Nothin' but Star Wars

First, though, I must ask: How on earth was JAG able to stay on the air for 10 years??? Can I assign a special task force to investigate this question?

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The new Star War toys came out on April 2nd and it’s May 9th now and I still haven’t seen them. I’d write something like, “Wow, this is it guys. The final batch of Star Wars toys ever!”, but I’m sure Lucas and his marketing savvy will find some way to make more toys in the future, adding more profits to the already bulging Lucasfilm coffers. Watching the documentary that came with the Star Wars DVD Special Edition set (which is quite good, by the way) I learned how Lucas was able to wrangle total control over the marketing of the Star Wars films from the studio. Well, wrangle might be the wrong word, because back in 1976, movie studios didn’t think that much about making toys, t-shirts, and random puttzinfraffin to go with their movies. From what I gathered, Lucas asked for the control of marketing in case the studio did a bad job promoting the movie, and they sort of gave it to him without much of a hassle because at the time, Star Wars was just some random, unproven science-fiction B-film being made for $13 million. I bet the studios are kicking themselves now.


Those toys were SO popular back in the day, and Kenner couldn’t make them fast enough to meet the demand. They had to issue rain checks and IOUs to everyone because Christmas came and they still couldn’t make enough to keep them on the shelves. Imagine being a 5 year old kid and getting a rain check in your stocking Christmas morning? But I can remember a ton of Star Wars gear from when I was a kid- lunchboxes, buttons, costumes, whatever you can think of- and those profits all went back to Lucas. No wonder he had no problem financing the rest of the movies all by himself with no studio help whatsoever. And who could forget back in ’99 when every can of Pepsi and Mountain Dew had a Star Wars character on it? I was drinking Queen Amidala Diet Pepsi and Mace Windu Mountain Dew for a year!

I’ve gone back to the first three movies and watched them all over the last 2 weeks to get me primed for Revenge of the Sith, which will be released here in Turkey the same weekend as in the States, I’m happy to report. I watched the DVDs with the commentaries on them, so they have George Lucas rattling on and occasionally making no sense whatsoever, and then Carrie Fisher will pop in now and again to complain about the working conditions or what she had to do to play Leia. And this was MAJOR complaining. After a while, I just wanted to yell at the screen and say, “Will you stop being such an actress for two seconds!” I think it would have actually pained her to say something nice or positive in starring in 3 of the most famous and most recognized movies of all time. The commentary also had a special effects guy who’d talk about what a hard job they all had back in the early 80s before the advent of modern, user-friendly computers. They basically had to build their own computers and develop the technology as they went along, which is more than a little impressive. And then they threw the sound guy onto the commentary track, where he illuminates the listeners as to how they found all the sound effects for the films. In the beginning, it’s fascinating to learn what he used to get the sound of the lightsabers and the tuscan raiders, but after a while, even that got a bit too tedious and detail-oriented for the sound recording novice.

Yet because I’m a nerd, I still enjoyed it. And Empire had its director, Irvin Kirshner, on the track, who was extremely forthcoming, humorous, and a pleasure to listen to. Every time they cut back to Lucas or Carrie Fisher, I’d think, “No! Keep Irv talking!” The guy did a hell of a job on Empire, and I think he’s the reason Empire’s considered the best of the three nowadays. He added a lot of little stuff that accumulated over the course of the picture- stuff I don’t think Lucas would have done if he were still in the director’s chair.

So, getting back to the toys, I hope there aren’t any spoilers on the back of the box. With it being an explanatory prequel and all, you’d think there couldn’t be any spoilers at this point- we just want to watch it to see how it all pans out, but we all know the final outcome (or at least we think we do). But remember how upset people got 6 years ago when they bought the soundtrack for a New Hope before it was released? One of the track listings revealed that Qui Gon Jin died, and people (diehards and nerdy fanboys, most likely) created quite an angry stir. What exactly were Lucas and John Williams thinking labeling one of the tracks “The Death of Qui Gon” or “Qui Gon’s Funeral?” Oh, who knows, and really, who cares at this point? I’m not gonna waste any of my time wondering about it now.

But yet…I write about it here.

I heard Jar-Jar Binks is in the new movie, but that he has little to no dialogue this time. We can only hope that rumor is true…