To Disney From A Former Star Wars Fan: Here’s How You Can Make Me Care Again

Dear Disney: You own the Star Wars franchise now. Great. You also own Willow but we’ll skip that. You own Star Wars. I used to be a fan but then The Phantom Menace came along and crapped all over my head. So I don’t really care about Star Wars anymore. But I might be made to care again. How? Well, in the spirit of the political season, let me present my ten point plan. (A couple of these might not be serious.)

1. Put the Force Back in the Force

Midi-chlorians. What kind of dripping sponge thinks that idea is cool? “See the Force is really all these little microscopic things in your blood. It’s not mumbo-jumbo at all. It’s biological.” It’s biological mumbo-jumbo. No, George Lucas did not understand the dichotomy at the heart of his own saga. The human spirit vs. technology. That’s why Luke’s destruction of the Death Star is so damn inspiring. HE TURNS OFF THE COMPUTER. But turns out it wasn’t the spirit at all, it was some crap in his hemoglobin. The Force was embedded in there like little orange chunks in Jello.

This calls for a U-turn. Here’s what I propose. First scene of the new Star Wars movie:

INT.  SPACE LABORATORY – DAY

A SPACE SCIENTIST stands over an elaborate highly technological instrument array. His DROID waits beside him quivering with expectation (or maybe he has to pee droid pee).

Space Scientist

(removes some kind of technical thingie from the other thingie; I don’t know, I’ll think of a name for it later)

Here it is! The results from all my experiments. And the answer is: Liam Neeson is full of crap. There are no such things as midi-chlorians. He was wrong all along. The Force is a mystical energy that permeates the cosmos like we always thought. Welp, glad we cleared that up. Everyone can go back to thinking the way they did before George…er…Liam screwed it up.

Droid

Bloop bloop bleep blooop.

Space Scientist

You said it F5-9873. Liam Neeson. What an asshole.

2. Nerf Herders

This might sound stupid but there needs to be an entire movie that revolves around nerf herding. Maybe after the destruction of the Empire Luke retired to a nerf ranch. He’s got a dog. He spends his days herding his nerfs. Now and then he takes out his lightsaber and destroys some floating orbs just for old time’s sake. I don’t really care about the Luke part of it, I just want to know more about nerf herding. What the hell is a nerf to begin with? What kind of grass do they like? Do they make lots of noises? Do New Zealanders ever have sex with them?

3. Boba Fett Up the Azz

Okay so technically Boba Fett is in the Sarlacc’s gut taking thousands of years to digest (sounds stupid but C3PO said it so it must be true). But there’s no reason there can’t be another Boba Fett. There were fricking clones in those other movies. So, clone Boba Fett. I don’t care how you explain it, I just want Boba Fett flying around jacking people up. I want Han Solo fistfighting with Boba Fett on the roof of the Falcon while it’s flying through hyperspace. That would probably tear them apart though. Screw it, I don’t care. I want Han to rip Boba Fett’s helmet off during their fight on the roof of the Falcon while it’s travling light speed and it’s a chick and they start making out. It’s Alison Brie. Whatever, just lots of Boba Fett.

4. Rip Off Kurosawa Some More

So here’s a plan. Luke, Leia, Han, Chewie, R2, 3PO and Lando are samurai. Space samurai I guess. And they have to protect these filthy ingrate peasants from bandits. Or no no no, wait. Han is a rich dude and Luke is a filthy drug addict and there’s all these visual juxtapositions of a house on a hill and these crappy alleys full of druggies. And some stuff about a kidnapping and a train. Okay some Kurosawa movies don’t work as Star Wars movies. What if there was this old mean guy who was dying of cancer and he became good and went to a weird Japanese strip club?

5. Choking Dudes

I like watching people get choked out. I don’t mean that Force choking crap. That’s for pansies. What, are you afraid your hand will get dirty? Darth Vader’s a germophobe. Oh, and Darth Vader needs to be in these movies too. That will be tough to justify I realize. Actually it won’t. Because if you think about it, what is Darth Vader? I know what George Lucas thinks Darth Vader is. He thinks it’s some deeply powerful thing about goodness corrupted by evil and then redeemed blah blah blah. But that’s NOT what Darth Vader is. Vader is about the visual. It’s about the helmet and the cape and the weird chest-controls and the gloves. And the voice. And the breathing. Vader is just this distillation of all that’s scary and evil. So it doesn’t matter who or what is under the mask. Just bring back that visual. Forget about psychology and exposition and all that garbage. Just a really tall dude in the Vader costume menacing the crap out of people. And choking them. With his hand like a real man.

6. Scheming Jawas

Hey George Lucas is really anti-Semitic and evil, did you know that? Cause of the whole Jawas thing. Jawas = Jews. Little smelly dudes in hoods going around screwing hard-working people by selling them faulty droids. I mean come on. You mean you didn’t see that? Well whatever. I’m not even upset about it. I think there need to be more Jawas in Star Wars. Scheming Jawas. Who get thrown in concentration camps. Hey, maybe Natalie Portman could come back as the leader of the Jawas? Why the hell would they follow Natalie Portman? Hello!!! The butt.

7. Lando and Leia

Star Wars needs some interracial romance, no? And it’s pretty obvious those two are hot for each other. Look at the way they check each other out when the Falcon first lands in Cloud City. Lando’s like “White girl!” And Leia acts all snobby but you can tell she digs him. That’s what chicks always do. I’m picturing a waterbed. Mood lighting. Little Barry White playing on the space turntable. Han walks in. “What are you doing with my girlfriend??? Chewie tear his arms off!” I mean it’s either that or they fall in another trash compactor. “Son of a bitch, why does this keep happening???”

8. Two Death Stars Linked Together By Some Kind of Weird Metallic Umbilical Cord

Then it would be like a giant dumbbell floating in space. Okay forget about that. No more Death Stars. Let’s think of some new crazy alien space weapon. This one doesn’t destroy planets. Instead it creates planets. It creates these crazy carnivorous monster planets with giant teeth that go around like huge intergalactic Pac Men eating everything. Wow that’s stupid. This stuff is harder than it looks. I apologize to George Lucas. It’s not easy coming up with crazy space weapons. Maybe that’s why we went back to the Death Star for Return of the Jedi. Hey did you know there was originally going to be a whole fleet of Death Stars in Return of the Jedi? And they were in orbit around the Imperial home planet. And the shield generator was on the Imperial planet and they had to go to Endor and install a giant gun to shoot the shield generator. It’s true, you can look it up. But they didn’t have enough money for lots of Death Stars so they just made it one big half-finished Death Star. And they decided to scrap the Imperial home planet and just have Endor be a moon of nothing. And then they put Ewoks on it. Cause it wasn’t lame enough.

9. A Rancor Fights A Dewback

That would be sweet. It probably happens all the time too. They’re both on the same planet. Tatooine has all sorts of shit on it. Dewbacks. Sand people. Rancors. Sarlaccs. Jawas. It’s like the craziest place. And still Luke is bored there. What the hell man? You need to get out more.

10. Seriously, Just Hire Some Smart Writers And A Smart Director. Okay Disney?

All wise-assery aside, it is possible to make a cool Star Wars movie. You just have to respect the audience and respect the material. Like when they made the new Batman movies. Those movies aren’t as great as people think but they’re still cool movies. Cause the people who made them were trying to make good movies. They weren’t trying to make stupid slick comic book crap. They actually respect the material even if it’s kind of stupid. George Lucas’ problem is, he doesn’t respect the material. Not really. He always looked at Star Wars as a means to an end. In the beginning he didn’t even want to make an original thing, he actually tried buying the rights to Flash Gordon. Cause he thought sci-fi/adventure would be his ticket to riches. And he was right. But as soon as he could, he handed off creative control to other people. Why? Because he didn’t really care about the whole thing. He wasn’t interested in being a solid craftsman at work on something worthwhile. He just wanted to make tons of money. He only came back for the prequels because of ego and greed. If he had really cared about making good movies he would’ve taken a few years to work on the scripts. He wouldn’t have sat there at his desk firing off any old shit and calling it a story.

But Lucas is out of the equation now. People will be taking over the story who are fans and therefore presumably care about it. They will take it seriously and they will try to make genuinely good movies. That’s the hope anyway. Of course there’s always a chance Disney could screw it all up by hiring the wrong people. They could hire people as hacky and disinterested as Lucas. Then the new Star Wars movies will just be big commercials for toys. I really hope that doesn’t happen. But I don’t know what to expect. It’s not George Lucas and that’s good but it’s Disney and that’s bad. Is it going to be Miley Cyrus as Princess Leia? I could actually see that happening. I could see this being turned into a giant stupid farce aimed at 15-year-old idiots. But maybe it will be cool. Disney can do cool, right? The second Pirates of the Caribbean wasn’t bad. It had some humor. Some nice effects. Some action. Granted it also had some bad things. Orlando Bloom. But mostly it was all right. I guess in the end I really am just ambivalent. It’s just stupid space adventures after all. It’s just wookies and shit. It doesn’t really matter.

Much.