Over the last week and a half, I've read all the Star Wars novels (only those based on the screenplays for the movies) and watched all the movies. Two weeks ago, I was not a Star wars fan but now, although I still wouldn't go to any of the conventions or line up in advance for a premiere of one of the movies, I am (a fan). In many ways, I could be considered a geek - my love of science, math, reading and technology. Despite these things, there are many areas where I am definitely not a typical geek - I'm not into Star Trek, Monty Python, Lord of The Rings, comic books, graphic novels and Sci-fi in general. But now, at 40+ years of age, I have taken one more step closer to true 'geekiness'. I watched Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back as a kid (and enjoyed it) but after watching it, I never felt the need to immerse myself in the culture. I never watched Return of the Jedi until yesterday. After immersing myself in the stories of the Star Wars saga for the last week and a half, here are my thoughts: My favourite of all the movies and novels was Revenge of the Sith. The novel was better written than the others and the story was more thought-provoking. The characters were well-developed and there was consistency with the overall story of the other novels. My favourite of the original trilogy is Return of the Jedi. It wrapped up many of the loose ends and there were many new developments in the story. After Obi-Wan dies, his apparition comes back every now and then to instruct Luke to "use the Force". I think a better use of his time would have been to sing "99 bottles of beer on the wall" or "I'm Hen-er-y the 8th I am, Hen-er-y the 8th I am, I am... 2nd verse same as the first" to Darth Vader whenever he tries to sleep. Doing this over a 5 or 6 day period would make Darth Vader so useless in a light saber duel that even an Ewok would be able to slay him. If I were asked which character is most like me, I'd have to say R2-D2. He doesn't say much, few people understand him and even though he doesn't play a huge role in things that are going on, he often comes through to save the day. Also, when an annoying character (like C3P0) spends a lot of time complaining and blaming R2 for the problems, R2 ignores him. That would be my response too. I, like everyone else, found Jar Jar Binks to be very annoying but not enough to ruin the movie. All they needed to do was to give him a less annoying voice (maybe deeper) and it would've been fine. Mark Hamill is a bad actor. It's not hard to see why he dropped off the face of the earth after these movies. He reminds me of Shaun Cassidy in The Hardy Boys. He exaggerates his reactions and it just doesn't seem believable. After 900 years, you would think Yoda would learn to put English phrases in the correct order. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I hope you found them amusing.Submitted 3/14/2011 12:15:04 PMComment (1)