My Kind Of Scum

I don't know if it's a mental condition of mine but for some reason I just can't enjoy something once it gets over half way. The knowledge that the end is in sight just taints whatever pleasure I'm having, whether it be a tasty chocolate bar, a holiday, or the second month of what the other person thinks will become a long term relationship. The same is true of watching films, however in their case I think I often have a point. Generally by the time we get to the third instalment of a planned trilogy, something goes titties up and all the hard work that's been done before gets a little shat on. For example, just look at Spiderman 3, X-Men 3, and Debbie Does Dallas 3, which all somehow lack that sense of wonder and excitement that made the first two so gripping. Maybe they felt the need to escalate effects in favour of focusing on character; maybe they'd painted themselves into a corner, or maybe you could simply see the boredom behind Debbie's now cold, soulless eyes. The same rule of diminishing returns is sadly true of Star Wars: Return Of The Jedi. Though, does that film suffer because it is a bad film or simply because its predecessor was arguably one of the greatest films of all time? I say this as though I don't think anybody's seen it and made their own fucking mind up already. But if you keep reading, I can promise a good few dick jokes and a few too many swear words to keep everybody awake.

Fathers And Justice

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The Empire Strikes Back continues the story of Luke, Leia, and Han as their importance in the universe continues to grow and their incestuous love triangle reaches its fever pitch. Luke begins his training with Yoda, an alien that both looks and sounds exactly like the disabled love-child of both Kermit and Miss Piggy, whilst everybody else just tries to avoid the massive shiny helmet of Darth Vader. Meanwhile, Vader himself is attempting to track down the young Skywalker with all the determination of a knob that's dressed up as Batman, whilst hanging a 'Fathers For Justice' sign off Buckingham Palace. For most people, this is the best film in the Star Wars franchise and for others it's simply the best film ever made. On the flip side however, some people even consider this film a further stain on the reputation of cinema after the dumbing down of movies began in the mid-70's with its predecessor and Jaws. I won't really be giving that train of thought much time here though on the grounds that those people are simply pretentious, boring twats.

The Original Hope

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When I was younger I used to believe in all sorts of silly little things such as magic, Santa Claus, and anti-aging cream. Since then however I've sadly discovered that most of these things are actually total bullshit and exist simply because people were desperate enough for them to be real. In many ways this is similar to the Star Wars prequels which were willed into creation by the franchise's fans and a creator with all the imagination of a lump of cheese. Being set before the original holy trilogy, those films could be seen as the mundane reality behind the eye-catching magic. In the same way that the Masked Magician showed us that everything is done with smoke and mirrors, they too showed us what the Clone Wars were and how Darth Vader came to be. If we're to assume that most people weren't the biggest fans of these most recent additions to the saga then I guess one question has to be asked... now we've had a decade to come to terms with them, do the prequel films diminish the magic of the original Star Wars?  

The Reality of Nostalgia

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I started life in a particularly grotty area in which junkies roamed the streets and little children would shit on the floor in public. Some girl I knew once squat one out under a slide in the park and told me to keep it a secret. She said that I should tell people a dog had done it, which was fine because as far as I was concerned a fucking dog had done it. I was disgusted, appalled, and about five years old. Thankfully we moved away and it was only the other day, about twenty years later that I decided to return to it. I looked up the old road that had shaped my initial impression of the world when I was kicked in the balls by a wave of nostalgia. The place was exactly how I'd remembered it... the streets were paved with faeces and syringes littered the floor acting as obstacles for the children as they played their daily game of 'don't get AIDs'. What struck me the most however was how small the place now seemed. I wondered what the chap who bought our old house thought of the place, but of course I couldn't ask him. Not because I didn't have the confidence but rather that he'd made his answer quite obvious several years earlier by stringing himself up from a nearby lamppost and hanging himself. Oh well.  

A Link To The Past

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Look, everybody knows everything about Star Wars: Episode 1- The Phantom Menace, so what could I possibly say that you haven't already heard over and over again? Well it was 1999, and thanks entirely to the trailers for this movie the world’s supply of nerds were increasingly suffering from some sort of collective movie blue-ball. It'd been over fifteen years since Princess Leia chose to start shagging Indiana Jones instead of her own brother, and so excitement for this prequel trilogy was higher than Keith Richards in a rocket full of crack. Then the film was released, people were able to see it and millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror as it became increasingly more apparent that what they were watching was a total piece of shit. Like Dr Manhattan's giant squid monster, The Phantom Menace brought humanity together to fight one collective enemy with society’s battle cry being, “George Lucas raped my childhood”. Although if modern revelations are to be believed, it seems that most media personalities that rose to fame during the 1970's have quite literally raped somebodies childhood, so perhaps this was a little extreme. Nor in my own case was it true. I was ten years old in 1999 and I loved The Phantom Menace more genuinely than I loved my own soon-to-be-dead grandfather.