Monthly Archives: May 2005

On Friday night, Jen and I accompanied Tom and Audra to a viewing of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. Contains spoilers.

I’ve read some reviews about EP3 and its predecessors. Many of them refer to George Lucas ripping up their childhoods. Such phrases are, of course, complete drivel. What many geeks of my generation fail to realize is that Lucas’s target audience has always been boys around the age of 10. It just so happens that many of us were around that age when the “classic trilogy” of episodes IV, V, and VI was released. Lucas hasn’t changed much; we’ve all grown up. In the intervening years, many of have to come to idealize the original Star Wars trilogy and esteem as one of the great myths of our time.

Frankly, Star Wars is, indeed, one of the great myths of our time, along with such creations as The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. But the movies were still aimed at little kids. Kids who buy toys and cereal.

With that in mind, I hereby declare Revenge of the Sith to be a great movie. I do not feel that George Lucas has crapped on my childhood or any such nonsense. In fact, if I had to pick one thing about which to be angry at Lucas, it would be his newfound resolve against creating episodes VII, VIII, and IX. He says now that he never said there would be nine movies, which is utter nonsense. Everybody knows that were supposed to be nine. But I digress.

It was the best of the six Star Wars movies, in my opinion. Seeing Anakin Skywalker’s descent into madness, as Mike so aptly described it, was heartbreaking. Having seen the backstory on the big screen gives much more depth to the classic trilogy. Knowing why and how Anakin fell for what should have been seen as an obvious ploy makes the whole story that much more tragic, and his ultimate redemption all the more meaningful. The tale of Anakin’s fall is very cautionary; it warns us all how easy it is for good people to fall into darkness. His reasons were noble enough: he wanted to protect his wife. And after losing his mother, who could blame him? But, as does every tragic hero, he went too far. It wasn’t enough to protect her: he wanted to make her immortal. That was his undoing. It was his refusal to settle for anything less than the absolute that made him such easy prey for Darth Sidious. Several people have commented that Anakin’s conversion to Darth Vader was too quick to be believable, but I disagree. It was very believable, which is precisely what makes it so very frightening.

The opening sequence was astonishing, from the vast batallion of ships to the Chancellor’s rescue. Right from the start, the movie establishes that Anakin’s relationship with Obi-Wan has changed significantly. Obi-Wan now treats his apprentice with more respect, and Anakin seems to have matured quite a bit, which is a nice change from his whiny petulance in Attack of the Clones. But their relationship is strained when Padme, Anakin’s secret wife (the Jedi are forbidden to marry) reveals to him that she is pregnant.

Anakin begins to have nightmares about Padme dying in childbirth, and he begins to be obsessed with preventing her death. He visits Yoda seeking advice, of course without revealing any information that would get him into trouble with the Jedi Council. Yoda tells him to learn to let go of anything he’s afraid to lose. Sage advice on any account.

Long story short, Palpatine, who is of course secretly Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, convinces Anakin that only he can teach Anakin how to save Padme. And Anakin, consumed with the thought of protecting his wife, gives in. Sidious names him Darth Vader, and a new villian is born.

Vader travels to the volcanic planet of Mustafar to kill Nute Gunray, Viceroy of the Trade Federation. In doing so, he made me very happy. Gunray was absolutely the dumbest character in the prequel trilogy, from his lousy costume to his ridiculous pseudo-Asian accent. Obi-Wan tracks Vader to Mustafar and what follows is one of the coolest lightsaber duels in the Star Wars franchise. It ends with Vader in defeat, and Obi-Wan walking away, leaving him for dead, mangled, crippled, and burning.

But we know it doesn’t end there, because we’ve already seen Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, right? Palpatine/Sidious finds what’s left of Vader’s body and has him turned into the twisted cyborg we see in the classic trilogy. As Vader assumes his new costume (or old costume, depending on how you look at it), we hear the faints strains of Imperial March. And then, in a very nice touch, we hear the voice of James Earl Jones coming from behind the helmet.

All in all, it was a good time and a good movie. Do I think Lucas has redeemed himself? Not a question for me to answer, as I didn’t feel personally offended by the first two episodes of the prequel trilogy. I never felt that Lucas had betrayed me or my childhood memories, nor was I offended by Ewoks in 1983. And I thought Boba Fett was the coolest guy ever when I was a kid.

No, in the end, I just think it’s a good series of movies, and that this one was the best of them. Personally, I hold out hope for episodes VII, VIII, and IX. I’d love to see more.

From Star Wars Spirituality, featured on christianitytoday.com:

Partly because the Star Wars saga is melodrama, and partly because human instinct tends to prematurely separate the sheep from the goats, the potential for the redemption of Darth Vader never crossed the well-set minds of most viewers. For some, the redemptive ending was not entirely plausible. The Time magazine reviewer, for example, thought it corny. But the very surprise it occasions effectively uncovers the bad manners of contemporary cynicism and hopelessness. That is admittedly a preachy point to make, but the effect of the ending of The Return of the Jedi, the unlikely return itself, pivots on the audience’s usual gullibility about the way the world usually works, which is badly. Sinners, whores, and late grape-pickers all the same, contemporary imaginative habits are constrained to see judgment and doom, to turn away from the possibility of renewal.

Very interesting reading.

I ran this through my irony meter, and it exploded.

Here’s a snippet. See if you can guess the author.
But not the iPod. Most agree it is the best quality player on the market even if the cheapest one costs a few hundred dollars. The problem is that the iPod only works with either songs that you buy from the on-line Apple iTunes store or songs that you rip from your own CD’s. But those other music sites have lots of music that you can’t get at the iTunes store. So, if you have an iPod, you are out of luck. If you are really a geek, you can figure out how to strip the songs you might have bought from another on-line store of all identifying information so that they will go into the iPod. But then you have also degraded the sound quality. How cruel.

Oh, it boggles the mind.

I can’t even bring myself to comment. The whole thing is just too stupid.

From Howstuffworks.com: Chances are that you have seen a lightsaber at one time or another, whether on the evening news or down at the local cantina. Therefore you know that a lightsaber is an amazing and versatile device that is able to cut through nearly anything in a matter of milliseconds.

Cool. I can’t remember ever being as excited about a new Star Wars movies as I am about Episode III. Gracie and I just finished Episode I and tomorrow we’re doing Episode II. I’ve seen them already, but it’s always good for another viewing, and it’s fun to watch Gracie discover the Star Wars universe. It’s also fun to hear her talk about Dark Vader, Dark Maul, and Dark Sidious.

When Darth Maul first appeared, she said, “Daddy, is he good or bad?”

“He’s bad,” I said.

“I can tell,” she replied. “I can tell by how he looks.”

Which is good, becuase if she ever encounters a dude with six little horns and a painted face in real life, I hope she runs.

I know I said I wasn’t going to write much about Tangelo on this weblog anymore, but I can’t help myself. And, what, are you gonna stop me?

Huh?

Didn’t think so.

Anyway, I’ve released a new version of Tangelo into the wild, version 1.2b5. The big news, aside from some bug fixes, is that it supports the new Tangelo Skin system I’ve devised. The original templating system left some things to be desired. For example, the only way to specify a background image for a page element was to use an absolute URL OR to require the user of your theme to upload a certain image manually. Both options suck. So I worked around that by creating a file format (based on SQLite – Will rocks!) that bunches all the images and templates together into one file. Tangelo can then open that file, show you a preview of the skin, upload any necessary images, back up your old templates, and replace your old templates. Republish, and you’re done.

So, how to create these special files? With Ugli! Ugli is a free add-on to Tangelo that lets you create and distribute your own custom skins. And I have to say, it’s pretty cool. I still need to produce some skeletal documentation and get it over to Dave so he can flesh it out.

And the burning question: Ugli? What the crap kind of name is that? Well, an Ugli is an exotic breed of Tangelo from Jamaica. So there’s the Tangelo connection. Aaaaaaand… I couldn’t resist going for the cheap joke and releasing a design tool called Ugli. It’s too funny.

A few people (including Tom) are already working on Tangelo Skins using Ugli. I hope to see a lot of third party skins developed in the future. That would be really cool, to see a tool I created being used like that. I’m personally developing several to include with the release of Tangelo 1.2.