the building meter data is "what a weird quote" from s1ocki. It's such a blank, blase acceptance of this as being plausibly related to Star Wars, however odd it might seem.

I actually liked Robot Chicken, it was good for LOLz. But yeah they've been doing that schtick for like 7 years now. Most of the impact of the 'jokes' on that show was how sort of fresh it was to see Star Wars taken out of its usual melodramatic context. Nowadays there are a zillion commercials of Yoda saying something about soft drinks and the brand of Star Wars as self-knowing parody is over-saturated.

Maybe these things are actually funny, there's no way for me to objectively tell anymore because I've experienced over 10 years of Adult Swim-style Serious Sci-Fi Character Says Something About His Laundry. It's not something you just see on late night stoner TV programming. It's ubiquitous. SW humor needs to bring something else to the table to make it stand out.

For a while it was simply that nobody had done SW humor much, so that was enough. Now, I sort of actively hate these people. They are building 'comedy' careers out of writing things that require zero wit and humor. One could write a season's worth of this show in an afternoon, not even trying. Just find an iconic moment:

1) plug in a different pop-culture reference
2) have a character break his character and complain about something for a few seconds
3) invoke the awkward silence

Little kids will love this stuff, and good for them, they love the prequels too. Lucas was right when he said SW is made for little kids because even if it wasn't in the 70s, it's become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is now.

1) plug in a different pop-culture reference
2) have a character break his character and complain about something for a few seconds
3) invoke the awkward silence

this is 85% of Adult Swim programming since Space Ghost

Which is why it annoys me so much! Space Ghost is almost 20 years old!

this is 85% of Adult Swim programming since Space Ghost

I believe you're thinking of the Strawman Network.

star wars jokes were starting to seam really fucking haggard 20 years ago, long before robot chicken was even a gleam in seth green's eye

one of my unused thread ideas i've been kicking around for years and years was "people with careers in comedy that were built at least partially on star wars references/parodies"

this is 85% of Adult Swim programming since Space Ghost

― jjjdoom (Whiney G. Weingarten), Saturday, August 25, 2012 11:17 AM (6 minutes ago)

i think that's true to some degree, but it can be done well or poorly. venture bros. at it's best made the formulaic geek-joke stuff work by writing decent characters, coming up with interesting ideas and actually being sort of funny. robot chicken is the nadir of the approach. zero attention to anything but dumb non sequiturs and gross-out gags.

the writers on Venture Bros have said they consciously try to use as few Star Wars references as possible, but there are still a good amount in there, amid all the other references

Yeah i mean it can be done well. It's just, when that is the ENTIRETY of the content, then what you are viewing is pretty much hack-work.

I was about to write off Seth Green for exploiting this formula and internet nerd humor but i looked at his wikipedia entry and forgot he has a pretty extensive career. Good for him for being in the right place at the right time to capitalize on this stuff.

The funniest SW humor is the Rifftrax for the Holiday Special.

I think the funniest SW humor would be a documentary wherein someone goes to a convention and arrogantly recounts his favorite elements of the Star Wars universe with superfans and constantly gets little details wrong. Like calling that trash can thing R2-B2.

beedy beedy beedy

lol barf pucus

sp.

Obi-Wan: There was nothing you could have done, Luke, had you been there. You'd have been killed too, and the droids would now be in the hands of the Empire.
Luke: I want to come with you to Alderaan. There's nothing for me here now. I want to learn the ways of the Force and become a Jedi like my father.
Obi-Wan: Why yes, yes......that's a great idea. Let's do that...

Should we start a separate 'the crimes of george lucas's fans' thread?

http://io9.com/5950943/church-lawn-display-sees-luke-skywalker-accepting-jesus-rejecting-darth-vader

from camille paglia thread:

(she proclaims “Star Wars” creator George Lucas our greatest living artist)

― there is no dana, only (goole), Thursday, October 11, 2012 6:20 PM (29 minutes ago)

somehow i feel this ought to count for this thread.

No, sorry, that church display is ten times better and more realistic than anything released by Lucasfilm in the past 15 years.

yeah, as much as I disagree with the sentiment, that display is pretty amazing.

Makes ya really start to ponder Are the people in the Star Wars movies humans?

Disney buys Lucasfilm, says Episode 7 will arrive in 2015.

$4B in cash & stock

had a genuine gut feeling of NOT AGAIN!!! just now

"...as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced fuck this bullshit!"

Press release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20121030006384/en/Disney-Acquire-Lucasfilm-Ltd.

"It's now time for me to pass Star Wars on to a new generation of filmmakers."

please happen

and he was just swearing no more SW movies, by him or anyone else, when Red Tails was released 9 friggin months ago

don't see how McG's Star Wars can miss really

They should use that press release as the opening crawl for Star Wars Episode VII: Don't Bother.

Hope Peter Jackson really delves into the Gungan conflict

maybe he can finally convince d. lynch to take a crack

NOTHING REGARDING UTILITY DATA WTF

Star Wars 7 shd just be 2 and a half hours of footage of costumed dorks queueing for the last shitshow

They should try and get Tom Six, and make Episode VII: Gungan Centipede.

and he was just swearing no more SW movies, by him or anyone else, when Red Tails was released 9 friggin months ago

He was probably saying that to get Disney to up their price.

Star Wars 7 shd just be 2 and a half hours of footage of costumed dorks queueing for the last shitshow

― chow mein kampf (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, October 30, 2012 4:13 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this happened, it was called Fanboys

can't make it any worse. go for it, disney. knock yourselves out.

i assumed this was fake news, but, it isn't

I just can't even imagine for a moment what they'd pursue as storylines for Episodes 7-9. Not even the Expanded Universe stuff would be in play here, because that all includes the original cast.

OTOH Joss Whedon is the golden boy for Disney/Marvel, maybe they'll let him play with it.

okay, but what about the movie?

So now Disney owns Pixar, Marvel and Lucasfilm!?!