George Lucas announced recently that he is designing a live-action television show based in the Star Wars universe. My first reaction was excitement. Then I remembered that the last 3.5 movies from the Star Wars universe have been dreadful. I mean, the first hour of Return of the Jedi was fine. Once the Ewoks appeared on the screen, though, it was all down hill. Nothing has gone right since. Don’t even get me started on 2005's Revenge of the Sith. That was so terrible that I can still taste the suck.Alas, you know that I will at least tune into the first episode to see if maybe (against the odds) the Star Wars franchise can still capture my imagination as it did some twenty years ago. I had so many of the Star Wars toys, I think that I am personally responsible for a hole in the ozone the appeared above the Kenner toy factory.
Lucas, however, is being a bit cagey about the details of the show. He won’t discuss time period, plot, or characters.
Of course, this just begs speculation. I can only imagine that the new Star Wars television program will be based on one of the following options:
* It will be a new show on the Food Network. Hosted by the Sarlacc, it will be entitled Thousand-Year Meals.
* The show will start when R2-D2 and C-3P0 overthrow their cruel human masters in a bloody revolution. They then convert Darth Vader into a full droid to free him from his “human bondage.”
* The show will start when R2-D2 and C-3P0 overthrow their cruel heterosexist masters in a queer revolution. They then convert Darth Vader into their love slave by showing him the pleasures of bondage.
* Queen Amidala will host a new style program on Bravo, sponsored by Maybelline cosmetics. She will give fabulous hair and makeup tips entitled Easy, Breezy, Kabuki.
* The show will take place about twenty years after the destruction of the second Death Star. Princess Leia and Han Solo will have two adult children: a son, who does not have the force, and a daughter, who does have the force. The twenty-something kids both move to Los Angeles to work in a television station. Hilarity ensues week after week when big brother tries to prevent sis from using her magical powers to woo her mortal boss into marriage.
* Bea Arthur will play an intergalactic barmaid. The show might be in jeopardy, though, when Peggy Lee’s estate sues Arthur for stealing her shtick.
* In Star Wars: Miami, General Veers and his elite group of troopers must conduct the Emperor’s bidding in the exotic Florida locale. It’s an unending battle against drugs, corruption, and sunshine for Veers and his team.
* It’s a reality competition show where contestants must – Oh, I don’t know -- cook stuff – or maybe sew something. The winner gets $25,000 and an apprenticeship with Lucas Arts. The losers are choked to death by Darth Vader’s strange mental powers.
* The show will follow the exploits of Luke Skywalker and his cousin, Bo, as they evade Stormtroopers and Boss Jabba in their 1969 Dodge Charger.
* Lando Calrissian (played by Billie Dee Williams) and Bail Organa (played by Jimmy Smits) decide that they are tired of the Star Wars universe’s racist shit. Together, they unite all people of color into a radical revolution that makes the Rebel Alliance seem like a child's tea party.
* If not the above, Jimmy Smits will find any excuse to appear as Bail Organa to rescue him from the dreadful television show Cain.
* The show will follow Princess Leia and Luke Skywalker’s unhappy journey through many, many years of therapy to recover from their incestuous love affair.
* The show will focus on the period immediately after Anakin Skywalker’s lifesaving transformation into Darth Vader. The Empire saved him by replacing his legs and arm with mechanical parts. They had the technology to rebuild him – Better. Stronger. Faster. To pay off the hefty price tag (some say upward of $6 million), Vader must solve crimes and report regularly to Commodore Oscar Goldman.
* After the death of Anakin, Amidala decides to take her daughter and move in with her mother-in-law in San Francisco. Not accustomed to working, the spoiled Amidala finds it hard to fit-in at her first job as a photographer’s assistant.
* The show will follow the untold life and loves of R5-D4.
* The show will place Jawas into contemporary New York. Audiences will soon grow weary when they realize that it is just an extended advertisement for auto insurance.
* Each week, Carrie Fisher will watch a different scene from the original three movies and discuss which drug(s) she was high on during its filming.
* Each week, George Lucas will watch a different scene from the last three movies and discuss which drug(s) he was high on during its filming.
* After the fall of the Empire, the show will follow a Star Destroyer (the Aldaraan Princess) that has been re-commissioned as a cruise ship. Each week, a collection of colorful guest stars will come aboard and find romance.
* Lynda Carter will play a super-powered agent who fights on behalf of the Rebel Alliance. She will have a magic lasso that compels people to obey her and bracelets that deflect laser pulses. Hey, I can day-dream.
* Audience members will be allowed to hunt Ewoks for sport. It will be the highest rated television show in history.
* Princess Leia decides to finally leave Han Solo when he still won’t propose marriage after several years of dating. She moves to Minneapolis to start her life over and goes to work for a newsroom. She also befriends her kooky upstairs neighbor, a Twil’ek dancer named Oola. Princess Leia finds that she might just make it after all.
* The show will be merely hours and hours of entitled fan boys complaining about how Lucas ruined Star Wars. It will be a hard-hitting look into some very lonely lives.
* Leia and Han Solo decide to move into together. They only discover later that their landlord is really Leia’s father, Darth Vader. It's an awkward comedy where three's a crowd!
* Undeterred by the public’s vocal and consistent hatred of the character, Lucas casts Jar-Jar Binks as the star of a new sitcom. With the dawn of the empire, Jar-Jar finds employment as a maid on Coruscant's Upper East Side. While he bakes pies and scrubs floors, Binks is also quick to give a spoonful of his homespun, though simple, wisdom to his white imperial overlords.
* The show will unwisely resurrect the Mallatobuck, Attichitcuk, and Lumpawarrump, characters first introduced in the cringe-inducing 1978 Holiday Special. The tag-line for the show will be “Twice as furry, but with three times the love.” In reality, it will just involve an hour of quasi-human, quasi-ape men with too much makeup standing around grunting for an hour. Imagine it as another version of Fox News.
* The Star Wars Variety Hour will feature a “two-in-one” premise. After the destruction of the second Death Star, the Emperor is given the chance to host a variety program for ABC television. The show will be one part "behind-the-scenes" and the other part "variety." The Emperor takes up residence on the beach, frequently performs in sketches on the show, and is always accompanied by the famed Royal Guard Dancers.
* Much to the relief of the entire audience, Queen Amidala awakes to find Anakin Skywalker in the shower. It turns out that all three of the most recent movies were just a terrible, terrible dream.
You have watched way too much TV. Luckily for us...
ReplyDeleteCan I play Amidala in that last one and find Hayden Christensen naked in the shower?
I can't wait until you deconstruct your porn collection (if you have one) in the same fashion.
ReplyDeleteI mean, what is going to happen to those Millennium Falcon boys?
Do they go to visit Titan?
too funny, gayprof! we will see if mr. lucas steals any of your ideas. i'll watch anything that has Carrie Fisher in it.
ReplyDeleteThis was geek-licious.
ReplyDeleteExtra points for knowing about the Christmas Special.
You forgot one possibility: The show will feature Boba Fett racing around Southern California in a talking black car. Anthony Daniels will supply the voice of the car.
Know I understand why I got my head chewed off when I admitted that I didn't know which character from a Star Wars movie you were referring to when you compared someone to it. Talk about a wealth of (too much) knowledge. You would do well in a Star Wars edition of Trivial Pursuit. ;-)
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, have you ever repeated Wonder Woman comic book covers in your posts?
I thought you were a professor of Latino/Gay history. Oh, I guess TV could be a sub-specialty.
ReplyDeleteDespite missing about half of the character references, I laughed my ass off.
ReplyDeleteWhere do you find the time to write all this? Do you ever sleep?
GayProf, I love you, but watching those 8 minutes of the Star Wars Holiday Special made my IQ drop by about a million points. :)
ReplyDeleteare you sure they haven't tossd around the idea of having leia, luke, han, c3po, r2d2, darth and obi-won get stranded on a desert planet where every week the audience is treated to some hilarious adventure as they try to figure out a way to escape the desert planet?
ReplyDeleteVery funny stuff. I find Revenge of the Sith to be the most enjoyable of the prequels and even prefer it to Return of the Jedi, despite its glaring flaws (and there are a lot). BTW, check this out for a good laugh:
ReplyDeletevaderfortune.ytmnd.com
BTW, Robot Chicken does a hilarious Star Wars spoof where Jar Jar meets Darth Vader after many years apart and The Emperor rips into Vader for losing the first Death Star.
I cannot possibly award you enough points for this post.
ReplyDeleteWorking in an R5-D4 reference? That's more press than he's gotten since Kenner decided he warranted an action figure.
The Jar Jar/Nell Carter juxtaposition is nothing short of brilliant.
And most importantly, I now know there to be someone in the universe who is a bigger Star Wars/80's Pop culture geek than me.
I'm a total geek; I got all of those SW references! It's fantastic! *LOL*
ReplyDeleteyeah...and the cartoon sucked too.
ReplyDeletegreat use of your imagination. are your lectures as imaginative? if so, reserve me a place to audit one of your classes.
Huntington: You are welcome to take the role -- Christensen was too young for my tastes. I'd rather do Obi.
ReplyDeleteMarlan: I like the way you think.
VUBOQ: Carrie Fisher is so under used!
Alan: I thought the other day that this extra-geeky entry came right on the heels of my anti-camping post. If I am not the poster child for dorky professor, I am not sure who would be.
Steven: I wouldn't at all chew your head off for not knowing the characters. Indeed, I am a little concerned that I know so much.
Doug: What if I said that I also focus on the history of pop culture?
David: I never intend for posts like this to become elaborate. Once I start, though, I can't help myself.
WOL: I saw the Holiday Special when it first aired in 1978. For years, people tried to convince me that I had merely imagined it. Thank the goddess that the internet provides documentary proof.
Hello, My Name is Danny: Would this involve a weekly voting somebody off the planet?
Antonio: I found Clone Wars the least horrible of the most recent three. Overall, though, I think that they all sucked.
JP: For a long time, R5-D4 was my "R2-D2" as my parents bought me the former think it was the latter. Come to think of it, why did he get his own figure?
Frank: You should really consider this post a version of your ghost of Christmas Future. Don't end up like GayProf!
DykeWife: There is always a seat for you in my classes.
OMG, GP, I thought I was an uber-geek. Clearly not so - LOL!
ReplyDeleteWell done. I have to say, though, that forcing me to watch those two Holiday Special clips made me nauseous. To think I spent nearly 30 years deeply regretting that I missed the one and only time it was ever aired.
I got a few of the references. What are you anyway, you're like a tv show vault.
ReplyDeleteI'm all with you on the "what were they on" series; but somehow I think Carrie Fisher's would be much more fun.
ReplyDeleteAhh, Star Wars! Somewhere, in an alternate universe where it is always 1977, my 10-year-old self thinks you are a god for this post.
Oh, by the way, you may want to find the Fall 2007 issue of Ms. Magazine 9 (or at least the cover).
Okay. I've held off saying this... I wouldn't let myself believe it... but...
ReplyDeleteYou are a nerd.
A cool nerd, but one nonetheless.
The first Star Wars that came out was the last one I paid the child movie ticket price for. I was 12 years old, and remember arguing with the ticket person who didn't believe I was young enough. She asked for ID, but what 12-year-old has ID?
Gah.
I was late to the whole "Star Wars" thing, not actually seeing the movie 'til it was on television...which meant that I had no idea what we were supposed to be doing with those action figures.
ReplyDeleteOn a side note, yay, to today's cover: it was one of the first WW issues in my collection!
Atari Age: You should not have felt bad about missing the Holiday Special. Indeed, you should feel grateful.
ReplyDeleteTorn: What are you anyway, you're like a tv show vault.
As long as it is t.v. produced before 1985. Sadly, I am far, far out of touch with most contemporary popular culture.
Clio: Everything is more fun with Carrie Fisher.
Laverne: I am a nerd. Wait until you see my next post...
Greg: Oddly enough, the first time I saw the original Star Wars in the theater, I didn't care for it. It wasn't until Empire came out that I really got into into it.