Watching the second trailer for “Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens” this morning had a profound effect on me. The first thing it did was instantly make me feel eight years old again, and let me tell you, those were some mighty fine times. No job, no financial worries and most of my free time was spent playing with Star Wars toys, watching Star Wars movies and making Chewbacca noises. Granted, I still frequently make Chewbacca noises daily at the ripe age of 38 and wear Chewbacca slippers on cold weather weekends, but the world hasn’t seemed the same since the release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace. After I watched The Force Awakens trailer for the fifth time in a row and seeing Han and Chewie back on the big screen it suddenly hit me… the world went to hell after the release of The Phantom Menace. That movie sucked so bad that it literally sucked the life out of everyone on this planet and the entertainment industry as a whole.
Think about it. 1999 was the year everything started to suck. The economy was just starting to crash, they were trying to impeach Bill Clinton for getting a BJ and Michael Jordan retired. It was also the year that mainstream music officially started to suck thanks to an endless slew of pop boy bands and Britney Spears clones. Even the mighty Eminem and all of his rapping superpowers could not stop the “Phantom Menace” effect on the music industry and let’s be honest… the mainstream music industry has never stopped sucking since 1999. The fact of the matter is the world was a better place when Star Wars movies were great and when Star Wars movies started to suck, everything else did too.
Now, why did the “Phantom Menace Effect” have such a profound effect on our society as a whole? Well, the answer is quite simple actually. The original trilogy and all of its movie magic made us all dreamers who wanted to achieve great things and move to places that were in a galaxy far, far away from our homes. And there was no life problem that couldn’t be solved by simply sitting down on your couch and watching Star Wars, The Empire Strike Back or Return of the Jedi. It always immediately brought back the balance in our life force. The Phantom Menace, on the other hand, had the complete opposite effect on the human race. It made us realize that we now lived in a world where a Star Wars movie could actually suck and a world where people suddenly stopped trying hard to make cool stuff because it was way easier to sit back and let the computers do the work for us rather than using our brains. Slowly but surely we all started to pay the price for our newfound lack of vision. The Phantom Menace made us a society of bummed out clone troopers that had to accept that everything just sucks now and there’s nothing we could do about it. The movie industry became the Evil Empire that “forced” us to watch an endless slew of CGI crap, remakes, and sequels that we never asked for. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2!
The Phantom Menace also brought an end to our sense of humor thanks to Jar Jar Binks. The “Jar Jar Effect” let actors know that it was okay to not be funny in a movie and it turned our sarcasm against us. Before The Phantom Menace, being overly-sarcastic was rare gift but thanks to Jar Jar it made sarcasm fashionable and everyone became sarcastic in order to properly digest Jar Jar in our brains without pondering suicide. Jar Jar led to 15 years of bad comedy where apprently the only requirement to being funny in a movie was to say something really innapropriate or scream what you’re saying. Yeah, I’m talking to you, Ashton Kutcher.
Thankfully it appears the shit storm is finally over thanks to J.J. Abrams who seems to have restored the balance of The Force of Planet Earth with the relase of the second trailer of The Force Awakens. The Millenium Falcon is back. Luke, Han, Leia, Chewy and R2 are back. The old Star Wars music is back. And Anakin Skywalker is not. Trust me, once the movie hits theaters this Christmas you’ll see the economy immediately explode, all wars across the globe will suddenly end and our faith in the music industry will be restored once more when Hall & Oates finally does an album with Michael McDonald, Kenny Loggins and Lionel Richie. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to the nearest Toys R Us after work, getting myself a new Millenium Falcon and I’m going to take that thing for a ride when I get home. No, I’m not going to have sex with it. Or will I?
