Star Wars and Wizards. A nerdy treatise...
I'm re-reading "The Dresden Files" before diving into the latest volume, and it occurs to me: Jim Butcher's model for wizards and how they operate would have been a much more interesting model for the Jedi of Star Wars than the one George Lucas and his company thought up. My understanding of the Jedi is limited compared to the sheer metric tonnage of "expanded universe" material out there, though after his treatment of the Mandalorians recently, I don't think George believes that to be canon anyway, so I'll mostly concentrate on what we've seen in the films.
In "Dresden," we have a powerful bunch of people called "wizards." Their power is inherent, and usually is passed down through the mother. This seems to somewhat be the case in Star Wars, though except for the role-playing game, they never really address what happens to Force sensitives who discover their power on their own. Wizards, however, often meet with disaster when they discover their magical abilities, as they eventually break the laws of magic just through experimentation and doing what they think is "the right thing." They basically boil down to "thou shalt not use magic to kill, mess with someone's mind, enslave them, change them, resurrect them, cause a time paradox or summon C'thulhu." If you do, a bunch of guys called Wardens will find you and pretty much execute you on the spot.
I started thinking about how this would apply to Star Wars after the recent review of 'Attack of the Clones,' especially when the movie really couldn't give a good reason for Jedi not being allowed to fall in love. I mean, Jedi are rare, good to have around, the Force runs in families, so... why not? Wouldn't that not only give you more Jedi, but they'd be from a predictable source in your organization? In 'Dresden, the relationship complications come from the fact that the guy/gal who wields power might get his potential love interest killed or caught in a crossfire with his/her enemies, and then there's the problem of having non-magical people trying to deal with magic and its inherent problems (demons, attacks from other groups, not being able to have nice electronics around, etc.). Those could be similarly applicable to Star Wars, I'd think. 'Dresden also sets down fairly concrete rules around the use of power that can get you nailed by the club you belong to. If the idea of Force-influence (the Jedi Mind Trick) was given the onus that magically tweaking someone's noggin was in Butcher's books, it would have made Kenobi and Luke a little more "edgy," since in their time, there was no Jedi Council to stop them. Their acts might have been kind of sinister, even though they might be deemed necessary.
Also, the relationship between the Jedi and non-Jedi world would have been interesting if handled in a similar fashion as Butcher handles magic, and, in a way, it makes more sense. In the universe of Harry Dresden, magic isn't really a secret, it's just dismissed whenever it's encountered (usually), because it's "impossible." If the Jedi were considered a bunch of religious nuts who were good with laser swords and claimed to have use of this "Force" thing (though few really believe it), then "Vader's sorcerous ways" in Episode IV would have made more sense; only 20 or so years had passed since the Jedi Council was around, and if everyone then suspected the Force was hooey, you'd actually think Vader was kinda off his chum. People who hired/used Jedi would usually either have a Sith or Force related problem (which they should be expert at dealing with) or they'd be seen as kind of eccentric, like a politician who favored hiring ninjas as their personal guard. It works even more if one assumes a galaxy of trillions with only a small few able to channel the Force: The chance you'd see a Jedi in action would be so small that tales of their powers would, naturally, seem the stuff of Oscar Meyer meat byproducts.
So now that I've got that out of my system, what else is going on? Well, not only might Whedon be directing "The Avengers," but he might be rewriting it and "Captain America," as well. These are starting to look like my most favorite comic book movies ever already...
It's been a while since I've seen such a bevvy of Muppet-ness as the following clips: A film test done for the first Muppet Movie, parts one and two. It's wonderfully nostagically sad to hear Henson's voice again with Frank Oz. Then there's The Muppet Show: Live (the other parts of it are in the related links on the right) which gives a kind of nuts-n-bolts look at how the show was run. We so need that show back on the air... along with "Spitting Image."
While I consider getting a Twitter account of some kind just so I'll have some measure of immortality via the Twitter archive going into the Library of Congress, here's some other things that passed through my desktop:
- I'm not sure what to think about these leaked videos of testing iPads on unsuspecting cats and dogs. :)
- And while this joke has been done before, I found the take on the iPad's relation to a certain animation format amusing enough.
- There's a pretty cool-thulu looking mythos film adaptation of "The Whisperer in the Darkness." Behold the black-and-white Brylcreem-headed trailer!
- Destroy the Village is a kind of violent version of the old "Lunar Lander" game. Guide your rocket into the targets to blow them into cartoony smithereens.
- From the post-Atari 2600 age comes this gallery of game console prototypes. Some of the controllers looked almost geared to cause carpal tunnel on contact.
- A slight language warning on this amusing torturing of a telemarketer by the author of the webcomic, Goblins.
- After looking at this gallery of antique dental tools, I'm kind of amazed that nobody has made a "Saw" style horror film about an 18th century dentist.
- Sure, the gameplay is similar, but Miami Shark has become Sydney Shark, and now you can drag Australian helicopters and blimps to their doom!