I Miss 14-Year-Old Natalie Portman

I miss the days of internet past. When I first started BAMF, a major function of the web was to keep me informed of new and upcoming movies, especially the prequels to the Star Wars flicks. I used to sit online waiting for new information, salivating for that next crucial bit of spoiler knowledge that would make me feel all warm and fuzzy regarding Episode 1.

…then, of course, Episode 1 came out.

Now I’m not deluding myself, I know that making fun of the Star Wars flicks has become fairly passe. Once Weird Al has made the move to parody the franchise, the ability to mock the films with impunity has all but dissolved. But I felt compelled to revisit the subject thanks to the marathon that Cinemax has decided broadcast across two separate channels all weekend. It amazes me that Lucas allowed such a thing to happen, as the original trilogy brings an amazingly sharp focus upon any of the millions of horrible atrocities that exist within the prequel trilogy. I feel the need to discuss a couple of particular gripes that revolve around plagiarism. Completely idiotic plagiarism, but plagiarism nonetheless. I’ll stick to these topics and not move past them, just to keep things on target.

Ripoff Source Material:

1. Wayne’s World: We all cringed when Jar Jar said “Exqueeze Me.” It hurt. It hurt real deep. Tragically, there was no Garth to retort with “Sheeyah… right” and bring emotional closure to the scene. Instead we bled profusely from the soul for the duration of the film. And all for… the kids? Except no kids circa 1999 were old enough to see the Mike Meyers classic so… it was fairly useless. Unless Lucas mean to appeal to the child inside of me, in which case, the child inside of me calls him a dirty faggot, because faggot was an acceptably innocent phrase at that point in my life.

   Future me calls him a faggot too.

2. Stephanie & Michelle Tanner: “How Rude” was used so many times, I’m surprised that the Olsen twins don’t just retire as wealthy whores and begin dressing in large and obnoxious clothing in order to disguise their cocaine and diet pill addictions.
3. Looney Tunes: Damn near anything that the robots say in this trilogy is a direct ripoff of some old Warner Bros animated short. “Roger Roger” is a prime example of a way that George Lucas wants to cause us physical harm. Not to mention the fact that robots do not say “Um…” repeatedly throughout the duration of a conversation. Unless they run on 386 processors, and are trying to run Monkey Island 2 along with the program that allows them to say ridiculously uncharacteristic things. That’s Windows bloat for you though.
4. Mexican Jamaicans: Nossa woman nossa cry. Es muy malo.

Thankfully, Rifftrax is taking on The Phantom Menace, which I still found to be considerably better than Revenge of the Sith. Even though Obi-Wan defeats Maul with a move that was considered the kiss of death at the end of ROTS, which makes it hard to decide which film is lying to me about basic lightsaber based combat, especially in regards to high-ground situations. But why bother arguing at this point. It’s all terrible, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Like my grandmother always said, “you mix 5 gallons of shit and five gallons of ice cream, you get 10 gallons of shit.”

She’s still mum regarding which parent she considers to be the “ice cream.”