Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Star Wars: What No One Else Has The Courage To Say About It

Dear Friends,

For the third consecutive month, the Hard Taco jingle focuses on levity and brevity rather than pensiveness and extensiveness. At 78 seconds, "Manchego" is so short, I will only need to spend $11.5 million dollars to play it over a blank screen during the Superbowl.

Two months ago, we treated you to an uncannily accurate prediction of the newest James Bond film. Today, I'm going to do that same breaststroke in a much more crowded pool, and offer heroic predictions about Star Wars Episode VII.

SPOILER ALERT: It's quite possible that I am going to tell it like it is, so read on only if you want the gospel truth and the no nonsense treatment.

What will happen now that Disney owns the rights to the Star Wars franchise?
As soon as The Force Awakens leaves theaters, Disney will make plans to re-release it in exactly 20 years. That's how long it will take for the technology to finally catch up with Walt Disney's original vision of the movie, in which a whistling Han Solo bobs up and down on his noodle-like legs and steers a steamboat.

Will the new Star Wars movie rely heavily on computer-generated graphics?
No. To appease the fan base, they will return to the tradition of implying awesome technology, rather than showing it. As in the original trilogy, characters will simply describe space vehicles as either "operational," "quite operational," or "fully operational," and let the audience imagine how cool they must be.

Why is Luke Skywalker not shown in the preview?
Some time in the last 30 years, Luke became a Sith. They can't show him in the preview without giving this away, because now he has one of the two stigmata of Sith-hood: Horns or a hoodie. (Also known as the "Sith Hood.")

If you watched the end of "Return of the Jedi," you may have had an inkling that Luke was destined for villainy. The most obvious clue is that he was unthinkably rude to his father's corpse. In one scene, he helped Vader remove his mask. In the next scene, he burned his father's remains, and the mask was back on! Let's not forget that removal of that mask was Anakin's dying wish. Luke waited until Anakin was dead, and then immediately put it back on his face! That's pretty damn disrespectful, if you ask me.

Imagine if a loved died after a prolonged ICU stay. Would you reattach the ventilator to the body and bring them both to the morgue to be cremated together?

That vent really helped Dad for a while, so I'm sure he'd prefer that its ashes be eternally intermingled with his own.  And while we're at it, let's take his walker and his dentures and toss those in the fire, too. They were really part of his look there, at the end.

Is Leia also a Sith?
I predict yes! But in name only.

A voice change is typical when someone turns to the Dark Side. When Anakin became Darth Vader, his voice became lower and richer. When Luke gave into his hate, perhaps he chose to mark his transformation with a saucy lisp. In Episode VII, when he sees Leia for the first time in years, he shouts, "Hey, Sith! Join me and carry on the workth of Darth Sidiuth!"

Will Luke Skywalker finally die in this movie?
Definitely. In the interest of time, let's hope he's one of the Jedi who inexplicably disappears when he dies, like Yoda or Obiwan, rather than one of the ones who has to be burned on a pyre, like Anakin or Qui Gon.

Who is the adorable little droid in the preview that rolls around the desert on some sort of gyro-sphere?
Its name is BB-8, and it was built over 50 years after R2D2. Apparently, that's still not enough time for robot manufacturers to develop a friendly sidekick droid that can handle stairs.

With warmest regards,
Zach