Monday, January 1, 2007

Lucas Marches

New Year's Day, and the annual Rose Bowl Parade has been taken over by the evil empire.
The empire in question belongs to George Lucas, creator of Star Wars, who served as grand marshal. His escorts were scores of stormtroopers, the white-garbed foot soldiers in the war against the Rebellion.
The Rose Bowl stormtroopers were actually Star Wars fans who auditioned for the roles. I didn't learn about this until it was too late; otherwise, I might have thrown my hat (or light saber) into the ring and auditioned for a spot.
According to MS NBC, the fans selected for the honor spent time learning how to precision march. Nobody likes a sloppy storm trooper. They also met Lucas when the big man himself reviewed the troops prior to the parade.
Maybe it's best I wasn't there. I'm not sure I could have resisted the temptation to ask Georgie what the heck went wrong with his last three movies, which were as boring and pointless as the first three were thrilling and poignant.
The first trilogy was a cornerstone of my childhood and added Darth Vader, R2D2, C3PO, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca to the annals of pop culture. The last three gave us ... Jar Jar Binks?
Mesa think there's somethin mighty unbalanced there.

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