h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

'course it might not have been modesty. She may have gone Girl Scout.

Although Lucas never got around to making Star Wars Prequels, Ang Lee made a good one called "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon".

Chow Yun Fat's green lightsaber was cool.

I'm probably missing some important point, but what would "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" have been a prequel to?

Titanic is one of the few films I wish I'd never seen - it left me totally traumatised.

I agree that failing to invite the Lord of the Eagles to the Council of Elrond was a clear missed opportunity. I'm not sure we'd have missed out on all the cinema though - surely we'd just have had 6 hours of happy hobbits being hobbitty. And Aragorn and Arwen getting jiggy.

Day of the Triffids. Did they not have any herbicides handy?

Would the Star Wars contingent take any comfort from the fact that my 9 year old son saw ep 1 3D in the cinema this week - the first time he's seen a Star Wars film in the cinema - and was totally blown away by it? So at least the whole prequels and 3D thing is giving a new generation that opportunity, and letting Star Wars have a huge impact all over again. I mean, he's seen the films on DVD and he has the Lego and he's played Lego Star Wars on the PS2 ... but it's not quite the same, is it?

Mol

La-la-la-not-listening. I will *not* see 'Star Wars'.

I'm not asking you to

Mol

It was pointed out on Kermode and Mayo's film review this week that they're releasing the 3D versions in the WRONG ORDER, i.e. numerical order, rather than production order.

This will deprive the younglings of one of the greatest twists in cinema history. When they get to the climactic fight at the end of The Empire Strikes Back, they'll know perfectly well who Darth Vader is.

Come to that, when he strides onto the Tantive IV at the beginning of Star Wars (I refuse to call it A New Hope) and picks that guy up by the throat, they'll KNOW WHO HE IS. Vader's first entrance is one of the great villain intros ever, whereas Jake Lloyd's first appearance as Anakin is... well... not. That first throttling of a rebel soldier was a great statement that this guy is BAD to the bone, and to undermine it by showing the sequels first is a terrible missed opportunity.

Jaysus! Even I know who Darth Vader is and I've never seen any of them.

And never will.

Nononononononono - he knows what happens, he saw the DVDs in the correct order (ie 4 5 6 1 2 3 - or whatever it is, the original cinema release order anyway) - my brothers saw to that. But *now* he's seeing the Big Screen Wonder.

I might get round to watching them myself, one day.

Mol

I don't know what it is with me and defending unpopular films but to my mind Eps. 1 and 3 aren't that bad and 3 is actually pretty good: it's Ep.2 that's the real stinker.

Mind you, I did see Episode 1 before I saw any of the original trilogy and don't really rate Star Wars: it's even more childish than Star Trek, which takes some doing (except DS9, DS9 was proper, adult sci-fi).

from the outrage

My life would not have been diminished a bit if *none* of the Star Wars had been made. I kind of liked Yoda, mainly because he was a Muppet. To paraphrase Will Rogers, I never met a Muppet I didn't like. But if the Star Wars movies had not been made, Yoda could have gone into some of the Muppet movies.

You mean Yoda into the Muppet movies could have gone.

Although it would have been inconvenient for him, I think. At least a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away every single person who met him didn't say "Hey, you sound exactly like Fozzie Bear with a sore throat." - which is what he'd get in the real world...

Sooooo...so far everybody's missed opportunities of a lifetime centre around Star Wars?

What am I missing? No!!! Don't answer that.

What you're missing, Ed, is

(1) arguably the single biggest most pervasive pop-cultural phenomenon of the last half century and

(2) something that many, many people (and especially the kind of people that post on h2g2) recognise as a litany of lost opportunities.

One should not be surprised at all at this, even if one has managed to remain unsullied by direct contact with the source.

Oh, I'm not surprised! It's part of my pose of studied eccentricity. It's supposed to be endearing.

Yeah. The only problem I can see with that is that "I've never seen Star Wars" is *such* a hackneyed cliché that they've used it as the title of a radio and TV show. In order to appear eccentric, it's generally necessary to do something different or original, or at the very least something unusual. Why not smoke a pipe?

I got there years before they did.

(and don't you recognise ironic self-deprecation when you see it? )

Well, yes, I accept that, but you're *still doing it*. When someone makes a radio show out of your studied eccentricity... it's long past time to find something else, something new to be eccentric about.

"don't you recognise ironic self-deprecation when you see it?"

You know perfectly well they don't have it on my planet and I rarely notice it unless I'm concentrating.