Know Your Foe #10: The Force

When it all began, the Force seemed pretty cool.

Remember when you were four years old and you saw Star Wars for the first time? I know I do. In fact, back then we had to rent a VCR to watch those movies and they were the first three I saw at home through the magic of cassette tapes. They were undoubtedly great movies (the middle three only) and as I child I remember how I longed to be able to use the force. I wondered what the force was, exactly. I used to discuss it with my fellow nerds. I wish I could go back in time and tell them what I’ve discovered later in life, though I suppose maybe it’s best that I’m not able to. You see, understanding what the force is makes the whole idea a lot less cool. My past self and my nerd buddies would ultimately try to beat me up, but to no avail. Then they’d wait several years and see the new movies and finally understand I was telling the truth, only it’s too late and they already paid money towards Phantom Menace. You can’t come back from that kind of thing.

I paid to see it. In the theatre for Pete’s sake, if for no one else’s. No matter what I do from this day forward, nothing will make that go away. Nothing. When I walk down the street and people give me dirty looks I don’t just assume that they’re assholes and that they don’t like attractive people like me. I know why they’re giving me those looks. When I get turned down for a new job it’s not because I’m not qualified or because I have hate tattoos all over my face. It’s because they can see the guilt on my face and they know there’s only one thing a person can do that will make them look that guilty. Giving money to George Lucas. There, I said it. At least I’m not one of those people who pretends they watched it at a friend’s house one night (like anyone actually bought a copy). We’re getting distracted from the point here, and that is the true nature of “the Force”.

“You will not ask questions about the plot.”

The Force is what happens when you have a big hole in your plot and you’re too lazy to actually come up with something clever to resolve that hole, so instead you just “Force” the audience to accept the bullshit that you give them as a plausible excuse for your inability to make a complete movie. Remember in Phantom Menace when they were being chased by a fish and then a bigger one ate it? That was okay. It was an interesting way to resolve that problem. The only thing was being Forced to enjoy it again something like fifteen minutes later with bigger fish. Sure, the Force is looking out for them so it’ll just keep using the same device over and over if necessary. How about Anakin? I would contend that I’ve never had a character Forced so hard on me in all of my movie watching days. He’s a whiny loser who grows up to be the ultimate evil from my childhood. He’s really good at races that are just a Forced advertisement for the identical looking game that was released at the same time.

If the force balances itself does that mean when Jedi knights started saving people’s lives the force had to make evil Jedi knights to balance it out? Doesn’t that make the Jedi knights a bunch of assholes? If every good thing they do is evened out by an equally bad thing happening somewhere else doesn’t that kind of defeat the purpose of even trying? At least if they went out and used it for evil they could argue that ultimately good things happened. Or they could use the power to do things that were neither good nor bad, like moving a rock from one place to another for no reason. They’d be far more productive and happy and there wouldn’t be so much of an evil empire out kicking the crap out of everybody. Why are there seemingly way more dark Jedis? Well it’s probably because of all the super nice guy Jedis who came before them and then died, leaving behind a world of hurt and confusion. Thanks a lot, guys.

Remember when we were all Forced to accept the fact that Anakin hid inside a vessel he didn’t know how to fly, only to “accidentally” kill everything in room, then “accidentally” took off into space, ultimately “accidentally” crashing on the space station that was responsible for running all of the droids and then “accidentally” blowing it up and then fucking “accidentally” taking off just in time before the whole place blows up? With that many accidents we can all understand a bit better why Lucas wears Depends. Seriously, though, fuck coming up with a really good battle sequence where it goes back and forth and we really feel like it could go either way. Slap down a “too many droids to possibly win” scenario and then shut them all down at the same time based on the most ludicrous bullshit in the history of making movies. Yes, I’ve seen American Ninja. The sequence as it stood was so bad it made me hate people I don’t even know. It made me wish film was never invented and that everyone was born without eyes or ears. I would have punched that kid in the face if I could have. I’ve calmed down a little since then. You’re safe, kid, for now.

The sad fact is that The Force forced me to make a pact with myself that I would never do anything that contributed money to George Lucas ever again. You should have forced more trade union scenes on us, George. That shit was deep. You know the kids today, constantly watching the stock market and keeping tabs on which countries are supplying what goods where and who’s currently being sanctioned. Those crazy kids. By the way, a lot of people say that the final fight scene makes up for a lot of the terribleness of the rest of the film and to that I say, /puke. Yeah, such a cool fight. A bad guy who was barely established but uses two light-sabers together as a quarterstaff and some uninspired fighting. That’s really cool and impressive to anyone who didn’t watch Ninja Turtles. The final Force was the greatest of all, though. Since the newer trilogy was so terrible, Lucas was Forced to give up the rights to the movies and sell them to people who can actually come up with a plot anyone gives a shit about and, please oh please, situations that are acceptable and, if not necessarily real, cool instead of.. well, you know.