Dancing Stormtroopers? Only if Jar-Jar dies.

Ok, George Lucas has gone too far.

I can deal with Christian Hayden as Darth Vader. I survived his brat attitude and never really dark or compelling acting. I survived, barely, the existence of Jar-Jar who thankfully had ever smaller appearences in the prequel films. I even handled the bizarre and Scientology-esque existence of miticlorians that are in fact the Force, and the death of the best bad guy outside of Vader himself - Darth Maul. But you can only push a fan so far.

George Lucas has now greenlighted a stage production of Star Wars, as a musical. And there is going to be singing Wookies. And a Stormtrooper kick line [Note: this has been updated such that the Wookies and Stormtroopers may not be singing and dancing - we can only hope]. This sounds like a joke, or someone trying to make The Producers in real life. But this isn't either of those.

Hey, I'm a fan of Star Wars as much as anyone. I've seen every movie several times, know the histories of all the major characters. I've read many of the novels that continue to carry the story forward and was really pissed when they killed Chewbacca. I even had a few of the model toys when I was young (I am 40 you know). But singing Wookies and dancing Stormtroopers?

If this rings of the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special, which if you are under about 35 you never saw so be thankful, I think you are right. George Lucas may have enough money to burn, but this is not one of the ways I might chose. And I doubt many fans will agree with Lucas on this.

Now Lucas is no fool. The play will also feature an exhibition of never before seen props, models, drawings and the like. That will draw fans. That's the money maker. Especially if he gives fans a chance to buy the originals or (limited numbers of) reproductions of such. I would go to do that. But not the play.

Perhaps the only way I would go to see singing Wookies, Ewoks, a dancing Stormtrooper and Emperor Palpatine is if there was a clear scene of the funeral of Jar-Jar - or better yet watching him blasted into bits in space so we don't have to hear him. And even then I'd have to flip a coin over it.

**The original source of the story, which I link to, has dropped the singing Wookies and dancing Stormtroopers as I was writing this. So Lucas has not gone insane it seems. This is not a stage event, but a music concert with enhancements, it seems. That makes massively more sense. Yahoo, where I saw the news first, had an old version of the uncorrected story.

Still I would love to hear the funeral march for Jar-Jar.**

Robot Chicken does Star Wars - 6.18.2007.1

I’m sure many of the fanboys of Star Wars and Robot Chicken [a show on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim programming. Basically anime for adults.] were watching all night as a special episode, approved by Mr. George Lucas, dominated the channel.

This one night there was nothing but older episodes of Robot Chicken, which can have some very funny and dark skits, with the special episode repeating throughout the night. Of the dozen or so skits, several are old, but there was one I really liked. It resolve the question (if anyone was wondering) of what happened to that ridiculous, waste of space, Jar-Jar. Darth Vader does something every fan of the original 3 movies wanted to do. He chucks him out an airlock!

Sadly this is not without consequence. Still it’s worth it. When you see the skit you will get what I mean.

Other than that the ‘dancing in Bespin’ skit [my reference not the actual] and ‘Boba Fett gets personal’ are my personal favorites. Still I did expect a bit more as Mr. Lucas okayed the use of his characters, in addition to the use of his voice and that of Mr. Mark Hamill. I’m sure those who dislike President Bush will get a laugh out of the ‘Jedi Bush’ skit, which wasn’t too bad. Oh, I can't leave out 'Luke and Laura go Hotel New Hampshire'.

You can see all the skits over at the AdultSwim.com site. Now that you’ve seen my favorites in order, which was your favorite?

On a separate thought, did anyone else see the commercial for the flavored water that featured 50 cent. [I still hate his name] While all of the commercials from this company (who’s name I forget) features entertainers, mostly from sports, in events that are ridiculous this was way over the top.

The basketball player throwing a sheep, football players doing ping pong, and the NASCAR racer in the Himalayas were all ok. A rapper conducting a symphony just doesn’t work. Especially since he can’t even stick to Beethoven for more than 3 bars. It might have worked if he kept with the 5th Symphony, but the fact he doesn’t just brought up in my mind the question of if he has actually ever heard the piece. Kind of defeats the theme I thought.

This is what I think, what do you think?