Retronauts - 473: Retronauts Episode 473: Star Wars Episode I

Episode Date: August 8, 2022

A Retronauts crew from far, far away (Retronauts East) gets together to revisit the topic of Star Wars for first time since a long time ago (99 episodes ago!) to talk about the first prequel—1999's The Phantom Menace—and its impact on pop culture. You would not believe Jeremy Parish, Benj Edwards, Chris Sims, and Ben Elgin's collective midichlorian count! Edits by Greg Leahy, art by Shaan Khan. Retronauts is made possible by listener support through Patreon! Support the show to enjoy ad-free early access, better audio quality, and great exclusive content. Learn more at http://www.patreon.com/retronauts

You're listening to Retronauts a part of the HyperX Podcast Network. Find us and more great shows like us at podcast.hyperx.com. This week in Retronauts, now this is podcasting. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Retronauts. I am Jeremy Parrish. And I'm sure many people have used that joke before, but this is the first time I've used it that I can remember, and therefore it's valid. This episode, in case you were wondering, from that cool intro, we're talking about Star Wars episode one. And this continues on the heels. of our previous Star Wars topic discussions where we talk about the films and the games, and by we, I mean, Retronauts East, although it's now kind of like a cross between Retronauts East and Retronauts Midwest. But that's okay. You know, what is geography?

It's all bullshit anyway. It's just made up lines. So, anyway, please, Retronauts East and Midwest, introduce yourselves. Let's, how do we want to do this? Alphabetical by last name, starting at the beginning. Hi, I'm Ben Edwards. I am a writer and journalist and video game person and a member of the Retronauts East crew. There you go. All right. And next in line. I'm Ben Elgin. I was born in the 70s, so that qualifies me for Retronauts. Yeah, pretty much.

That's true. Actually, you know, we treat as valid any discussion about things that are at least 10 years old. Not necessarily that they're retro, but just that they are, you know, far enough removed from the present that they, we can, we can evaluate them critically with the past. So anyone who was born in 2012 or before is valid, valid on retronauts. And finally, Retronauts Mid-East. Midwest. Midwest. Sorry. Mid-East. Misa Chris Sims, and I am the entirety of Retronauts Midwest. You are. We do not have a Retronauts Mid-East, but I would love some of that oil wealth. Yes, we are going to minimize the Gungan Patois and talk about Retronauts, or talk about Star Wars

Episode 1. We will also talk about Retronauts. We're all in top form today. So please enjoy this discussion. But yes, we've talked about Star Wars and the Empire Strikes Back and the Return of the Jedi. And now we look forward 16 years into the future to discuss, I would say arguably, in terms of pop culture events, the biggest of the Star Wars films, not necessarily the most important, not necessarily the best, but the one that really saw the machine kick into full hype power. And also, a film that I think has begun to take on more, I don't want to know if the significance is the right word, but definitely that has been, I feel like it's important to a lot of people because the people who

are sort of starting to, you know, enter the workforce and the people who mostly listen to this podcast tend to be the ones who grew up with this movie and heard everyone talk about how terrible it is, but they have nostalgia for it. And in their opinion, you know, it's actually not so bad. And I get that. I grew up watching the G.I. Joe cartoon, which honestly is pretty crap, but I still have fond feelings about it. It's pretty crap, Chris. Hey, hold up right there. You're about to derail this into a completely different podcast. I'm just saying, no, everything is subjective, and that's fine. I don't hate episode one. I also don't love it the way I would have if I had been born, say, 10, 15 years later. Yes, or born a Jedi.

No one is born a Jedi. They're born with midi-chlorians, and then they're abducted by the Jedi. You have to understand. That's established in this film. Or if the movie had an editor, then we might like it more. Yeah. So we're going to talk about the things that this film did that were interesting and good, and also the things that it did where you kind of look back and say, huh, that happened. So to begin with, what was your experience with Star Wars episode one? Chris I was

What the window came out It came out in 99 Right 1999 yep Yeah so I was a senior in high school I think Or just finishing up my junior year I don't think It can be overstated

How excited people were for this movie Because if you are a kid Who Or if you're someone who was a kid when this movie came out And you've kind of grown up over the past 20 or 25 years years or so, you don't know what it's like to not have Star Wars, which isn't to say that we didn't have Star Wars, because obviously, you know, it had been around. It was a hugely popular franchise. But like, we didn't have any new Star Wars for like 16 years. There were comics and there were novels. Oh, and there was the multimedia event called Shadows of the Empire, starring Prince Shizor. you're telling a guy

who had a Prince Chesore action figure There you go With his little spider web Shields Yep I know all about The Islamiri and the Yu-Jem Vong Like people who liked Star Wars

Were so Starved Wars For content Wow And looking back on it Like there was some good stuff In the comics And I still maintain

Some of those novels Are like, you know Very Popcorn Beach-read fun even if they are not a woman traditionally considered to be good. There's some legit, terrible ones, but also some pretty decent ones. But, yes, they weren't movies. There wasn't even a TV show after the Ewox and droids cartoons disappeared.

And once Wilford Brimley checked out, you know, not that he died, just like checked out of the franchise. He was like, I'm done with this. I'm going to go eat my oatmeal. It was even a big deal when these movies, like I remember taping these movies off of like a marathon on the USA network that they had been promoting for like a month. It was a big deal when these movies would come on TV. And 97 saw the release of these special editions, which were divisive. And I remember having the last VHS box set of the unspecial editioned versions of Star Wars.

I still have that. Yeah. It's like the only VHS tapes I owned from back then, just because I never got rid of them. But I have them. They're precious gold. Precious treasure. I have the Laserdisc ones too now. I got in the early 2000s.

Those are cool. So then this movie comes along and like all of a sudden there's new Star Wars and it's so exciting and so thrilling. And even like in the immediate aftermath of that movie, like I remember going to see this as a midnight release with a packed crowd. And then, you know, I grew up in a small town in South Carolina and so everything was kind of on the same street. like all the businesses in town. And I remember leaving the movie theater at, you know, 2.30 a.m. with a friend of mine. And then driving over, like, down the street to the Walmart

because it was the only place that was open to buy the toys. And, like, I, and then I took, like, I don't know what the statute of limitations is. So maybe cut this out, Jeremy. But, like, I remember taking a pirated VCD. of episode one to school so that I could like have it on while I worked on the school paper like the next week after we got it like it had a spell over me and that more than the movie itself is what I find fascinating like it was and we can probably get into this later but it was like peak movie tie-in era as well like you don't see the tie-ins today like you did

in the late 90s where every summer blockbuster had a Taco Bell themed meal to it, you know? Like, as big as it was, and as much as you would think

it would be that way, like the Avengers, like, end game, like Dr. Strange 2 did not have the level of like cross media merchandising

that Godzilla 98 had, you know, where you would see the movie, order the pizza, get the, the Coca-Cola with the special label that had Matthew Broderick on it or whatever. So it was big. And that's something that kind of started with, I think, Batman 89 being the first big

movie. And so this kind of being, in my head at least, the last big movie to have that kind of, like, advertising, marketing push behind it of that kind is fascinating to me. And it definitely left an impression. The movie itself has problems. Okay, but we'll talk about those. But yes, thank you for the kind of overview of the 1990s. I would disagree that episode one was the last movie to have that kind of marketing push behind it, because I don't know if you remember 2015 and a little thing called Star Wars, The Force Awakens, but that was, that was inescapable.

There was no, it was like everything was The Force Awakens. It was like, get your home mortgage refinanced with Star Wars, The Force Awakens. I'm obviously much older now, and so I don't watch television for eight hours. after school, like I did in 1999. So maybe I'm just, like, not aware of it. If you went to a grocery store, like every single food product had Star Wars on it. Yeah, it was on everything. It was insane.

Like, I think I made a joke about it on Twitter at some point. Am I right in, I'll accept, I'll accept what I'm wrong about that. But am I right in thinking like that's the exception rather than the rule these days? Sure. I mean, but, you know, like some of the Marvel stuff also. I mean, it's all Disney at this point. Yeah, I mean, like, Wonder Woman shows up on a Doritos every night. I would say, like, your perception is different because there are so many of these big movie things now.

They make them so often that they can't all be these giant tent pole-type media extravagances or whatever. We're kind of blind to it at this point. Like, you just don't, you don't notice it as much because it's just this inescapable level of noise that's constantly out there. Whereas, you know, at the time, there were definitely big media machines to promote movies, but it just wasn't as, as, as, you know, universal as it is now. Especially when you talk about like movies that are cross over mainstream and like geek interest. Like that was a that was a big event back then that only happened once, you know, every few years it seemed like that there was something huge that all the geeks were really into. Whereas now, you know, there's three or four Marvel movies a year on top of other stuff. And so it's, it's constant. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, now the the geeks have grown up and and, you know, physically, physically they've grown up. But, you know, they're saying everything must be about us. So everything. thing is about us, because that's where the money is. What really got me thinking about it was the Batman and how, like, living through Batman 89, where that, that logo was, like, seared onto your brain by being everywhere.

And then even the Nolan movies, like, I remember, I reviewed it for Comics Alliance at the time, like, when the Dark Night Rises came out, there was, like, a pizza, a domino's pizza that came in, like, a special black box. And then the only tie-in for The Batman was at Little Caesars, which is... Yeah, I saw some... I was walking through Target and saw some The Batman toys and thought, huh, weird. There's some toys for this movie. It's not, it's not...

It was a much, like, less merchandisable take on Batman for one thing. But you're right. Like, it... Some properties have really saturated things and others have kind of faded. I think, like, social media maybe replaced that. Maybe, but we will agree, I think, that few things have had quite so much cultural presence as Star Wars Episode 1 leading up to that, which is what makes the actual outcome and nature of the movie so, not necessarily disappointing, but just like, it all seems so disproportionate to what the movie actually is. Like, we had something in our brains after years of loving Star Wars and seeing all this hype, seeing the trailers, and then you go and it's that.

And you're like, huh, that's, that's a thing. That's, that wasn't what I expected. Anyway, Ben, what about you? How was your Star Wars episode one experience? Yeah, so 99, I was in grad school in 99. And so grad school, being grad school, that's kind of largely a blank. in my like pop cultural awareness. Like I have no idea what music was playing or what was on TV from like 98 through 2000. Like not a clue. Star Wars though, I mean, you know, episode one was

big enough. Obviously, I knew that was happening. I went and saw it. I don't have, I don't have a huge amount of recollection of like what it was like actually going. I definitely remember having, I think, the same reaction a lot of us did that like, huh, that was pretty. And often weird and with some stupid things in it but it was still it was still new star wars i mean that was still obviously you know an event that penetrated my consciousness um and i hadn't been unlike chris i had not been that into all the extended universe stuff um i didn't hadn't read the novels or the comics but you know obviously enjoyed the original films um so kind of kind of brought star wars back into my consciousness for the first time in a while for sure

my episode one experience was memorable leading up to it I was very excited of course because I mean who wouldn't be excited because Star Wars was like our Bible of our generation of the you know the secular Bible of my you know every boy or kid in my school growing up knew Star Wars and would quote it nonstop the girls didn't know that much but it was like our huge thing and so to have more Star Wars was a incredible. And so when it came out, I have a vivid memory of wanting to go see it in the theater, and I couldn't convince anyone to go with me. No family members, no friends or anything. And I was a senior in high school, and I had a car. And so after school one day on, I think it was May 19th, 1999 was the release day. I just drove to the movie theater by myself and watched it. And that was weird. I think that was the first time I ever went to a movie by myself. And it was interesting. I mean, I don't know whether you want to talk about reactions now or later, but my response

was like it was sort of a letdown, I think, at the time. In retrospect, now I enjoy it much more having children. I see, like, I've watched millions of hours of children's entertainment because I have a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old. And it's mostly bad. Yeah. And it feels like maybe it's a good kid's movie. and, you know, we were so extremely critical of this because we held Star Wars to a very high impossible standard like a Bible.

For example, like I'm saying, like some kind of like ancient scrolls handed down to us from the gods. That's the way I felt about it, and I think my brother did too. And so anything that was not absolutely perfect was just like savagely attacked. And it was, I feel in retrospect that's a shame because I think it's a fun film. with, even with its flaws and everything. Yeah, I think there's also definitely an element of we hold the, like, the parts we liked of the original trilogy, so elevated in our memories and kind of forget about the other parts. I think we talked about this some when we were talking about the first trilogy that, like,

there's a lot of goofy shit in the first trilogy also. Yeah, it's, it's actually kind of mostly bad. One of the things that I think was very valuable for me, one of the things that I think was very valuable for me and learning to be more critical of things that were, you know, so cemented in my childhood as to be, like, sacrosanct was, I don't know if it was like Eclipse or Starlog or some magazine in the mid-90s had a, like a story that was on their cover that was like basically saying, why Return of the Jedi is actually kind of bad. I was like, how dare you?

What the hell is this? So I read the article and was like, oh, yeah, you know, they have some points. So then I, you know, was able to kind of step back from my childhood love of Star Wars and just the fact that it was like, you know, this cornerstone in my brain of the stuff that I liked and say, oh, yeah, okay, yeah, there's some problems. So I see that now, you know, as an adult, I've, you know, watching the original trilogy again with my kids a few times. Like, I'm like, this is not as great as I thought it was, like, when I was a kid. But it's only because, you know, I've had experience and exposure to much more mature forms of. art and media and stuff that I didn't have at that time when I was a kid, of course, so it has, it's, it does paint in a lot of broad strokes that a child's mind can pick up on really easily. And an adult's mind might not be satisfied. There's not as much nuance and stuff. You'll notice that there aren't a lot of, like, absolutely immense hardcore Star Wars fans who are 20 years older than us, because they were adults. When the movies came out originally, there are some.

but not a lot. Yeah. You know, there, there were people who really got into it, really loved it, were really fascinated by it. Like, I've talked to, you know, older adults in their 50s, 60s who were like, yeah, you know, it was the first time I felt like, you know, movies were speaking to the nerd that I was. But they also had balance in their lives and were able to kind of, you know, say, well, you know, it's really awesome. Amazing to look at. A lot of fun. But it's not, you know, what my identity is going to be based around.

Whereas people of our generation, I don't think have necessarily, I think, okay, let me rephrase that. I think you see a lot more people of our generation who can't create that divide. And that's where you get the sort of virulent hate campaigns directed at people like Ahmed Best and Kelly Marie Tron and, you know, people like that. It's just like, it's horrible. Calm down. It's okay. It's okay. They're just movies.

And sometimes they're kind of bad. They're a lot of fun and they look cool, but chill out. Yeah, I mean, you got to remember, you know, Star Wars in the end is space opera. Like, nuance is not really its thing. And it's not supposed to be. It's not what it's going for. It's not going for, you know, deep nuanced commentary. It's going for space opera.

Wow, you just really pissed off Yoshiuki Tomino. He's all about the nuance in his space opera. Well, that's true. But he's got a lot more, like, room to work with in terms of the Gundam franchise than This might be jumping ahead a second, but I just watched episode one again yesterday, and I really appreciate that George Lucas directed this now. At the time, I thought, what a horrible mistake. He did a terrible job, but now I've liked the George Lucasness of this film because it feels like Star Wars, whereas the new stuff is like just a pastiche, an imitation of what Star Wars should be done by people with bombast. Anyway, there you go.

Yeah, like my own perspective here. Yeah, like my own perspective here, and then we can put a cap on this section of the podcast and move on to discussing the other stuff. You know, as someone who was born in 19... You know, I grew up with Star Wars. I think that might have been the first movie that I remember ever seeing. And, you know, I'm old enough that I remember people being like, oh, wow, now it's called episode four.

It wasn't called that before. And, you know, for me, growing up with my Star Wars toys and watching the movies on VHS and having my little speak and read record player and storybook of, you know, the original movies, like, that was just foundational for me. And I was fascinated by the movies. And I never stopped liking them, even though Star Wars kind of went away. And it, it didn't, it didn't end well in the 80s. Like, you had the movies and they stopped. And then they made these kind of, honestly, pretty bad cartoons. They made those movies that I mentioned with Wilford Brimley, Ewox, yeah, Battle for Indies.

door. And yeah, it was just kind of a fizzling out sort of thing. But I was, I never stopped like enjoying the movies. And, you know, I didn't play role-playing games, tabletop role-playing games, but I had friends who had like the Star Wars source books from West End Games, which started, you know, publication right around the time that the other properties faded away, the toy stopped being made and stuff in 1987. And I would borrow those books from them and just pour over the pages, reading about stuff like, you know, the Karelian, like the whole trade piracy franchise they have going on and reading about the different competing ship manufacturers. You have like the Kuwait drive yards and you have, you know, the Ingram starships that are

being made and stuff like this. And it was all just like, wow, I don't remember any of this in the movie, but it's so cool. It just all felt really authentic. And, you know, so when Star Wars started to kind of make a comeback in 1991 with a publication of the Timothy Zon novels. And then that was followed immediately by Dark Horse comics getting the Star Wars license that Marvel had dropped and publishing Air to the Empire, not Air to the Empire, Dark Empire. I was like, wow, this is new stuff and it's cool and different and actually takes the story forward. I always wondered what happened to Luke Skywalker after all that was over. Now I know. So I kept reading the novels that were of wildly varying quality, reading some of the comics, which were of even greater varying quality.

And so, yeah, when Shadows of the Empire came out, I was like, yeah, why not? Well, this is kind of bad, but it's still kind of cool. It's like, okay, now you see how Leah got the Bausch outfit. Okay, I needed to know that. You know, it just all built up. And then the, as you mentioned, Chris, the reissues, the special editions came out. And that was very much at this point, like they were on the. road to hyping up episode one and building up toward this, this massive media franchise,

this tent pole event in pop culture history. And, you know, even behind the scenes, like, or not behind the scenes, but kind of off their marketing track, you had things like in, I want to say, 1993, 94, my college got a hold of prints of the original trilogy. And we actually had a night where, like, you know, a huge chunk of the student body got together in the amphitheater and watched all six movies back to, you know, from, from beginning to end. And people were like, freaking out about stuff like, hey, it's Wedg Antilles on screen. You know, they were cheering for like the most minute things.

It was like a Rocky Horror Picture Show midnight screening. Like this, this was just baked in. So, yeah, when episode one came out, there was a lot of expectation around it. And I went to see it on opening day. I didn't go to the opening night for the midnight screening, but, you know, that day I was there, like, for a showing I could get to. And I was like, wow, this is exciting and really cool looking. And I don't know. There's some stuff.

I feel a little weird about it. I need to see it again. So I went again over the weekend and was like, you know what? This is good, but it's not great. I think I had something else in my head. And then I had, you know, some friends say, oh, we want to go see Star Wars. You've got to come with us because you're like the Star Wars guy. I was like, oh, okay, yeah, go see it again.

And then a fourth time, I was like, man, four times seeing this movie in two weeks, it's just too much. You're like, me's it going to die. Exactly. Yep. It was like I had been taken over by the Trade Federation. It was awful. So, no, I don't hate the movie, though. Like, I definitely burned out on it thanks to kind of being dragged to it.

But I can see the good in it. And as you say, Benj, like, it's definitely an Autour movie, but very, very clumsy and weird. It's also trying to be like this, you know, massive multi-billion dollar franchise tent pole at the same time as being an Autour film. And that's, like, to me, I put this in the notes, but episode one is like the perfect finale to the 20th century of pop culture. because you have a 1970s film auteur who grew up, you know, going to, what was it, you see Berkeley or whatever or, I can't remember, some California college. He studied with, you know, Francis Ford Coppola. They were buddies.

They started, they did little indie movies together before they all hit it big with stuff like the Godfather and Jaws and Star Wars. And so you have that kind of baked in there, like this idea of here's a guy who has like ideas and vision, and he wants to make these movies. But his vision was that he grew up, you know, kind of like the kids who grew up watching Star Wars and were like, wow, I can't wait for episode one. He grew up watching serials like Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon and stuff like that. And, you know, that's what he wanted to make was movies like that, you know, space westerns that, you know, spoke to his predilections and loves, his love of 1950s, World War

two movies. And it's just all this big jumble, like everything pushing bigger and bigger, trying to combine things that should never be combined, like deeply personal films with media saturation and massive toy lines. And that's what you end up with is Star Wars Episode 1, which is this sprawling, fascinating, technologically groundbreaking, film where half the actors are just like kind of standing there reciting dialogue and everyone who tries to talk to Jar Jar Binks is basically staring into nothing because he wasn't actually there. It's, it's so weird.

It's such a weird movie. There was a guy wearing a hat. There was, but it's still like, there's still like this thousand yard stare whenever whenever Quigon Jen talks to Jarjar. You're like, yo, yo, the eyes are over here, buddy. Yeah. I mean, like, yeah, like there's a reason that. the big centerpiece of this movie is a chariot race.

It's the big Ben-Hur chariot race, right? Because that's what Lucas is looking to recreate is that sense of grandeur. And it's really cool, but it's not, it's not as good as, and, or weird as the chariot, the Ben-Hur rip-off in Jojo's Bizarre Adventure. So Lucas, you know, second tier right there. But it's like, the main problem with episode one, believe it or not, for me, is Matt paintings and miniatures. It would have been 10 times better if there were matte paintings and miniature sets, and they would have done, like, accentuate everything with the CG to get your vision on screen, but like make something real. Because the reason that the stuff in Star Wars looks so good is that it's real, and that they literally built like a little ship and blew it up, you know? Yeah, but you know, they've never actually said this over.

like explicitly stated this. But Star Wars episode one happened because of Jurassic Park. ILM Lucas's, you know, effects division did the groundbreaking CG for Jurassic Park. And I think, you know, that broke all kinds of records and basically pushed the state of special effects art into, you know, effectively into the next century. And I think Lucas looked at that and was like, I should do that with Star Wars. And so, yeah, episode one is very much a like trying to figure things out that period of CG where, you know, now

they do, studios, a lot of studios have gone back to like combining miniatures and digitally enhancing them. You have things like, I mean, obviously not everyone is doing

George Miller, Fury Road, but where, where, you know, they use CG to enhance what's already there. But you're right. Like,

they started doing that more in the, like the Disney Plus Marvel stuff. or Disney Plus Star Wars stuff where they use a combination of practical effects and like actual projections on those big Unreal Engine powered screens behind everyone

in addition to the CG elements and they're still figuring out the mix but it does make things look a lot a lot more grounded than episode of which has a tendency to look kind of like hey Star Wars has gone into the to Mist Island Yeah there's a lot I think there's a huge spread of like how stuff holds up in this movie.

I mean, they were obviously, you know, they were pushing the boundaries. They were doing a lot of really groundbreaking stuff for the time, but also still very obviously figuring out what was possible and how to do it best. And there is, I mean, there's some stuff that looks really good in this movie and also some stuff that doesn't. Like, it hit me like the very first scene, you know, the right at the beginning of the movie where you see like the droids and the giant walkers in the hangar of the trade federation ship.

Like that shot didn't look right. Right, like the lighting was off on the CG. But then there's a lot of... I mean, a lot of the ships actually look really good, I think. A lot of the tech and mechanical design, there's some really interesting designs. There's a lot of stuff that looks really. The city shots, they go back and forth, but some of them look really nice. They do.

I think the... I think the CG works really well for the things that are supposed to be, like, here's the pristine republic. Everything is beautiful and clean. So things like, you know, the Naboo Capital, the... Is that right? Yes. I'm just pretending that I didn't know that off the top of my head. So, yeah, like the Nabu capital and, you know, Amidala's spaceship, the silver reflective thing.

Like, those work really well as CG because they're supposed to be like almost unnaturally beautiful. Like here is, you know, the height of the republic before the collapse, before everything goes to crap because the empire takes over. So yeah, it's supposed to be a little bit unreal. It's supposed to be like heightened reality. Again, you know, Lucas looked very much to serial films that he watched growing up as a kid. And there are just, you know, visual cues pulled from Flash Gordon. Like when the Trade Federation, their view screen, that kind of rippling effect, like that has taken straight out of Flash Gordon serials. Like I've seen where they've said, yeah, like this was inspired by, you know, this episode of Flash Gordon or whatever.

and like you see it side by side and it's the exact same thing. So there are these omages to that sort of classic effect and style, but they've tried to make it look, you know, push it into the next generation of effects. And I agree. It doesn't always look right. But they tried and that's something.

My kids, I played this for my kids the other day. My oldest daughter said, this looks so fake. I wrote it down. And my younger daughter said, this is too old and yucky. I refuse to watch it Although she said When Jar Jar came on the screen

She said that guy is my favorite I like his voice It's funny So Jar Jar Jar Redemption And that's why he's there Yeah open world game from Rockstar. Jeremy, you mentioned

Amadella's ship, the silver like mirror ship, and I still really like that as a design and as a visual and as an idea because I feel like looking at that and the beauty of the Naboo capital,

Thede, I believe you said. It's Theid. That's a great contrast to the original trilogy where like, like, why wings are pickup trucks, right? Like, everybody's, you know, busted out hot rod that they have.

Yeah, it's not even, it's not even, um, yeah, if you watch the, uh, the prequels, you see Y-wings and they look different because by the time you get to the ones that the rebellion has, they've like scavenged the, the armor plating off of them to put elsewhere. So they're supposed to be like these fully encased ships, but the ones you see in, in the original trilogy, they basically, like, it's, it's running on their skeletons. But then you spend like an hour and a half of this movie on a planet where everything is junk, you know? So it doesn't lean into that contrast in the way that it should, which I think is a problem with the prequel trilogy in its entirety is that it doesn't really work as a prequel to the original trilogy.

Like, it doesn't make sense as what comes first. And a lot of that, I think, starts here. And on the subject of the CG, watching these movies, somebody said something about pro wrestling that really stuck with me. It was a wrestler who said it. And they were talking about people who like wrestling, but, you know, they watch the show every week and they hate it. And they're like, yeah, everything you love about this,

you love because they gave it to you. And everything we love about Star Wars, we love because George Lucas gave it to us, right? More or less, if you get right down to the root of it. And so you can't argue with these movies because this is exactly what George Lucas wanted. And coming out of the end of the prequel trilogy, I was like, oh, I don't like Star Wars because I can't argue with the guy who made it that he made it wrong. I have no idea what you just said. I want to say this, well, look, folks, go back and listen to it again. This brings me to an interesting point, too, that I feel like I like episode one better now because I saw episode two and three.

And I didn't know how bad it could get, you know, like I thought episode one was as bad as it was going to get. But episode two, it just has some of the most abysmal acting and lines and stuff of any film I've ever seen in my life, especially with such a huge budget. And episode three is just a huge downer. Like, it's just a tragedy and it's no fun. So, episode one can stand alone by itself as a fun little movie. And I feel like I've said this before on an ancient retronauts podcast. If it was just by itself, it wasn't a Star Wars thing, it would be a cult classic. It would be like one of those, like, I don't know, any kind of like fantasy space movie from the 80s, it's not Star Wars that people look back and they're like, wow, this is actually really cool.

Yeah. I don't know. The problem with that is that it's so obviously doing setup. up. Like, if it stands a lot, like, it doesn't really work standing alone because so much of it is so obviously laying the groundwork for what's to come. See, I think all of these things that you've, the three of you have just talked about are connected. And the, the ligament there is George Lucas. Like, the idea that it doesn't lean enough into the contrast between, like, Corrassant and Nabu and their opulence and luxury

and the fact that, oh, yeah, over on Tatooine, you have it. everything run by gangsters and everyone's living in poverty and their slavery. But it's also glossy. It's so fun and neat that you don't really feel it. Like, you know, supposedly the people of Nabu are suffering and dying under the Trade Federation's embargo. Like, that's an amazing plot device right there. That really brings in the kids a trade embargo. Wow. Yeah. But the thing is, you don't ever see the suffering of the Nabu people. It's just like, yeah, Amadala keeps talking about how it's bad, but it just looks like, you know, there's droids walking in the streets. Like, there's no violence.

There's no, you know, like the whole shootouts on the street or anything like that. It's one thing I noticed. It's too antiseptic. I noticed rewatching this movie that there is, I mean, it's Star Wars. There's not like blood or stuff. But like, it's completely devoid of violence to humans until like the final act. Yeah, it's very antiseptic. the first casualties in the movies are a couple pilots get shot when they're storming the castle.

Like, up until that only droids get destroyed. No, I mean, the pilots of Obi-Wan and Quigon's starship get vaporized very beginning. Oh, that's true. You're right. You're right. Yes. Other than that. Other than that, the only violence is against droids for like the middle, like, hour and a half of the movie. Yeah. I think that's the kid's movie thing. Yeah. Yeah. But, but it does get to, I think the problem with George Lucas, in that he is really, really great at coming up with ideas, worlds, visions, concepts, you know, all these things, just creating a place to go and exist and have adventures. But he's not great at necessarily making all the details work.

He's not good at getting great performances out of actors. And, you know, we saw that in the original trilogy where he directed the first movie. and it has this most stilted and corneous dialogue. And that's even with, you know, like Harrison Ford coming in and being like, Hey, George, I'm not going to say this like this because that's just bullshit. No one talks like that. George Lucas is brilliant for certain values of brilliant. Like, I will not take that away from him.

Directing human beings is not among his skills. No. And there's a reason that the most memorable stuff in Star Wars is Harrison Ford ad-libbing. And there's a reason that the only actor, in a. cast full of good actors that comes out of this entire thing like without seeming terrible

is you and McGregor who if you watch the behind the scene behind the scene stuff clearly is not listening to George Lucas's direction yeah he's just like I get to be a Jedi making his own noise he's the one having fun with it like we all know Natalie Portman is a great actress like she's been a great

actress since she was a kid in the professional yeah but you wouldn't know that from these movies I mean in the first movie you can almost forgive that because she's supposed to play like this, you know, implacable kabuki actress of a royalty.

Yeah, but then in the subsequent movies, it's kind of like, oh, yeah, someone needs a little better direction. Yeah, it's weird when she flips back and forth between the voices where she's like, it's like, I'm pet me, blah, blah, blah. And it's like, the trade federation must not be completed and whatever. You know, like there's one scene where she's not in, like, a queen makeup or whatever.

and she suddenly becomes the queen and she's like, okay, now I'm very sad and stern and, you know, like, that's a family thing. Princess Leia also did that in the original trilogy. She'd go from being like tough talking, you know, New Jersey gal to like putting on her British affectations to talk to. Sleep through your fingers? It's code switching. Politicians have to do it. It's part of the job. Absolutely. I think that's actually kind of fun in the movies. And you mostly see it with those two characters. Yeah. Now, the thing that will never make sense to me is that Nubu has a democratically elected 14-year-old queen. Teenage president. Yeah, 14-year-old queen. Like, I'm sure there's extended material that's tried to explain how this happened. I'm sure there is. It will still never make sense. It does not make sense. I've read it and it doesn't make sense. It's ridiculous.

But, yeah, like, you know, kind of getting back to the disconnect between visuals and what's actually being said. Like, if you really look, George Lucas throughout this trilogy is looking ahead to the moment in history that we are now as Americans and saying like, hey, I see where, you know, know, this is going and how democracy crumbles and how fascism rises. And, you know, there's a lot that I think in these movies is almost resonant with the present moment in history, but it's just not quite there yet. And, you know, Lucas wrote and directed all three of these films. So they are very much like pure, unexpurgated George Lucas's brain coming at you for six hours, you know, in IMAX. And it's interesting, but you really underscores the fact that the best Star Wars movie was directed by someone else.

Irving Kirshman. Yep. Because he just, you know, it's collaboration. Like, creating movies is a big task. And you need to collaborate with people to have the back and forth. I swear, I did not understand the plot of episode one until yesterday. I mean, the Trade Federation thing, who is fighting, who is the bad guy? Why are they doing this?

I didn't understand that for a very long time. It's palpatine playing both sides against the other, but what are the sides? It's a weirdly realistic plot of political intrigue that is way too complicated for a movie about Space Wizards. Yeah, like, it's kind of, you know, Lord of the Rings's Game of Thrones tier, like, in terms of the political machinations. But, yeah, it is, it does have, like, you know, a puppet that speaks in Germanic syntax, yes, Germanic syntax. Yes, Germanic syntax. And it has, you know, a weird, like, lizard man who is kind of doing a racist minstrel thing. And, uh, you know, it's...

There's a, there's the, the trade federation is the one that always gets me. It's like, how did that go on a movie screen? Yeah, you know, that's all dubbed over. And they played with different dub approaches. For a while, they were going to be, like, used car salesmen, which is a thing that Lucas really loves. Like C-3Pio was originally going to talk like a used car salesman. But at some point, I believe it was, I read Rick McCallum, was like doing reference research and found Thai accents and said, hmm, yes, we should make these evil, you know, money-grubbing businessmen sound

like Thai, they're from Thailand. It's very weird. Yeah. Like it accidentally, I think unintentionally channels the serial movies that George Lucas grew up with in that they had so much yellow peril running throughout them. And it accidentally, I want to give them the benefit of a doubt, I want to say, you know, accidentally just kind of leans into that way more than it should. It's, it's not, it's not something you can actually like point out and say, wow, this is evil. This is bad. But it just, it makes you uncomfortable. I think that. That also kind of comes back to the idea of Lucas as an archer, right? Like, you can't tell him no.

You can't tell them that's what these dudes don't. That's not what these dudes sound like. Yes. Have you watched the making of for this? Oh, I say the phrase, not for this one, but I say the phrase, it's like poetry. It rhymes at least three or four times a week. The making of behind the scenes that was included on the DVD for this movie is one of the most fascinating pieces of, you know, behind the scenes media. I've ever seen because it shows the ugliness of the creative process behind this movie.

It shows, like, it frequently shows the creators, you know, not just like Lucas, but also the producers and the, you know, the various high-ranking team members just kind of lost in a drift. They're like, we've got this idea and it's just not coming together. And they're all just kind of like sitting around in the conference rooms being like, oh, wow. you can tell they watch rushes and stuff and they're like this this isn't good but at the same time like everyone is being so careful to tiptoe around Lucas so he he you know there's times where you're just like someone needs to step up and say George you got to change this because he's like yeah

I don't know there's something that's not quite right about this but I like this part and everyone's just kind of like yeah George that's good yep when when clearly clearly you can see painted across their faces. That is not what's happening in their brains. Their brains are saying something else entirely. It really does give you just unprecedented insight

into how this movie happened the way it did. You got to say things out loud to another person. If you are in a creative field, get a person who is not invested in what you are doing and say a thing out loud to them. That has stopped

me from writing so many things. that would have been terrible in ways that I did not realize. But, like, you talk about this movie being so much set up. It sets up, it doesn't set up the right stuff, right? Like, we don't really see, like, obviously, Quigon and Obi-Wan are all through it. But we don't really see the Jedi at the height of their power. I mean, we get that in the later movies a little bit where they do nothing, except for they show up at the end of episode, too, and have a big fight.

with Kit Fisto, my main dog. He's so happy about using the force push against the broken C-3PO. He loves it. He's like, yeah, I've been waiting four movies to do this. Take that video. Kit Fisto and that dude with two brains. Love that guy. But we don't, you know, we have these Jedi dressed like Uncle Ben from Star Wars.

Yeah, dressed like, yeah, moisture farmers on Tatooine. Yeah, just wandering around a desert planet for most of the movie, which is. is what we have seen Jedi do before. We don't see Anagan do anything himself that is cool. We see you know them open a door with a lightsaber which was cool. Like I was like

this is a new use of lightsabers. Look at that. They have just sticking in the wall. Oh yeah. And they can run really fast and jump in real high and crazy. You do get like the hints in here of how like the fact that they've kind of become out of touch. Like like if you have

look for it, but I was, you know, watching it this time, I was like, okay, so the chancellor basically extrajudicially sent these two cops to fuck up the trade federation while the Senate was deliberating sort of, you know, just kind of outside the law. No, no, they were there to negotiate. Yeah, to negotiate, right. But like the Senate didn't even know they were there. And like, and then things like, like when Quigon takes, takes Anakin's blood to check for Middiclorians does not actually tell him what he's doing or ask him anything about it.

It's just a heap of violation. Yeah, I'm going to just take this kid's blood and analyze it for, you know, our own purposes and now decide that I'm going to basically kidnap him and take him with us. That never bothered me. I don't know what. The Jedi, yeah, the Jedi are kind of like, I mean, I think this movie does very effectively show a society that is in stagnation. I mean, the Senate is in gridlock I can't possibly imagine

what that's like in the real world and you know there are basically extrajudicial cops who can go around doing anything and kidnap children

if they want to like say hey your son you know we we cheated at dice and then he won a race so we're going to take our ill-begotten

earnings and take your kid off the planet and the other thing about that is he like enjoy your slavery though Right. Yeah. Like, he could have taken Schmee if he wanted to. Like, there's no question about that, right? He could have taken Schme with them. He didn't take Schmee because that would have anachan attachment and Jedi aren't supposed to have attachments and yada yada, bullshit. But like, yeah, this is obviously a super, like, more ethically questionable decision, like, which the Jedi don't care about at this point, you know? Well, they're like, no, you can't do this. Not because you abducted this grown child from his mother and left her in slavery, but because he's too old to be malleable, you know? He's not. he's not going to be brainwashed. Yeah, like totally, totally brainwashed by us.

Yeah. So, you know, when the Jedi fall, you're kind of like, whoa, that sucks and it's bad for the galaxy, but also, it's great. Is it that bad? Like, yeah, they made us hate the Jedi. That's why I hate the prequel trilogy. They are a bunch of idiots. They're like ineffective, weird, like cold, distant, like bureaucrats sitting around deciding things and what, like. But, I mean, that actually, to me, that's one of the brilliant parts of it is like, you know, what happens when you have basically unfettered power to travel throughout the galaxy doing whatever you want and you're you're powered by this kind of self-righteous morality, like the vision that you are correct, you are the light side of the force, not the dark side, they're the bad guys. And, you know, I think the idea is that the quagon is supposed to be sort of one of the few Jedi who can actually see through. all of that and kind of chart his own path, but he still does a lot of the bad stuff. He's like, let's steal a kid from Tatooine. Why not? Let's cheat Wado out of his human ownership. And I feel like they had to do this. You know, there has to be a reason why the Jedi fell. You know, there's all these Jedi and, you know, there's two Sith. So, like, why did this happen? There has to have been something wrong. Like, there was, but it ruined my childhood. That's the thing. Sorry about that. We looked back. We looked at this.

the, you know, in the original trilogy, the Jedi were this mystical force that propel, that have the power and a weapon that propels the hero to overtake an evil empire. Then we look back, then the trilogy, they're a bunch of incompetent weirdos with lightsaber sitting around.

They're clean, they're weird, they're not fun. They're not like rusty and dirty and cool, like in the episodes 4 through 6. Like, I would imagine them being like a cowboy or something, like some kind of cool, like gunslinger. Instead, they're like these haughty, you know, I don't know how to describe it. I don't

know. There should not be a Jedi organization. So you should think they should be non-denominational as opposed to like the Methodists. They should be wandering Ronan. Yeah. There you go. Here's the thing. Okay, I'm glad you said Ronan because, you know, the entire idea behind Jedi was taken from samurai films. You don't say. And they are meant to be. like to me it's totally it totally lines up like samurai were you know sort of the official licensed uh sword police of the daimyo you know the the ruler of that area in ancient japan or feudal japan not really that ancient um and it makes sense that they kind of fill that function here and someone like obiwan becomes a ron because the entire

dimeo the entire kingdom collapses um that should have already happened by the time we start this movie. I don't know. It all, it all seems consistent to me. Because, like, one of the big things that bothers me about this is, A, the character of Yoda is destroyed in these movies. Yon is a, like, it ruins Yoda as a character by contradicting stuff that we see later and making him an incompetent buffoon. The other thing is, like, in Star Wars, Hansa Loo is like, oh, a gentleman. Yeah, that ancient religion. Dog, do you mean 20 years ago? Yeah. Do you mean, like, when this movie came out, this ancient movie? A lot of these problems are obviously, like, the timeline getting compressed, like, because they wanted to show, they wanted to show the fall of the Republic. They wanted to show the Clone Wars, all these things that were referenced in the original movie. Yeah, the way the original trilogy is written, I feel like this history should have been spaced out like about 10 times as much as it actually was. Sort of. But I mean, like, the original trilogy kind of makes it explicit that, you know, the fall of the Republic happened, you know, in part because of the rise of the emperor and Darth Vader. So, you know, it's tough. It's, like, it does raise the question. Like, do prequels need to exist? And I'm willing to say, no. Although I am watching Better Call Saul now. And actually, that's really good. So who's to say? Also, I was thinking, who's to say this prequel trilogy doesn't deserve a prequel trilogy? Like, will they do that someday? Let's just go back. Keep going back.

Let's see the Jedi being assholes for three movies. Buddy, I have some great news for you. Star Wars is currently owned by the Disney Corporation. So yes, you will be getting every corner of this universe explored. I mean, this, I wanted to put this episode together because of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the show. So there you go. Look, prequels break stories because a good story has a beginning and in life, there are no beginnings and ends. It's a continuum of crap.

Wow, that was very Yodaish. is an arc that has a beginning and an end and you are breaking those walls and extending it out and it just ruins that encapsulation i think that's never make a prequel ever again anyone Class is back in session. Class is back in session, and HyperX has the grade A gear you need for dorm life, remote classes, and for schooling folks online. Shop the HyperX back-to-school deals going on at HyperX.com to help make your return to student life a breeze. Comfortable cloud headsets can help keep you focused in as you cram for finals

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I'm Ryan. The Lion is always a dot to me. And I'm Mark. How are you doing? And we are a podcast of two friends watching Friends. We live in every episode of the TV show Friends in all its glory, they'll be behind the scenes and discussing all our favourite moments. Join us as we get reacquainted with some old friends and hopefully make some new ones only on the HyperX Podcast Network. Well, I'm glad you said that, binge, because that takes us into the actual discussion that I've outlined in this episode that we are now an hour into.

You say that, you know, Star Wars had a beginning and an end. And yes, the original Star Wars is great because, it is the only movie in the entire trillet or the entire nonology that stands alone as a film. But it has all these hooks for before and after. You know, Darth Vader lives at the end. And also, where did Darth Vader come from? Oh, the Senate. They're breaking up the Senate.

How did that happen? What is the Republic Senate? Oh, what are the Clone Wars that Leah's father fought with Obi-Wan in? This is amazing. But, you know, when George Lucas wrote Star Wars, the original movie, he wrote something like eight drafts of it. Those things were all over the place. I don't know if you've read these drafts. So, Chris, you must have read these drafts.

Believe it or not, I have not. I did read the, I know your outline mentions the novelization and Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster, which I have read. But I've never read the, the Star Wars drafts. So his Star Wars drafts are all over. the place. Eventually, everything gets whittled down to just what we saw in 1977 on the screens. Well, what came out for screens in 1977, and we saw later. But his ideas spanned much further in all directions. And there was all this backstory stuff that he wrote that ended up being called. But that stuff existed in the 70s. Like, when he sat down to write the Phantom

Minis, he basically just brought up his 20-year-old notes. and said, all right, let's, let's, you know, rework this into something. He had, like, 15 pages of notes or something that he turned into a full screenplay. But if you read those old drafts so much of, you know, this movie does not exist as it is in those drafts, but there are all these different elements that he kind of cherry-picked and pulled together, everything from, like, big concepts about the Jedi and about the rise of the emperor to individual names, like all throughout this, the, uh, the notes that he wrote, this character named Mace Windy keeps showing up. And he finally got to

have Mace Windy on screen, but I think he realized, like, that sounds really dumb. So it's going to be Windu now. And we're going to, you know, make it Samuel L. Jackson because that guy can sell anything. But yeah, like the groundwork for this was all laid down. Does it necessarily mean that it needed to exist as a film franchise of its own? I don't know about that. But But it's not like this stuff was just kind of spun out of nothing. And he sat down and said, like, well, those were pretty good movies. I should, you know, figure out where everything came from. Like, he already knew in his weird notes and his success addled brain or whatever. And, you know, during the sort of peak of Star Wars popularity, like 1980, 81, he was always talking about, you know, well, you know, I really kind of conceived this as nine movies, which isn't quite true. But he talked. talked about, you know, making a prequel trilogy and a sequel trilogy. And then I think Star Wars, the Return of the Jedi, was such a grueling, miserable experience that he said, you know what, I don't actually want to do any of these anymore. And he stepped away for a long time. He also

didn't want to just become the Star Wars guy. He was like, what if I could become the Howard the Duck guy also? Wouldn't that be great? So, yeah, he took a big break. But I think that, from what I understand, his divorce from Marsha Lucas really kind of wiped him out financially. And so, you know, in the 90s, he started kind of thinking, maybe I should make some money again. And that's where the whole train started getting back into motion again. And Star Wars came back for better, for worse. Yeah. I want to say, as a continuation of what you said, I love the fact that he did these backslash.

stories and had this richness of all these characters and everything. And that's what made the original trilogy, episodes 4 through 6, so believable and lived in and beautiful. But to me, the power of the mystical past is that you don't know exactly what happened. It's not explicitly explained. Like, if we had a video camera back when Jesus is walking around, you know, or like, I don't know, like, I'm not going to go there, but some other kind of ancient. I would solve a lot of debates. Yeah. I mean, like, it wouldn't be near. nearly as exciting as what we have passed down through the stories in the Bible or these other ancient tales and epics and stuff.

I mean, the epic of Gilgamesh, as a documentary, I don't know if it would be that exciting if we really knew what happened. But hearing these tales echoing down through the ages, that really fuels like what's going on. So when they talked about like the Clone Wars and the original thing, it's like, whoa, the Clone Wars and your imagination just blooms, like, thinking, oh, my gosh, think about all the stuff that happened before, and Obi-Wan was a warrior in the Clone Wars and stuff. And it turns out actually seeing Obi-Wan as a warrior in the Clone Wars is not that great.

It's not as cool as you could possibly imagine it. So he's kind of the only cool thing about some of those movies. Okay, so he's the greatest thing about it. Okay, sure. But seeing that seed explicitly, you know, it was a seed for an imagination that propelled the film of Star Wars episode four or whatever. and that trilogy forward but actually seeing it worked out when Lucas had to actually work out

how it would actually work and everything it's just it can't match that mystical fantasy in your brain like anyway that's how I feel Chris what do you think? Yeah I feel like the you fix a lot of problems and I know that everybody

has their armchair screenwriter version of the Star Wars prequels I've, I got a really good one that I came up with on a drive from Durham to Greensboro one year. Does it star a character named Jarbulba? No, it stars a character named Chris Sky Walker, Luke S. Mary Stu Walker. But like, I feel like you would fix a lot of problems with this if there's no Jedi Council.

And it's just the Senate who's kind of in charge of this stuff and they take an akin to them. And they're like, no. And then that, like, that way we get to see the Senate make a choice that leads to consequences instead of the Rube Goldberg machine of political machinations that we have in this movie, which is about space wizards. That would be great. I agree. I, you know, Benj, I agree that I think maybe the biggest crime this movie commits. is that it does sort of go up to our imaginations all the things that we created in our brains while our imagination is sleeping and put a pillow over its face and just slowly wait for our

imagination's chest to stop rising and falling. You know, if you look at the extended universe stuff, expanded universe stuff that was coming out in the 90s, it's really interesting because the early stuff really played with some of the ideas that were mentioned, referenced in the films. But then there were other, you know, as you get closer and closer to episode one, there were other concepts that start to kind of come into play that the books are afraid to actually touch on or maybe feel they can't. So like the early stuff, the Timothy Zon books and the comics, Air to the Empire, Dark Empire, both of those say, oh, Clone Wars, that's a thing. That's going to be fun to explore.

and they come up with all these really interesting ideas about clones. Like, you know, the Air to the Empire book, it's about like a Jedi who was sent on an extra-galactic exploration mission and disappeared, but then he has a clone who's gone nuts and wants to take over. Are you talking about my man Joris Cabez? I am. And eventually they clone Luke. And you can tell it's a clone because his name is Luke with extra... X reused. Joris also has two use.

If anyone is wondering, that's how you can tell their clones, because they, they expand their, their vowels. They have diphthongs. Could have called him Tuk. Oh, they could have.

Or Duke. Duke would be good. That's very good. Man, see, it's that screenwriter and all of us. But, but, yeah, anyway, so there's a lot of stuff with clones, especially, yeah,

also Air to the Empire is base, or no, Dark Empire is basically episode 9's plot, but better. And that's, stuff has played around with, and it all gets totally overwritten. But then some of the later books, it's like, Luke and Leah want to find out more about their mom. So they kind of go on this

galactic vision quest to find their mom. And they never really find anything. But, but, like, it just always plays with the idea of like, hey, is mom out there? What happened to her? Did she live? Did she die? And it's just like spinning the wheels because, you know, eventually episode one would come along a couple of years later and be like, no, this is their mom. She's cool. She's Natalie Portman. She wears kabuki makeup. It's a thing. Anyway, so the actual Clone Wars, not as cool as the one we all had in our heads or even in our books. But what can you do? Yeah, like, I don't have my own screen, screen, play screenwriter.

I am not a screenwriter. I just wish the prequels had had some competent screenwriter and director take a crack at them. George Lucas had his own. connected script doctor baked in. Carrie Fisher stepped in. It was like, they've never actually said what she did for episode one and two. But apparently she helped kind of guide the dialogue along. Yeah, and I know she's done good things.

She wasn't nearly as heavily involved. Yeah, for other movies. I mean, I don't know how heavily she was involved. I shudder to think how much worse it might have been if she hadn't touched it. Exactly. Like, how bad was it before then? Well, apparently she just did one and two. so episode three is your answer.

And that's the best one. No, just kidding. I just contradicted myself. How dare you. But, yeah, like the original Star Wars trilogy, those scripts were all heavily worked on by Marsha Lucas. And the Empire Strikes Back and Return the Jedi weren't even written by Lucas.

Like, he outlined them, but then they were written by... Lawrence Cadden. Lawrence Kasden. and Lee Brackett, was it? Yes, Lee Brackett. Yep. Started it. She wrote Empire Strikes back and, yeah, she passed away before it was finished.

Well, that was a smart move of Lucas stepping back and saying, you can play in my universe. That's a good thing for these, you know, competent writers and directors. The interesting thing is that he actually, he didn't want to direct these movies. I think he remembered how grueling Return of the Jedi was. So he was like, he went to Ron Howard, he went to Steven Spielberg, he went to Robert Zemeckis. all these, you know, people kind of in his orbit who were great at creating, you know, big hits, you know, tent pole franchise type material. And he was like, guys, guys, you could make a Star Wars. And they all said, ah, we're good, George.

Thanks anyway. Yeah. I just read that, like, they thought it was too daunting and too epic and too crazy and big. Plus, they had, they would have had George Lucas breathing down there next the whole time, probably, too. Like, I don't know about that George. Yeah, I mean, Ron Howard did step in and, and, uh, bring solo to the screen after that collapsed on itself. Now, that's a prequel that we did not need.

That's a rough one, buddy. Rogue one was cool, though, right? Right. Yeah, but that wasn't Ron Howard. Yeah, I know. I will say that Ron Howard's daughter, Dallas Bryce Howard, has consistently directed the best Star Wars stuff for Disney Plus. Like her work on Mandelorraine is always just like,

God dang, her stuff for Book of Bobat where she was like, Let's not talk about BobaFet. Let's just do Mandalorian stuff. Didn't fit at all. It had no business being there, but it was really good. The Mando stuff has been great. But now I'm sitting here, I'm sitting here trying to imagine what, like, Robert Zemeckis' episode one would look like, and it's kind of hurting my brain. I haven't watched Mandalorian because I don't like, I don't like that little thing.

I don't like that little guy, and I don't like his dumb name, even though dumb names are a Star Wars tradition. Yeah, they shouldn't have named him. That was one of those things. Just leave him Baby Yoda forever. I love the mandolary. Yeah, Mandelaarie is great. Except the parts where Luke Skywalker shows up because they completely bongled it. They should have recast him as a human being, not a face, like a computer face.

It wasn't terrible, I didn't think. But that's my opinion. I mean, that's not going to ruin the entire series for me. Yeah, I mean, he's in it for like, you know, 15 minutes anyways. Anyway. So episode one. How about that movie? Yeah, by all accounts, it was in production for six years, beginning, you know, with Lucas starting to write the drafts and active production for about four or five years.

And by all accounts, which seems to be verified by that making of documentary I was talking about, it was kind of horrible, just a shit show from start to finish. Sorry, parents who were listening to this with your kids. hmm okay so here's what they were working on for five years everything about the scenery the designs of the like the aliens and the ships are amazing in this film there's a lot of good designs of the mechanics of the robot things that fold open and shoot you like the ships that dispense the robots and packs of like little like suitcases full of little robots that come down I love the roll were the rolling ball robots The droidicas.

Yeah. And, man, the ships, the designs, the set designs, the costumes, I mean, all that is incredible. It's like second to none. If now, if you could only just put an incredible story on that, you know, it would be unstoppable. Again, I feel like the story is actually good. It's just, okay. It's just not expressed well. There's good ideas in the story.

Yeah. It's just how it's put together. Okay. So the plot is good. The story is iffy. It's not a horrible film. I just watched it again yesterday, and I enjoyed most of it. Like, it's just, it's not a horrible film. Like, I thought it was in 1999. I don't know. All of you are wrong. Okay. It's a masterpiece and we love it. Is that better, Chris?

Yes. There we go. That's, yeah, unimpeachable. 10 out of 10, no notes. Excellent. Okay. Episode over. No, it has a bad plot and a bad story. I disagree. And bad ideas. Plot is good. I really stand behind, like, the concept behind everything. Again, you know, like, showing the galaxy, it's sort of its America 2020 state of peak decadence and everything is, like, very stratified between the haves and the have-nots.

everything's being patrolled by laser sword police who can do whatever they want. All of that is, it's very interesting and, you know, it gives you a taste of what the Galactic Republic was like at its height without necessarily having to have, you know, try to create a dramatic story in this utopian society. But we're showing what happens, we see what happens when the utopia really isn't and it starts to break down. And like the concept of the Sith rising to power, not through, you know, just direct conquest, but rather by manipulating and corrupting what was already there, all of that's really interesting. Like, that's a much more not only realistic, but intriguing, I think would be the correct word, kind of pathway to power than just, you know, we have a bunch of star destroyers with planet destroying weapons on them. and there's a whole fleet just hanging out here and then we're going to take over the galaxy that way. Yeah, no thanks.

But the idea of like, here's the system and the system is breaking down and there's someone who recognizes that and has not only the vision to come up with a scheme to take advantage of it and play the sides against each other, but also, you know, like the magic space powers to sort of acclude the minds of the people

who should be able to figure it out. like that's that's all really good it's just not delivered well it's not explained well but but the the premise the idea behind it is all really sound and to me that's a like that's a interesting take on palpatine's rise to power i also really like the fact that this this movie and the one after it both try to be really coy about the fact that yes palpatine our lovable senator Senator here is actually Darth Sidious, who is actually the emperor. Pay no attention to the fact that

these men are all played by the same actor. That could be a coincidence. And the fact that they tried to... Yes, a good old sheave. Sheave palps. Old sheave in the universe. The fact that they try to,

you know, the script and the direction tries to obscure this fact actually kind of drove people crazy back in the day. And there were all these amazing theories about how one or the other of Palpatine and Darth Sidious was a clone, and one of them was like the true force behind everything, and the other was going to have to die or something. And maybe Palpatine was the clone, and Sidious was going to kill him and then step in and take his place. And no, the most obvious, like it was Occam's razor, like, you know, with a lightsaber blade on it. Just no. It's the same guy. Yes, exactly. But I find that really fascinating. There's something I didn't know till yesterday is that he is the Phantom Menace. Like, I had, what is the Phantom Menace? Like, what the hell is that?

Who is it? You know, what does that mean? It's him because he's behind the scenes manipulating everything. Yeah. But, yeah, the movie doesn't make that very clear. Yeah. Like, I agree with both Jeremy and Chris here because, like, rewatching this now, I actually really honestly enjoyed piecing together everything Palpatine was doing, like watching him

in the scenes as the emperor and as Palpatine and how it all fit together. And it kind of makes sense. And it's pretty cool. But also fitting that into this, as Chris says, the space opera about space wizards running around, like, it's not an easy thing to do. And it wasn't done super well. Like, you know, I did not. I do not remember getting almost any of how the political machinations actually fit together when I watched this back in 1999. You've watched a few times to see how it all works together.

This movie is not good. So long. But independent of anything else, what you just said, Jeremy, contains good ideas. They are not good Star Wars ideas. They are not good ideas that this universe is built to support. This universe is built to support ideas that you can express in one sentence. Well, here's the thing. Okay, a few weeks ago, I read a really great article in, I don't know, it was some online film focus magazine, Vulture or something.

You know, this movie was being written around the same time that Brian De Palma's Mission Impossible was in theaters. And Mission Impossible took a 1960s, you know, kind of simplistic spy thriller TV series where they took, you know, complex espionage plots and made them television palatable. Not just television palatable. We're not talking like peak TV of the modern era where you can, you know, really stretch and get deep. We're talking like 1960s television, 1970s, and then the 80s reboot, like, you know, simple stuff. And De Palma took that premise, that property and created a story with a really pretty complicated storyline to it about, you know, manipulation and betrayal and espionage. But it's, if you watch the movie, it all plays out so clearly because it's so. good at telegraphing what's actually happening while characters are saying another thing.

It was one of the first times I remember going to a movie and coming out of it while everyone around me was like, what just happened? And I was like, oh, yeah, okay, so this and then that and then that and like piecing it together based on what was being said versus what was being shown at the same time. And this article pointed out the fact that like the linchpin of Mission Impossible, is the, you know, the De Palma movie is when Tom Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, realizes, like, what has actually happened and the fact that his, his former boss, Jim Phelps, is behind everything. Sorry for the spoiler. But it takes sort of the, the disastrous scene from the beginning of the movie where everything goes wrong. And suddenly Ethan Hunt is,

you know, pinned as a traitor to America who murdered all his teammates, even though we know that didn't happen, it takes that and recontextualizes it as Jim, like, explains his plot, you know, like, tells everything about, you know, he basically tells a misleading story. He's lying to Ethan the entire time about what's happened and basically outlining a fictitious version of events. Meanwhile, Tom Cruise is just like sitting there and not reacting at all, But the editing, you're seeing like what Ethan is visualizing and how he's like piecing together Jim's story with what he actually experienced and saying, oh, this is what happened. This is how Jim pulled it off. This is how he murdered this person and how he set up this other person and how he blew up this car and who was his accomplice.

And it takes this like brief maybe three, four minutes scene. and the entire movie, you know, comes together at that point, and if you're kind of like watching and piecing together everything that's happened, it all suddenly makes sense. And that leads into the finale. And, you know, it also makes it clear that Ethan understands what's happening. Like he gets it, even though he's not showing it outwardly. So when he, you know, like, manages to win the day at the very end and turn the table on gym, turn the tables on gym, it's not some like Deos X Machina. It's all. all is consistent with the story. So to me, like, that movie is a great example of how you can take a simple pop culture property and do something more subtle, more sophisticated, more advanced with it. I feel like that's what they were trying to do with Star Wars. And I think, I think there's another, I think there's another casualty there of the fact that this movie is set up in a lot of ways because there's a lot of it that's all about Palpatine's machinations, and nobody in the movie actually figures that out by the end of the movie. Still, nobody knows Palpatine is doing

this. No one is seeing the fall of the Senate and the rise of the empire coming, except maybe the audience. The soundtrack gets it. The soundtrack knows. Because you hear the Imperial March hinted at when he's like, we will take great interest in your career. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so like the audience is supposed to be piecing this together, but there's no opportunity to, like, tie stuff together in the film because none of the good guys know what's going on yet. Like, the larger plot that's in motion is still totally shrouded in mystery as far as any of the characters are concerned. That's why I think you can watch this as its own little thing and think, oh, the good guys won, and that's it. No more Star Wars after that. Just cut it, cut it off there.

Also, none of that involves the main character of this trilogy, Anakin Skywalker. Right. He's not involved in any of that. He's there incidentally, yeah. He's not, he is not part of the inciting incident of this trilogy. Yeah. Well, I mean, he accidentally blows up this Trade Federation starship. That's something, right?

He doesn't do it accidentally. He does it by spinning, which is a good trick. Yeah, it is a good trick. It is pod racing. You know, the thing is, the original outlines for this, the original script had him as a 14-year-old, which, you know, makes a lot more sense than a nine-year-old. Like, at least at 14, like you can pilot an Ava. So you can definitely become a Jedi.

But then Lucas was like, no, no, the Jedi kidnapped children and indoctrinate them from infancy. So that's not going to make – that doesn't work. So let's make him nine, which is still too old. So – Somebody should have stopped him at – Hang on, they do what? He's too old. Yeah, and then we also get that nine-year-old hitting on the 14-year-old, which also makes no sense.

No, no. The nine-year-old who then ages ten years. Disney has made weird all change that lyric from hitting on the queen to talking to the queen. Thank you. He was hitting on the queen. He thinks she's an angel. That line is really weird, too. And Angel, like, now there's a race of aliens in the Star Wars universe that some people call angels, which we've never heard of and never hear of again.

I mean, there's a hell in Star Wars, because that's where Han Solo is going to see you. I mean, it's pretty weird because she only has two eyes, but whatever. I want to talk about something this movie does, I think, relatively well, which is the casting, I think is actually pretty good. Like, Jake Lloyd got so much crap for this, but he's actually, I think he's okay. One of the things that notice, so he's got a lot of stupid lines where he was stupidly directed. I think, but I did notice, one of the things I noticed watching this time is in the Padres scene, his totally dialogue-less acting where he's struggling to put his pod back together is actually pretty good, especially for like a nine-year-old. I think so. Yeah, he's not doing badly.

I mean, I think it's the same problem that all the rest of the actors have in the movie is that a lot of the dialogue was not very good. A lot of the directing they were given was not very good. But he's doing fine with what he's got. If Natalie Portman comes off like a wooden board, like it's bad news for everyone else. Yeah, the casting's fine, I think I mean, in some ways the casting was the only thing that held this together in the face of terrible dialogue.

You McGregor and Ian McDermott are both very good. And, I mean, Liam Neeson is very good. He's okay, yeah. I don't have any problem with Liam Neeson. Yeah, I like Liam Neeson. He's not good in this, but... You don't think so? He has a very specific set of skills.

Skills he has acquired over a long career. He will track you down. He will find you. He will be so impressed with your midichlorian count that he will steal you from your mom. We could have called this Taken. We could have called this Star Wars Episode 1, Taken. Damn.

Thank you for saying Jake Lloyd's name because all I've been able to think for the past, like, hour and a half is Jared Letto. And I'm like, I know that's not right. That's an adult. He's a bad actor. But no, Jake, Jake Lloyd is perfectly fine in this movie and got, he and Hayden Christensen both got a ton of shit that they did not deserve because fans are. things are horrible. Yeah, they are. But in the balance, I think Jake Lloyd did a better job than Hayden Christensen, unfortunately.

But it may have nothing more to do with what Hayden Christensen was fed to say and how he was told to act in those films, which is just didn't work out. I've seen him in other films, and he's quite good. Yeah. And I mean the time when he shows up in Obi-Wan, like, all of that's good. You think so? When he looks like he's 50 years old, but he's playing himself at like 19 or something. That's those scenes.

I mean, I mean, you got to work with what you got there too. Hey, look, Clone Wars Age a guy. How about Jar Jar? I just read Michael Jackson expressed interest in playing Jar Jar Binks. What? But he wanted to do it in prosthetic makeup while George Lucas wanted to do it in CGI. That's what Wikipedia says. I'm at best also got a lot of shit.

they didn't deserve, because none of this is his fault. Ahmed Best? Oh, yeah. No. Oh, no, no. They've done a good job of, like, giving him a, you know, another chance, you know, with the Star Wars trials show or whatever that's called, where he's basically, you know, Jedi Master Ahmed Best. Like, it's, it's nice that he's had that chance to be in the franchise and not be this magnet for people being shitty. Yeah. Yeah, but I would say I don't mind Jar Jar Jar as much as I did because I was, when I was, let's say, 18 years old, I thought I was so sophisticated and mature. And wow, why would I watch this stupid children's character bumble around and do all this in my favorite? You know, but now I'm 41.

I have kids. They like Jar Jar Jar. I think this is actually kind of cool, you know? So, you know, sir, it's ridiculous in a lot of ways, but it's not, it doesn't bother me nearly as much as it did back. then, and I don't know. That's really surprising to me, because even, like, obviously I was, you know, in my late teens when this movie came out, so I, I recognize that Jar Jar is a bad character, like, badly written and badly characterized. But even when I was a kid, like, I never liked, I never liked the bumbling idiot with zero redeeming qualities. Mm-hmm.

And Jar Jar Jar has no redeeming qualities. Wait, you don't like Orko? Oh. No, I didn't like Orko. I feel, yeah, I feel like, you know, I mean, it's to some extent Charger's filling a role that, like, the droids did in the original version of as comic relief cutaways. And I feel like the droids just worked a lot better just because, I don't know, the droid humor feels more Star Wars, whereas Jar Jar Jar ends up leaning into, like, fart jokes. And like, there's no second gungan that's cool. Yeah.

Like, there is with the droids. The droids are a buddy act. I mean, Captain Purple is cool, but he's only there for, like, two minutes. Yeah, yeah. Jump. Jaja. Well, you know, I like the droids in this. The one, when C3Pio said, this floor is not entirely stable, you know, I thought that was hilarious when I first saw it. Yeah, but you have to stop his thing. Like it was really in character with C3Pio. Dark Vader made C3Pio. Yeah, that never, yeah. That never made any sense. How did nobody find those kids when one of them was like at his uncle's house and the other one like had the, you know, like, had the.

a droid that he built? How did that happen? In fairness, when he built C3PO, he was naked, just wires and stuff. And eventually they put gold plating over him. Well, and he's a standard kit, evidently. I mean, there's protocol droids show up all over the place. Yeah. But he did have the same thing.

And R2D2 is in every single scene with every single character all the time throughout these whole, all these films. Nobody notices. I mean, to a degree, like, you know, especially the astromic droids like R2D2, they're kind of meant to be just sort of background scenery, like people just sort of take them for granted. When you have the characters who are like, you know, have a

close bond with their droids, it's actually kind of supposed to be unusual. Like, it's Yeah, they're just off-the-shelf hardware. You're a little friendlier with that droid than we really understand. So I think that kind of works. Yeah, like having Darth Vader makes C3PO. I thought that was dumb. Really bad creative choice. It was really stupid. It's also pretty weird to think about the

princess of an entire planet it having like an Apple 2E. Right? Because he's a 20 year old, like he's a 25 year old droid built by a child. This is like a princess having the vio that I got and watched that VCD on. Chris, when you find out what the American government runs on and how they power our NASA space flights, you are going to flip. And also this is just for. droids. This is just before everything

and the galaxy went to crap because of the Imperial takeover, too. So, like, apparently like, you know, there were, I have to imagine there were a lot of chip shortages, you know, after the Empire took over. Nobody was building new stuff anymore. So you're just using all the old stuff. By the way, this movie,

when I just watched it, I noticed a lot of the props hanging around were obviously identifiable items that I never noticed before, like these trackball things. There's at least two of those hanging in an Anakin's thing and like a shovel from a Play Kids set and like the handle of like a toy wheelbarrow. Like it's all painted silver and dangling around.

Yeah, all the movies have that just because prop people have fun. It's called Greebling. Anakin has a full Jansport backpack from Target when he leaves Tasurine. And the razor blade handle is the little communicator thing that he can plug things into that Liam Neeson uses. I mean, you know, this goes back to the ice cream maker that's now, famous because of Empire Strikes Back, but like just prop people have fun. Well, but the other cast members like Samuel L. Jackson is Mason Windew. That was, at the time, I knew him mostly through Pulp Fiction, you know, and I thought, wow, this is really out of place.

It doesn't really seem right. But now, I don't know in retrospect, I don't mind as much. What do you guys think? Say Middy Chlorians again, Mother Effer. He had been in like 60 movies at that point. Yeah. I mean, I knew him from Jurassic Park. Die Hard 3. No, actually, I totally forgotten that was him until, you know, many years later.

He was in Coming to America as one of the guys like the shotgun. I remember that. Yeah, no, I mean, Samuel L. Jackson is basically just being Samuel L. Jackson here. But I kind of wonder if that's because he's sort of taken on the public persona of movies like this and Pulp Fiction. I don't know. Anyway, he does this thing. That's good. He's got a purple lightsaber, but you don't get to see this movie. Thanks to him, we have purple lifesavers, yeah. So that's good. Oh, Ray Park as the martial arts champion, Darth Mall. Yeah, Ray Park. Also a gymnast flipping around everywhere. I don't know.

Ray Park is, like, his, like, I think he's great. Yeah. You think so? I mean, I know you didn't like the, like, flipping around choreography, but, like, I mean, I just, he's, he's a great stunt guy. This is something I noticed when I first watch it. I was like, okay, they're fighting, but it doesn't look like they're fighting. It looks like a choreographed dance, and they're just twas. whirling around spinning and stuff and it didn't look real or gritty or dirty or dangerous or

anything like that. I mean, it's way better than when the same fight becomes like all CG, like them doing completely impossible things in some of the later prequels. Yeah, I think the big, you know, the big duel here, the duel of fates, if you will, good music, by the way. It walks a good line between sort of like CG excess and the sort of, dudes hitting each other, hitting at each other with swords, with sticks, the original trilogy. It's dynamic and energetic, but at the same time, it still looks like they're mostly, it's

like wire foe, you know, it's a little stylized and unrobustic, but... You can still follow it, unlike when you're flipping it at five times a second. It still has, you know, like the sense of mass and actual interaction between humans, which you lose a lot in CG. I'd say that's one of the high points of the film, but the problem. But the problem with that is that I think Lucas looked at the finale of, or the climax of Return of the Jedi and was like, there's three different storylines here, you know, three different things we're cutting between. They all sort of rise to a, you know, like everything's hopeless at the same time. And then they all resolve immediately after.

And he tried to do that here with four different storylines. And it falls out of sync and it takes the attention away from, you know, each individual scene too often. So you've got the Jedi fighting Darth Maul, which is cool. You've got the space battle where Anakin saves the day accidentally by spinning. You've got Amadala's infiltration to the palace, which seems kind of superfluous. And then even more superfluously, you have all the gun guns fighting the droids basically to provide a distraction for the droid army so that the space battle can happen in the palace infiltration. So it's all a little muddied and it jumps away from each. seen too much to quite work. I wish they had

toned that down a little. Yeah, but also, I mean, it also feels like the space battle is there just to be, Star Wars has to end with a space battle. Like, and Anakin needs something to do. And like, that's why it exists, which is kind of, you know, Natalie Portman's really long, pointy gun is cool. It's unexpected. And there are long pointy ships in space that are really long and sharp and pointy. Is there a point here?

There's a big point. I don't know. I do feel like the duel with Darth Mall, like, if anyone who was into Star Wars says that they did not lose their minds when there was a lightsaber that was actually two lightsabers, that person was lying. Yeah. That was cool. I also feel like there's, like, it's kind of the most Star Wars. that this movie gets because it's a big weird fight over a big weird bottomless pit that's there for no reason. I don't know what that room does. I don't know what that room does and why it's a bottomless

pit. And why it has all these shields that open and close and rainbow sequence. Yeah, that was a very like video game level moment in that fight. I liked it, though. It did add a lot of dramatic tension. It did. It was great. Like, like, it's the setup is extremely video game, but then you get there, And it's this intense character moment where it shows so much about all three characters in this fight in how they react when they're momentarily cut off, which is kind of beautiful. The scene where Darth Ball is stalking back and forth on the other side of the shield, like a caged animal, just wade to strike while Quigon is meditating. Yeah. That's, that is like, that's good. You're like, oh, it's not subtle, but it's great.

That's Jedi. I like this. Yeah. I also really like that Quigon's not. good at fighting. Quigone loses the fight, right? Yeah, that's not really his thing. Yeah. Yeah. He's not. He's about kidnapping kids. Wars do not make one great to quote Yoda, who then pulls out a lightsaber and does a flip-around with Dracula. Which is the most infuriating thing. That's a whole different conversation that we'll have some other episode. But I like that this fight scene

that happens at a bottomless pit shows us that like a good Jedi is not necessarily a good fighter. And Obi-Wan wins this fight because he gets pissed off and he gets mad and he kills a guy. And so it's like, okay, Obi-Wan is a good fighter and maybe not a good Jedi. Maybe not as good a Jedi as Quigon was. It's the only time that Quigon is irrelevant to this plot. What about when he steals the children? Come on. It has been said many times. That could have just been Obi-Wan. It did not need to be, there did not need to be a second guy, accepted this scene where he's good. It sort of defers the judgment of taking Anakin away from his parents to, it gives that

to Quigon so that Obi-Wan can stay spotless, basically. I mean, for that part, like morally okay, I think. I think also it's valuable. And, you know, they kind of present Quigon as a little bit of a renegade. A maverick. Yeah, a bit of a renegade Jedi. Like, he, you know, sticks to the rules, but he also isn't afraid to bend them and isn't afraid to question the Jedi Council. That's what I started calling him Ben Kenobi.

Yeah, pretty much. So, I mean, it gives, you know, it gives Obi-Wan some more backstory. But also, I'm not saying, like, everything in the next movies are good, but, you know, presenting the fact that, hey, sometimes there's Jedi who don't agree with the system does at least kind of. of set up the fact that there's going to be, you know, Dracula and, you know, just, just the kind of, the fact that the Jedi are out of touch. And, you know, like, they collapsed and were killed off kind of due to their own arrogance. And again, I feel like that's interesting and not what I expected, but it's consistent and it works for me. Maybe Christopher feels like it's not consistent with Star Wars. But I don't know. Like, to me, It's, it works. So I don't mind, I don't mind Quigon. And, you know, come on, who can complain about Liam Neeson? That guy, he's got like, he's a one-note dude, but that note, he plays that note so well. All right. So we haven't actually talked about the Star Wars episode one video games. And that's because there were a lot of them. And we can't actually talk about the movie in this amount of depth and the games in any amount of depth within the space of two hours. So this is episode one of our prequel trilogy podcast trilogy. Yes. So next time, we get together. I think we're going to talk about episodes two and three, their cultural impact, what they, you know, represent in terms of all the stuff that we've been talking about,

these important things about society. And then we're going to wrap the trilogy by talking about the games based on all the movies, because there were a lot based on episode one and not so many based on episodes two and three. So I think that's a good, compact approach. And then, Fortunately, there were not really any video games about the sequel trilogy, so we never have to talk about those at all. Anyway, gentlemen, thank you for sharing your Bombat opinions about Star Wars Episode 1. I think everyone will agree. This was a truly wizard episode. So I will let you share your bona fides and let people know where to find you on the internet.

Retronauts, of course, is a podcast that you can find on the HyperX podcast network. You can also join that network if you like. Drop someone a line. It's on the website. Podcast.hyperx.com, I believe, is correct. You can also listen to us for free anywhere you want, but you can support the show to fund more amazing discussions of Star Wars Episode 1. Actually, we won't talk about it again.

But more amazing discussions like this one by going to patreon.com slash retronauts and subscribing to the show. And you'll get every episode a week early at a higher bitrate quality than you hear on the public feed. And for $5 a month, you also get exclusive patron-only episodes every other Friday, as well as weekly columns by Diamond Fight and Discord access. Many, many things at patreon.com slash retronauts. Anyway, that's our pitch. Gentlemen, pitch yourselves.

Let's go, we'll start with binge this time. Yep. I'm Ben Edwards. You can find me online at, gosh, where am I these days? Twitter, Benj Edwards on Twitter. I write history articles for how to geek every Friday, howtogeek.com. Benjedwards.com. I run a blog that I don't update very often, vintage computing.com. And I still like Star Wars, even though it has hurt me. It's hurt my soul many times, but it's still my friend. Ben, how about you? I'm Ben Elgin. I don't really have anything to pitch right now, but you can find me on Twitter at Kieran, K-I-R-I-N, where I mostly check-in beer. But sometimes I post other things as well. And I'm actually enjoying Star Wars right now because I liked Obi-Wan and the Mandalorian. So, have it a good time.

Chris. I'm Chris Sims, and I said Uncle Ben earlier, and I'm going to say Uncle Owen, please don't. Correct me. With great midi-chlorian power comes great responsibility, Chris. You can find all the stuff that I do, including a bunch of podcasts at my website, which is t-H-E-isb.com. If you like hearing me talk about the narrative problems with stories of ancient religions, you may be interested in Apocrypal's, the podcast where me and Buda Serino read through the Bible and Apocrypha, the expanded universe of the Bible, and as non-believers, who are trying not to be jerks about it. I hear that a basket of loes and fishes is no match for a good blaster by your side. I have heard that.

We do compare it frequently to Star Wars. How curious. How interesting. And finally, you can find me, Jeremy Parrish, on the internet on Twitter as GameSpite. You can find me on YouTube talking about old video games, which we didn't do in this episode. But most of the time, that's what I'm doing. You can find me on many other episodes of Retronauts. And finally, you can find me on many other episodes of Retronauts.

And finally, you can find me doing stuff also related to video games unlike this episode, though sometimes Star Wars video games, unlike this episode, at limited rungames.com on limited run games, doing stuff there, mostly making books. So anyway, that's it. That is Star Wars, episode one, the podcast. Join us again in the future for episodes two and three, the podcast, a double feature. Everyone loves those. And eventually an episode about video games.

you know, sometimes we actually do talk about the things we're supposed to talk about here. But gentlemen, thank you for sharing two hours of non-video game discussion with me. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and now I'm going to go have lunch. I'm going to make an apple fly across the table to me using the power of my mind. Lord of Stimba, Arara, Arama, a lot of

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