[civilian_number_two]

I stopped using Outlook about a year ago, about the time I joined this forum. I still have the program, I just haven't been using it. I opened it about a month ago and found some messages in my in-box that brough me right back to my first contact with Chefelf, his famous Lists, and later these forums, and all of you.

Oddly, it made me nostalgic, curmudgeon though I am. At the time I discovered them, I promised to post them as a sort of anniversary of my arrival. I'm a little late now, but I don't welch.

Background: I was working as Script Supervisor/ad hoc AD on a short film being shot in the sand dunes of Richmond, the place where they filmed a lot of MISSION TO MARS. It was very hot, but we worked like crazy people. During one of our breaks I got talking to this gal who was working as a Grip/PA/Go-to Gal. She had been reading The Lord of the Rings for the first time in her life, and cackling with glee at all the juicy homoeroticism you gals all seem to love post-Jackson. Naturally we ended up chatting.

We got on to STAR WARS and I started in on what I hated about TPM and how I hadn't even seen AOTC (I loved saying it back then even more than I love saying it now); she mentioned something about a list one of her professors had seen and we swapped emails.

She sent me something, so I sent this back:

> Well, it works.
>
>      Here's something for you that I banged out long ago:
>
> 1) Qui-Gon Jin finds this boy on a planet.  The boy has incredible force sensitivity (now flimsily attributed to genetic predestination a la Adolf  Hitler).  What with one thing and another, Qui-Gon takes this boy to the largest city in the galaxy.

> 2) As it happens, Q-G has to leave the city to go to a war-torn planet.  Rather than find a decent babysitter, he takes the boy with him.  Presumably, when you're in a city the size of a fucking planet, you have limited options.
>
> 3) Arriving on the planet, Q-G has the option of hiding the boy anywhere. Remember, this is a planet with Eath-like gravity, so naturally it would have  about two hundred million square miles of surface area.  Even discounting the water-covered surface, there would be many places to hide a vulnerable eight - year-old.  Q-G takes him to the centre of the war zone (an area of roughly five square miles).
>
> 4) Inside a hangar filled with enemy attack robots, Q-G deserts the boy to go off and start a two-on-one swordfight with a mean-looking but otherwise completely uninteresting bad guy.  He tells the boy to hide inside a fighter plane.  Seriously.
>
> 5) The boy, desperate to protect himself, hits several butons at random, and surprisingly, the plane makes a perfect take-off, entirely by accident.
>
> 6) For some reason, the plane has been programmed, by "auto-pilot," to fly right into the centre of a nearby space battle.  It even lands, of its own accord, on board an enemy spacecraft.
>
> 7) This spacecraft has, within its hangar, a huge-ass gun that can take out a rully loaded small transport.  We've seen it work; it destroyed Qui-Gon's ship earlier in te movie.  It should have no trouble dealing with a fighter plane.  For some reason, it doesn't target this intruding fighter plane.  And we can see it, sitting inert, in the frame as the boy sits desperately fighting with his plane's controls.  Screenwriter/Producer/Director/Madman George Lucas doesn't have the integrity even to show a close-up of it coming to bear.  He has quite simply forgotten it's there.
>
> 8) The boy starts pressing random buttons on his dashboard, and his fighter craft is suddenly back on manual control.  He could not get this to happen before.  Anyway, now his little plane is spinning about and shooting everything in the hangar of this carrier.  Not one of the enemy attack robots can hit his awkwardly-spinning little plane.
>
> 9) For whatever reason, this carrier is burdened with the same weakness common to all Star Wars enemy behemoths: if you shoot it in the right place, the whole thing blows up.  Sadly, the right place happens to be right in the very hangar that Mr George Lucas has no right expecting us to believe this one unescorted fighter plane should ever have managed to reach.
>
> 10) As it happens, there is a war taking place on the surface of the nearby planet.  With no possible explanations, the robots who are winning are busy rounding up the surrendering Gun-Guns, despite having been given very unambiguous orders to "kill them all."  Well anyway, this one spaceship that  this boy just blew up happened to be controlling all of the robots.  So now they all just shut down.  One robot gets so shut down that his head flies right off!
>
> 11) Everone celebrates and spends lots of money on toys and George Lucas goes on to say that the critics never had a good word to say about his movies, so he wasn't going to start worrying about them now (STAR WARS was on virtually every top ten list in 1977 and was even nominated for Best Picture, so again, he's full of shit).


And that's why Liam Neeson is the worst babysitter in the history of the universe, and further why George Lucas is ruining the memories of my childhood.

Mike.

PS: don't even get me started on the pod race.

She sent this back:

haha....yeah, my drama teacher went on about the pod race as well.  i remember reading somewhere, or someone saying that amidala is rich as hell, why didn't she just buy anikan's freedom, or his mom's freedom, instead of that stupid pod race.  but i really don't want to get you started on that, so i'll shut up.  here's that site:

http://www.lanceande...78reasons.shtml

That was the beginning ...

[civilian_number_two]

"What happened then, uncle civilian_number_two?"

"I'm glad you asked, jyamg. I am glad you asked ..... "

When you responded to the lists, the subject line defaulted to "You're an idiot for thinking Star Wars: Episode I was bad because ... "

Here was the body of my first email to nate@lanceandeskimo.com:

HA!  That's a great subject line.  Not what I'm actually writing about, but I'll keep it.

    My name is Mike and I love your lists.  While I haven't actually seen ATTACK OF THE CLONES (due to a vow I made after seeing PHANTOM MENACE on opening day), I have heard enough about it to say you sound like you've included just about everything worth mentioning.  And your Ep I commentary is right there with everything my friends and I hated about that film.  And the writing is good, too; great work.

    Some things I might add: 1) During the pod race sequence, we get a close-up of Warwick Davies.  He's all dirtied up and acting like a guy who just lost a bet.  Maybe this is a valid cameo, since I guess people do bet on pod races, and why not take the star of WILLOW (not to mention a key player in RETURN OF THE JEDI) and give him a little cameo?  Those who noticed him might have a little laugh, right?  All well and good, except that Lucas inserts him like three times into the final edit.  Again, he wanted to make sure he milked as much pure goodness out of the first viewing.  It would be terrible were he too subtle, and you might miss a detail like that.

    2) You more or less cover this, but the pod race really bugs me.  Lucas clearly wanted it in his movie; that much I get.  But this Dickensian reliance on coincidence is a bit much.  The Queen of Naboo is stranded on a planet with only about a million dollars in Federation currency.  Qui-Gon tries to spend this money in an auto-repair shop run by a flying Jew with a New York accent.  Said stereotype insists that Federation money (good on a million planets) will not be any good here.  This is something like anyone, anywhere on Earth, refusing US dollars.  Ok, fine.  So Qui-Gon can't go and exchange his money somewhere?  There are no banks?  Even the Hutts, famous for moneylending, would surely give him some kind of a trade.  So he can't use the mind trick, and apparently in the entre city there will be no other shop with the part they need.  Qui-Gon never hits on the idea of simply forsaking the queen's ship, and selling it in exchange for some bus tickets, the purchase of this slave boy and her mother, and maybe a few souvenirs.  After all, a ship like that has to be worth a few million, at least.  Nevertheless, Qui-Gon can't think of anything to get out Anikin out of the race; his only plan, in fact, requires that Anikin race and that he bet on it.  When asked why the Indians in STAGECOACH didn't shoot the horses, John Ford famously replied "Because then we wouldn't have had a movie."  Lucas apparently used this same reasoning when motivating his pod race: shut up and watch it.

    3)  While I'm going on about coincidence, I should add that it never bothered me that Obi-Wan wanted to go to Alderaan and at that very same time the Empire wanted to blow it up.  Obi-Wan was, after all, looking for Princess Leia, and Tarkin did, after all, blow up the planet only to piss Leia off.  And the distress message about the Death Star coming to Luke first, rather than to Obi-Wan, who might have enlisted luke after receiving it, was only a small detail.  So the coincidences in the STAR WARS series have never bothered me.  In PHANTOM MENACE, Qui-Gon takes refuge on a planet and the first kid he meets is Darth Vader.  Vader, incidentally, built C-3PO and used to hang out with Greedo.  The reliance on bogus coincidence is too amazing for words.  Lucas really should have hired a screenwriter.

    4) In STAR WARS, Obi-Wan finds Chewbacca in the Mos Eisley cantina, and Chewbacca leads him and Luke to Han Solo.  I doubt Obi-Wan can speak Wookiee, yet it seems important to Chewbacca that he and his captain take this one fare.  Wow.  Wouldn't it have been brilliant had Qui-Gon sold the queen's ship and booked passage on board a ship crewed by Chewbacca?  Wouldn't that have explained why, years later, Obi-Wan sought passage aboard the Wookiee's ship before even speaking with the human pilot?  And might it not have explained why he even knew the Wookiee's name?  Wouldn't that have been a great and clever way to introduce a character from the trilogy into this new, more kid-themed series of films?  Well, no.  Lucas wanted his lame over-theatrical introductions of R2-D2 and C-3PO, and he damn sure wanted his pod race.

    5) This may just be a little detail, but what was Jar-Jar even doing with them in Tatooine?  After the scene with Boss Nass, his relevance to the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Amidala team was about zero.  Nevertheless, when Q-G sets out for the city, he takes Jar-Jar with him, along with R2-D2, who's suddenly important for no explored reason (oh wait!  how about "I'll sell you this droid for that part we need" ? Ah, no).

    6) In ATTACK OF THE CLONES, and correct me if I'm wrong, aren't the heoes chasing a bad guy for like ten minutes of screen time, and don't they chase him all over the city of Coruscant, and doesn't he like pull off all sorts of amazing maneuvers to escape?  And when they catch him, isn't Jango Fett all of a sudden just there, like he'd been following them all along, and doesn't he kill the bad guy just before he can complete a sentence?  Isn't this like, something that was so old school and cliched by the forties that they used to make fun of it back then?

    7) Along the same lines, doesn't Shmee Skywalker die within minutes of Anikin finding her?  So she's dying for weeks, or days at least, and her last minutes of life coincide with his arrival.  So basically she's like that bleeding guy outside the dungeon in DIABLO.  I don't know if you've played this game, but basically there's a guy who will never die unless you talk to him, whereupon he gives you a clue as to what you'll find inside this ruined cathdral before breathing his last.  That's Shmee. 

    Anyway, those are some complaints I'd add.  All too big complaints like "Why do they have better technology in the past?" I won't bother with, even though it's actually the whole theme of STAR WARS that Luke has to give up o the technology and reach back to the animist powers of an earlier time.  Why bother with that?  So too I stay away from complaints that when Obi-Wan refers back to the days of the Old Republic he does so fondly, yet when we see the old world we have no idea that it was nice or idyllic at all.  All we get is this corrupt and over-burdened political process.  The idea being that the Federation was doomed to collapse due to its own mismanagement, not due to some coup enacted by the Sith.  In GLADIATOR, the dying emperor speaks of a "dream that was Rome."  I can accept this because I know all about Rome and its history.  If Lucas wants me to accept that there was a "dream that was the Old Republic," he has to God Damned show me!

Pax.

Mike.

To which:

Michael,

Thanks for writing!  The vow you made sounds great.  I wish I could make the same vow except that I have a morbid fascination with making a complete list of my gripes.

About your comments:

1.)  Lucas has seemed to lose all ability for subtlety over the years.  The man who once said "A special effect is just a tool, a means of telling a story; a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing"  is now officially dead.

2.) Watto not taking the money is just stupid.  He wants money, but not Federation money.  What other money is there?  The pod race scene is just stupid and pointless.  Going to Tatooine at all was just stupid and pointless.  Tatooine shouldn't have appeared until Episode III when they bring the twins there to hide them.  I fail to see why they picked Darth Vader's home to hide Luke.  It makes sense in Episode IV because you think they picked this remote desert, do nothing planet.  Apparently they have simply picked Vader's home.  Great idea.

3.) Don't get me STARTED about the freaking coincidences.  It makes me want to shout whenever a new one surfaces.  Anakin, Threepio, Greedo, the Death Star, Tatooine.  WHERE WILL IT END?!?!?!

4.) You know what?  As much as I hate the coincidence thing I really like your idea about Chewbacca helping them.  That is actually a really good idea.

5.) Jar Jar was doing nothing.  He was simply there for comedic value (of which he had a value of 0).

6.) Jango Fett killing the bounty hunter pisses me off.  Jango Fett alone pisses me off.  The greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy should not need to hire a bounty hunter.  He should not be able to follow that chase and he should not be able to beat a Jedi in hand to hand combat.

7.) Shmi's death is, again, ridiculous.  It's very much like a video game where people are always waiting around to talk to you before they die.

Well thanks again for writing, Mike!  I enjoyed reading your comments!
--
Chefelf
http://www.lanceandeskimo.com
Updated every weekday!

[civilian_number_two]

Anyway, there are a few other emails here, but that's the bulk of it, in those first two. After the summer was over I guess Nate opened the Star Wars Fan Convention, and sent out invitations. I've had a great time posting here and I'll continue to. Looking back, my opinions haven't changed one bit, nor has my writing become any more sophisticated. I have kept true to a vow I made long ago: I will never learn.

This has been my indulgent moment of reminiscence, and a sort of happy birthday to the chefelf.com forums; now on to you lot: what brought you here, and what can you say by looking back?

[Despondent]

Great thread Civilian.

I had a great story to submit, then lost it when trying to tack these pics to the post. So I'll just post these and join the others in their tales of infancy to Elfdom a little later. I scanned these in response to your Biggs post, and yes they're out of sequence for shock value.






Please don't allow it to detract from the topic at hand.

[Vwing]

Cool. Oh by the way Civ, that Obi-Wan/Chewbacca thing will be in Episode III, because Chewbacca will be in Episode III and Obi will meet him. Like I said in another thread, Lucas isn't completely forgetting he has to make connections to the OT. Just mostly.

[Chefelf]

Ahhhh, the memories. I remember when I used to talk with all of you via email. Isn't it better now that we all know each other?

[Jordan]

That was a real treat civilian. I laughed my ass off reading the emails.

My chefelf journey started over a year ago. It's not as well documented as yours was...

I hated TPM and found AOTC to be just plain boring. Which struck me as odd because it had so much eye candy. Ships, droids, laser, but in the end it was just a big nothing. Being one of those kids who created his own SW character after watching the OT and then buying the old trading cards, comics, etc... I felt very betrayed after TPM and AOTC.

I knew there was something in the movies I really hated. I just could not put my finger on exactly what it was. I simply stamped the movie as lifeless and boring. I would talk about it with my friends all the time. However, our conversations were pretty dull. "starwars sucks now" "jar jar is annoying" "I hated the movie blah blah". I could not find the refuge I needed in my pals. Which is odd since we gripe about everything. Back in highschool people called us the 'downers'. Us group of 4 will be forever known as the kids who yelled out "boring" after the 12:00 "happy new years" shout in 2000.

Anyways, bored out of my gourd, one day I typed in "Star wars hate" (I think it was, could have been anti-starwars). And of course, one of those links was chef's. I opened up the link 78 reasons....And I was blown away. I laughed so hard. I laughed while saying "yes, yes it's so true" I rarely laugh by myself. I could not believe it. This guy (chef) hit everything right on the nose. Most of the list never even crossed my mind, but after reading it, the whole PT came together like a puzzle. I found what I was looking for, a beautiful bitchfest about something on SW. The itch had been scratched! I truly did hate the PT and now had intelligent reasons to do so. Never again would it be "jar jar is lame".

After that I went on to read his AOTC list and....eureka...again! The way it was delivered was great. The only other time I laughed at comedic literature was while reading Jerry Seinfeld’s "Letters from a Nut". After the SW lists I sent Chef an email telling him his work was great. He replied back, to my amazement, with a warm thank you. I never sent an email to someone I didn't know, save university registrars- so I was surprised that he gave a damn.

I then began reading his movie reviews, beverages rants, video game rants, blogs etc... After awhile I thought screw it, I'm joining the forum. I spent a couple months at LandE then migrated here. I met many people there - Chef, Laura, Walrus, Hecc, Officer B (gone now), Rory to name a few. Chefelf.com introduced me to even more people! I've never socialized on the net till LandE, and never as much till Chef.com. Good people, good times, what's not to like?

[Madam Corvax]

Ah, yes, the great invention of search engines. That's how I came across Chefelf's "Reasons" site. I think I started reading it at least three years ago, and I was waiting every second Monday for the reasons to hate Episode II to appear.

And I've been reading forum almost from the very beginning, although I joined only several months ago. But it seems to me like I've known you for a long time.

I loved "And what happened next, Uncle Civilian..."Gee, that was hilarious , great thread.

[Just your average movie goer]

Great thread and I'm sorry it's taken me so long to reply to it. It was a treat reading those emails, Civilian.

Also, Despondent - nice work finding that old comic adaption. It supports a few things we've mentioned on these forums.

I mentioned how I came here on some other thread a while back... there wasn't much to it. It's basically that I was sick of hearing people saying that the prequels were good. And some people even said things like "Episode II is better than The Empire Strikes Back".

There's only so many times you can hear that line without wanting to crack somebody's skull open. I needed a refuge from the madness. I needed some sanity. So I hopped on the web and looked for any reviews that gave the prequels the treatment they really deserved...

... then I stumbled onto Chefelf's reasons and the rest was history.

[Despondent]

I learned about the list in the dark times. Before the forum. While getting my hopes up for AOTC, I saw the Entertainment Weekly article on Chef’s Reasons to Hate Ep I.

I laughed my ass off. On the first page. It was so good, and they just went on and on. I’d copy/paste the list into simpletext and have my computer read me the reasons while setting up photo shoots. “But master, there are no pop-tarts” takes on a special inflection with the computer lady reading the lines.

And I hated Clones of course. A new batch of reasons to rejoice appeared. Anyway, I sent Chefelf a couple of emails and to my surprise, he’d graciously respond. One of my comments was “It’s as if Lucas, back in the ‘80s, went into the future and saw how bad Eps 1-3 turned out so he returned to the 1980s and renamed Ep 4: ‘A New Hope.’”

I suppose when the forum began I was on Chef's need-to-know list (Thank God.)

Anyway, it’s a great waste of time, isn’t it? But the community of friends and the emotions we share with little ones and zeroes are so much stronger than what the PT has delivered.

I hate sand.
I love Chefelf.com Night Life.

[Chefelf]

Pfffffft. Pfffffffffffffft. <-- Sound of Chefelf's head inflating.

Thanks everyone for the great praise. I'm so glad that people were so excited about my lists and would look forward to them. I never would have imagined that it would bring joy to so many people. If there needs to be a Nitpicking leader of the anti-prequel movement then I gladly accept the challenge!

I’d copy/paste the list into simpletext and have my computer read me the reasons while setting up photo shoots. “But master, there are no pop-tarts” takes on a special inflection with the computer lady reading the lines.

That's the best thing ever. I was curious so I decided to do the same and put it into a text editor. Man, this is HILARIOUS! While it's a bit creepy hearing my words spoken in a robot voice, it is absolutely side-splitting!

I suppose when the forum began I was on Chef's need-to-know list (Thank God.)

That email went out to a MESS of people. I'm glad so many of you came. I'm pretty sure we would have lost touch but now, years later, we can converse daily and you have all met each other rather than just talking to my sorry ass.