Star Wars and arms dealing

Ok so maybe this should be two posts instead of one i'm just being a bit lazy really. It'snot even saving me a great deal of effort when i think about it.

Well I'll start with the arms dealing prompted by my reading of Mark Thomas book As used on the famous Nelson Mandela: Underground adventures in the arms & torture trade. A book you can get for a fiver off amazon, a tad annoying as even with £3 off at Waterstones I paid £7.99, well nevermind shit happens.

I'm not even halfway through the book, it's a good read so far. The guy isn't quite as funny off the page as he is on stage but the simple and clear manner he explains what he's been up to makes for a concise and easy read. So far an easy conclusion is what a bunch of fucking bastards our government are. This may no come as a shock to you, it wouldn't the first post where i've said similar. This time however re the arms trade I was genuinely shocked.

My thoughts on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the war on terror in general i think are well known if you've read my blog over it's course and well there are only about 4 people i think that read it andI don't need to go over that again, it's all there for any happy wanderer if you want to scan through the drivel posted since june 2005. Further back you go the more likely you are to find that sort of stuff. Anyway, whatever you think of the current policies, they at least have a spurious defence for them. They have arguments for why they are doing what they are doing, a bunch of shite they are happy to change when someone points out how nonsensical there reasoning is, be it WMD or exporting democracy at the barrell of a gun.

What rationale however does anyone have when going to India at the peak of a flashpoint with Pakistan when you are withdrawing diplomatic personel from the region as conflict seems imminent, a conflict that many expected would go Nuclear. When going to India on the pretext of pursueing a peaceful resolution that you try and flog them military equipment worth around a billion quid to BAE systems. it's apparantly standard practice for any minister going abroad no matter what the principle reason for their trip to as Mark puts it to 'big up' the guns. It's really quite sickening.

Anyway onto Star Wars..

Sky movies are doing a run on them just now, showing all six movies over six weekends. Obviously they want to finish on the lastest entry in the series as it gets it's premiere. Which is a shame as it would have been nice if they had shown them in chronological order in Star Wars time. Show episodes 1-6 rather than 4-6 and then 1-3. They have their reasons but i disagree with them.

So I've not really been in the mood to watch them. But as it happened I'd just had dinner ready and I could hear Empire Strikes Backs on in the background about ot reach the climax, the "Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father," bit. I couldn't help myself I had to through and watch the end. Lightsabre duel with Vader, the hand cut off, the revelation, the fall, the rescue as Leia curiously hears Lukes cry for help and R2-D2 saving the day as we Vader looks out from the mammoth Super Star Destroyer. It was very exciting, even though I'd seen it loads of times.

It's such a shame that something so good is such a souless enterprise now. I suppose it was always commercial, the toys and all that way back. The modern films though, all the ties in you do think is this being made to fulfil an artistic vision or even just as mass entertainment or is it purely a vehicle to make obscene amounts of money for various corporate entities. After watching the first of the new trilogy it would be easy to believe the latter.

Given the anticipation of the first of the new films it's no wonder people went mental over tie ins etc , it was a shoe in to make money no matter how bad it was and lets face it, it was bad. Jar Jar Binks was just to annoying for words. it made it almost impossible to forgive any other mistakes, midiclorians almost ruined the whole thing in a singe bit of dialogue. We were all quite happy with the original explanation of what the force was thank you very much. The small child that played young Anakin looked suitably innocent but was given irritating dialogue and told to shout yipee a lot. In a word it was a mess. Just about watchable thanks to a decent set piece ot two and a quite iconic baddie in Darth Maul who deserved to be in a better Star Wars flick.

Expectations lowered and three years later comes Attack of the Clones. As if TPM hadn't lowered them enough the cheesy title even had Ewen McGregor choking on the title when he was told it live during an interview, he couldn't help but scoff at it before getting a boot up the arse and falling back into line later on. It couldn't have been worse than TPM and thankfully it wasn't. What it wasn't however was that great either. Off the top of my head I'm not entirely sure what was wrong with it. There was less clunky dialogue, still some though despite Lucas letting someone help with the script. A scene where Obi-Wan is trying to find a missing planet but needs some kids to solve the puzzle for him only makes him look thick. Also the new Anakin whilst not totally awul just seems like such a brat, which is maybe ok in itself as he is a teenager at this point and powerful Jedi or not then well teenagers are presumably still prone to moody sulks. The relationship with Padme though doesn't convince, she is a mature and confident young woman, what she sees in the sulk monster is never that clear. Anyway Anakin starts his slide towards the dark side, the film ends with a disappointing lightsabre duel. Christopher Lee really was to old for that shit and it just looks embaressing that he beats Obi-Wan and Anakin so easily. It's not an age thing, we all know Yoda is 800 plus years, it's the fact he can clearly hardly move.

One last try, just last year came Revenge of the Sith. I have it on DVD and I had to go look up it's exact name. I couldn't remember if it was Revenge or Return. I've read that Return of the Jedi was meant to be Revenge of the Jedi but they changed it as they didn't think that revenge was a suitable thing for the Jedi way. Although in Japan they kept the original becuase in Japanese culture revenge is considered more honourable. Don't know if it's true or not but i read it in a film magazine that reported it as fact.

To be fair to this newest one it was easily the best of the new trilogy, it's even my 3rd favourite of the six. Just knocking out episode 4, which is my least favourite of the originals to watch. I think it's because it's the most dated looking and you don't feel the full depth of the whole story yet. Even with the prequels behind it.

Well my opinion on the newest one hasn't changed much since i posted this, maybe softened a little on Anakins turn to the dark side. It's still a little bit hard to take but well with the premonition over his mum coming true I suppose he could lose perspective. The politicing going on around his still clearly impressionable and naive mind clearly confused him further as you can kinda see why he started down the dark path, you still can't help but think, "He's clearly evil you tit!"

Just goes to show you should trust Yoda, he didn't want to teach him as there was to much fear in him, he was proved correct and nae mistake.