$tar War$: An Open Letter To George Lucas

Dear Mr Lucas,

Stop. Please just stop.

I can't take it anymore. A writer more talented than you (not including my 5 month-old nephew) once wrote: "Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them." Well now is the time when I can no longer suffer and must take arms against your money-grabbing, face-urinating evil ways. You cannot understand my pain; it is beyond your autistic, self-important ivory-towered existence where toadying henchman agree with your every utterance and you wipe your puckering asshole with the money of eager fans. You have no idea how hard it now has become to be a Star Wars fan. Where once we stood proud (ignoring the convention-goers of course) and held aloft our lightsabers proclaiming "May the force be with you," now we cast sad eyes upon the ruins of a once great Empire, wiping away a tear as we turn our back upon a legacy and admit, finally, we were wrong.

I, like so many others deceived, stood in line for The Phantom Menace daring to hope that, after 20 years, we would once more be amongst our childhood dreams and heroes. And, like so many others, we filed outside afterwards confused and doing our best to convince ourselves that we enjoyed what we had witnessed. I agree that expectation would never match what would be delivered onscreen, but it felt like a dagger to the heart to witness the gutless excuse of a movie you actually produced. But we took strength and drew hope that Attack of The Clones would prove Menace to be no more than you finding your feet after so many years away from directing and writing. But no, Attack of The Clones was just as poorly executed as Menace. It just had more flashing lights and videogame set-pieces with a little less of that Rasta-haddock Jar Jar Binks. Finally, it was with a heavy heart that I welcomed Revenge of The Sith, accepting it was going to, in the parlance of our times "suck ass." So great was my reluctance to accept this onrushing faecal juggernaut as the closure to a lifetime's love of Star Wars that I watched it on pirate DVD. I couldn't allow myself to give you more of my money simply to watch it for the sake of it completion. To this day, I haven't bothered to watch Sith on legit DVD nor purchase it - because a shiny shit is still a shit.

I bought the originally trilogy on VHS way back when, it was a regular staple of my movie diet. I went to see the Remastered versions at the cinema because I was a child when they were originally released and wanted to see them again playing wide and loud. And I bought those again on VHS because I'm a fanboy tool. I bought the Star Wars monopoly board game because I'm a fanboy tool. I should've known better after The Phantom Menace, but I bought that on DVD because I thought maybe you would include all the cool stuff in the Deleted Scenes section, because there was no way that turgid film was the real Star Wars movie, it couldn't possibly be. But nope, there it was in my living room in all its THX mediocrity. And I watched Attack of The Clones and bought that on DVD, knowing better but powerless to resist my fanboy urges. And I bought the Original Trilogy on DVD, despite them having pointless additions because I'm a fanboy tool. Now I learn that you are, yet again, re-releasing them on DVD. This time I can get the original, as-seen-in-the-cinema versions as well as the butchered new editions.

Well no more, Mr Lucas.

You shall receive not one more penny from this fanboy tool. Because what was once great has now been reduced to little more than your personal ATM. Tweak an explosion here, insert a new awesome CGI monster called Bungfwap doing backflips and that's another $400 million you can stuff in your goitre. Nope. Not going to happen. And I'll tell you why, Mr Artistic Integrity who cried into his beard when Warner told you to edit THX 1138 because it made no sense and was, to be honest, rubbish. You have too much fucking money.

You have entered your own planetary orbit where you are your own god and nobody has the balls to wrench the controls from your hands as you wilfully sail The Millennium Falcon into the sun.
Whereas you enlisted help with the original trilogy because even your own friends told you the script was piss-poor, you reached such a level of power and autonomy based on those original movies that none of your underlings dared to whisper "Maaaan, George hasn't got a clue what he's doing."
I mean, how do you go from "The circle is complete, now I am the master" and "May the force be with you" to Anakin and Padme rolling about in a field riding CGI cows saying "I love you more, no, I love you more," huh? That's another matter entirely: over the course of three really, really dull films, you have reduced Darth Vader from one of the quintessential, all-time-great movie villains into a whiny teen full of angst because his Jedi teacher might tell him off for levitating space-fruit in an effort to woo his beloved.

My child will be born January 2007, and I'm looking forward to sharing its first experience of watching classic movies. And you know what? Fuck your new Star Wars movies, they're out of the picture. It will be Star Wars (stick the New Hope subtitle up your ass), Empire and Jedi - burned onto DVD from the original VHS. And only when they're old enough to realise your fall from grace will they be able to watch the new ones, because I don't want to have to explain to a crying child why Han Solo, Princess Leia, Chewie and Luke have been replaced with Pikachus, cut-scenes from Halo and a middle-aged man refusing help and writing himself up his own ass.

So no, I'll not be buying this month's reissued Star Wars movies. And I shall now go and thank my mother for giving away all my original toys to the goodwill store and apologise for treating her as a pariah all these years for saying "They were just toys." Because that's all they were - ancillary merchandise to allow you to build another wing on Skywalker Ranch to house your ever expanding ego. They weren't symbols of my childhood dreams and hopes. They were plastic figures that should've been called "Ahahaha fuck you, pay me" toys.

Besides, Tremors owns new Star Wars any day of the week.

Yours sincerely,
Andy