OLD MAN YELLS AT CLOUD: where we complain about popular things in media we don't like to feel better about ourselves

[Booyakasha]

'Full Throttle' at least is well worth the effort. It's super cool, relatively short, and the main baddie (and others) are voiced by Mark Hamill, if you like him as a VA. Of course, you could almost certainly find a playthrough on YouTube; on the flipside, all three of those games were released to Game Pass on the XBox, they might be free elsewhere, too.

[EDIT: I'd be remiss if I didn't say how awesome 'Day of the Tentacle' is. It's a little more sprawling and goofy than 'Full Throttle', but Laverne's VA really knocks it out the park. She really hits the "creepy/sweet" thing right on the bevel, man.]

[Booyakasha]

So I was watching this compilation of fight scenes from the 60's 'Batman' just now, and, you know, pretty good fight choreography, but the thing that really struck me is how much time Robin spends getting absolutely whomped on by the bad guys. It isn't as obvious when it's stretched out over the course of individual episodes, but man alive, he gets taken to church sometimes.

Like, it isn't unrealistic (I wouldn't like my own chances in a fight against four or five hulking frigs even as I am, and I'm a barrel-chested six-footer, not a slender 5'8" waif in green panties), but...like, I have to give Robin credit for charging the hell in, man. Tough little bastard.

[Booyakasha]

Huh, I'm surprised I was so on the money. I really didn't look it up or anything aside from a glance at the art.

I believe you, man, we all luck out with an educated guess sometimes. Like I said, the prettier characters in 'Last Unicorn' look like they walked right off the set of 'Space Battleship Yamato' or something, they got that dewy-eyed lanky mid-70s anime look to them.

I'm personally done with the topic of Paper Mario for now, but regarding the concept of word of god, it largely depends on the intent behind the change to me.

I feel you, homey. I totally get it.

I'm not as big on 'Dragonball', but...'Star Wars' is a bewildering haze. Like, there's been so many stories told about SW in books, comics, games and all, that you've always kind of had to choose what was canonical to you. Or, hell, embrace what Lucas supposedly once thought and 'believe in the power of myth'----------maybe Luke Skywalker's adventures led him into the events of the Zahn trilogy, or maybe the Zahn trilogy was just a result of Luke becoming a legendary Robin Hood-type figure as years passed, and people in-universe just started making up new stories about him and his merry band of outlaws. It's all fine. Ain't no SW or Dragonball Gestapo coming to get us if we aren't onboard with the official canon.

I'm not super familiar with the original trilogy, so the only difference I know of is the biggest one everybody makes a fuss over, changing Han Solo shooting first. That's a pretty good example of a tiny difference making a big impact.

You know, I'm sure I've said this before, but I'll say it again----------I have a lot of respect for George Lucas the young visionary artist. He had an idea, and he went through a hell of a lot to get 'Star Wars' made. It was a huge gamble--------like, to get the film made, Lucas traded away his director's salary for the merchandising rights. And sure, that gamble paid off, but if it hadn't, he'd probably have been ruined.

So, the Han v. Greedo thing. I don't know what was going on there, but let's face facts---------George Lucas would have been a skinny little Jewish nerd when he was growing up in the fifties and sixties. He probably had some bullies pushing him over and farting on his head and stuff. Tearing up his old sci-fi comic books. Artists do art things partly in order to work through their feelings-----------I can absolutely imagine George Lucas writing that scene, with Han shooting Greedo under the table and then swaggering out without a backward glance, as a big 'eff you' to anyone who ever knocked his specs off.

Nobody ever saw that scene and thought, "Han Solo is an evil murderer. He shot poor Greedo, who was sitting there peacefully pointing a gun directly in Han's face for the entire time they were talking, and telling Han that he was going to kill him. And so Han shot him utterly without provocation. And that's terrible." Han was fully justified in what he did-----------nobody could say otherwise. More importantly, though, it was a foundational moment for the character. One of the first things we see him do. Those are so important, and pre-SE Star Wars was masterful at them. Han shooting Greedo was perfect, Luke watching the sunset was perfect, Luke getting back to the homestead and finding it destroyed was perfect, Leia shooting that stormtrooper and then telling Vader he sucks right to his face was perfect. Why does Lucas insist on messing with perfection?

Lucas tries to justify it by comparing himself to Michaelangelo trying to perfect the ceiling to the Sistine Chapel for years, but that's a flawed analogy. Michaelangelo worked on the ceiling to the Sistine Chapel for years, yes, but when he was done and showed it to the pope and went 'tada!', he stopped working on it; he didn't go back twenty years later and start pissing about with it again. If anything, I'd say the Special Edition is more like if Da Vinci had gotten blitzed on grappa one night a few years after painting 'The Last Supper', and had then gone back and drawn a huge wiener on Jesus' face. But hey, whatever lets Lucas sleep at night. I mean, he's the guy with four billion bux in the bank, not me.

[Booyakasha]

Also...I mean, am I just stupid?

I don't remotely understand the scene between Jabba and Han in ANHSE. It has never made any sense to me-----------it was left on the cutting-room floor in the original cut of 'Star Wars', and there it should have stayed, so say I. Can anyone explain this to me?

Like, why are Jabba and Han even talking when Jabba has a price on Han's head? Why doesn't Jabba just eat him or flop over on top of him and smother him? What the hell is going on? Does Jabba actually want Han dead? Why did he put a bounty on Han if he wanted to talk like Daddy three minutes later? Why would he show up in person for the talk when he knows Han is liable to shoot his way out? What the hell is going on? It's implied that Jabba sent Greedo as some kind of emmissary to talk with Han, except that's stupid, obviously you wouldn't hire a bounty hunter who wants to kill Han to do that, you'd send Bib Fortuna or someone. The scene makes zero sense.

Also, Boba Fett is the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, and he's just standing there with a huge bounty three feet away. Boba Fett doesn't give a crap about Jabba-----------presumably he could have shot Han right in his face at any point, got paid, and jetted away in the Slave I whilst mooning Jabba out the window, and it wouldn't have endangered their professional relationship! because he's still the greatest bounty etc god i'm tired

I don't understand one inch of this crap.

I probably don't even want an explanation------------presumably some clump of ass-hair wrote a whole treatise about it on Wookieepedia that will make me want to jump out the window. Like when I learned about Omi the Dianoga and suddenly wished I'd spent the last forty years of my life practising the piano or learning kung-fu or something instead of liking Star Wars.

[EDIT: Hey, @CaptHayfever , help me out. I remember you once saying that puttin the Jabba scene back into ANH fixed a plot hole or something, and I didn't ask you to clarify it because I wanted to figure it out for myself, and now I admit defeat. What the hell is going on?

[Deku Tree]

What I would guess happened is that the Jabba scene was cut from the original, and they rewrote the Greedo scene to cover the missing exposition. I suspect that in an earlier draft that included the Jabba scene, there wasn't already a bounty on Han, and that was a change they made as part of the Greedo scene rewrite.

Putting the Jabba scene back doesn't make sense once you've already got the new Greedo scene, but George didn't have it in him to pass up an opportunity to play with CGI a little more.

[Booyakasha]

That makes sense.

It's dumb and it makes Jabba seem more like a pathetic hand-wringing shylock than a scary gangster, but whatevs. Lucas is a genius, and we are emphatically not.

[EDIT: Dammit. I want to go back and rewatch that scene now, even though I hate it and it doesn't belong in the movie. Friggin' Star Wars is the itch that would heal if I could just not scratch it. Damn it all.

[CaptHayfever]

I don't remember what I said before about the plot hole, sorry. I actually like the scene, though; it's basically the only significant change in the special editions that I think is good.

And remember, "I'm-a Luigi, number one!"

[Booyakasha]

Well, shucks.

[Booyakasha]

ahahahaa looka this

i'm flippin dying

[Booyakasha]

Man. You know, I like Weird Al's stuff just in general, but I think I like his wholly original stuff more than his parodies. I've had 'One of Those Days' stuck in my head the last few nights, and I love its blistering lunacy. "A big steamroller ran over my mom/And I cut myself shaving, and they're dropping the bomb/It's just one of those days!" Equating trivium with actual nightmare scenarios is hilarious to me, I guess.

[Booyakasha]

...oh, man.

I was watching that clip from 'Extremely Goofy Movie', and I just noticed that 'Shake Your Groove Thang' contains the lyric "goofy moves!"

That's the entire reason they picked that song, isn't it. It cain't be coincidental. They could just as easily have chosen 'Pick Up The Pieces' or 'Funkytown' or somethin.

Sometimes I wish I just didn't notice stuff.

[Booyakasha]

So there's a musical act I really like. Styles itself as Beirut. Far as I can tell, it's just one French dude who sings a bunch of vocals and plays like twenty different instruments, and then he layers all the tracks on top of each other so it sounds like there's a whole orchestra and chorus. So he's literally the one-man-band. Occasionally needs a session hurdy-gurdy or pipe-organ. Whatevs.

I just wanted to say 'In The Mausoleum' is so beautiful it makes we want to cry myself all hollow.

[EDIT: And then of course the lyrics are hard to make out because the vocals are all jumbled and French-accented, but one of them will come through clear as crystal, and it's an enigma. "And Berlin looks so ugly in the morning light." Or "Imposssible light/in a crowd of homesick fully-grown children." Ooh.

[Booyakasha]

You know, those goofy fantasy flicks really shine a light on the dumb 'awesome guy meets rad girl and it's love at first sight' thing. Like, in 'Father Frost', Ivan meets Nastya once and they're just instantly fated to be together; in 'Sword and the Dragon', Ilya meets Lady (they aren't terribly careful about revealing that she's called 'Vasilia', so it isn't always clear that they have different names), and in the next scene they're married. And then in 'Jack the Giant Killer', Sir Jack of Being Stupid and Princess Not-Appearing-in-this-Film fall in love in less time than it took me to write this sentence.

I mean, the ladies already like the music that Ivan sings in his happy-go-lucky fashion. I like it, too, and I'm straight. Imagine if he sang 'Shining Star'. Holy crap, the Russian winter would end, just from the heat spreading from Soviet girls' loins. Imagine them rough-hewn Eastern-bloc gals with their grey eyes and broad log-splitting shoulders and existential fugue, trading in their head-scarves for bikinis (if you don't want to imagine it, it's okay, I will. I'll also imagine Ivan serenading me. That sounds nice).

[Booyakasha]

...so there's this ep of MST3K I only saw recently. #514 'Teenage Strangler'. It's a good MST3K. Host segments crack me up and all, but...like, sometimes the movie itself does something good even when it's stupid.

There's a fun dumb surf-rock song that some rando lady sings early on in the flick. She.jumps up on the counter barefoot and sings "Yipes Stripes!" And but then they do a kind of disheartening minor-key version of that song all through the flick when it's night-time and the murderer is out murdering. Doin moider. "Yipes Stripes!" indeed.

'Teenage Strangler' is pretty stupid, but that isn't all that it is.

[Booyakasha]

So...like, does Aragorn ever just cut loose? How about Luke?

One of my favourite moments in 'Wizard People, Dear Reader' occurs right in the middle. The troll escapes the dungeon, and the near-dead Dumbledore sets it right on the line-------------"we will find this f*cking troll, and we will kill his f*cking *ss." Goosebumps and chef's kiss. Sometimes swearing is good (Patton's speech!). Aragorn should swear. Boromir and Faramir would totally swear if they had more screentime.

Like, if you were Luke, and Palps took a break shootin rootin-tootin electrocutin sparks and thundershocks all over you just to go 'and now, young Skywalker...you will die', presumably you'd tell him to go choke to death on a romulan's d*ck, right? Cry defiance, man--------------it's the end, go down swingin for the stands. Don't be weak. Why is everyone so dang weak.

[Booyakasha]

So I'm sorry I keep talking about 'Jack Frost', but it ain't my fault, man. There's a million things to talk about.

I love that Ivan is just...on a first name-basis and friendly terms with Baba Yaga, even right after they try to kill each other. That's weird, rìght? And, like, Ivan knows Grandfather Frost instantly, and Frost knows him right back. They're probably both in the White Pages.

...I mean, l met and shook hands with Scott Walker at my eagle ceremony, but nowadays he probably wouldn't know me from Adam. I'm fine with that (Scott Walker can go suck an egg, jack, he's the scum of the earth. Sez me).

[Booyakasha]

So. I'm watching the old sixties Batman flick, and, at the start of the flick, there's a roll of dramatis personae, and it introduces Batman as 'Batman', Robin as 'Robin', and then the villains are introduced as The Catwoman, The Joker, The Penguin and The Riddler. Isn't that slightly dehumanising? I mean, that old-school Batman show humanised the characters no less than any comic from the 80s. Probably Riddler wouldn't care because he's actually mental. Frank Gorshin's Riddler is my favourite Riddler---------------he broke through into our reality and made a song!

You know, if they'd just called him Dad Jokes Guy, it's not like people would have hated him less.

...can you imagine if Darth Vader were a dad jokes guy? Like, picture Vader and Luke goin round out on Cloud City, and Luke says, "you'll find I'm full of surprises!", and then Vader goes, "nice to meetcha, Full of Surprises! It's me, your dad!" Luke would probably have screamed a lot harder than when he got his hand chopped.

[EDIT: Man. I love these great old actors giving their best in this silly movie based on this stupid show. Burgess Meredith is playing The Penguin right up to the hilt, and he's every bit as convincing as he ever was as Mick.]

[EDIT2: 60s Batman fight-scenes are my favourite thing ever. The Batman characters, the tip-up into quick jazz, the pretty good fighting, all the 'BLONK's and 'SMACK's and 'NEO DOOM ULTRA DEATH EXTEND OMICRON's. Gods below, this is the most fun a person can have outside of a fun video game.

I love Joker and Penguin trying to throw pottery and hit Batman with chairs. Certainly that's how I play 'Power Stone'.

[EDIT3: 'Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb!' is what goes through my head whenever I'm having a poop emergency. Perfectly fitting when I find myself rushing up- and downstairs to find an empty stall at the MKE2.

[EDIT4: Man. The very fact that Joker of all people is telling Riddler that Riddler is acting crazy is reason enough to love the Riddler in this show. Reason enough to love Joker, as well. It's like Penguin is daddy, Catwoman is mommy, Joker is the snotty older brother, and Riddler is the giggling brat.

[EDIT5: Ahahahaa Robin tosses Batman a cutlass during the last fight so he can duel the Penguin, who has an umbrella. Dude...'POW' him. Or don't. This movie is so much fun that logic can go get bent.

[EDIT6: This is without a doubt my favourite Batman movie. If you don't agree that it's my favourite Batman flick, then you're a jerk.]

[I REALLY HATE POKEMON!]

I'd probably have liked Star Wars more if it was as funny as that. I remember liking that Space Balls movie which parodies it when I was a kid, more than the real movies, though I don't actually remember much aside from the goofy costumes.

Speaking of which, there's a probably terrible sequel to Space Balls coming, I think.

[Booyakasha]

There's probably a terrible sequel coming for every flippin thing ever, sooner or later. Gird your loins for battle and keep watching the skies.

[Booyakasha]

Oh, man. Imagine if we had 60s 'Star Wars', with Adam West as Luke. Maybe Cesar Romero as Vader? Frick, my brain hurts already.