The Dark Side

Back in the good old days, bossman used to take us all out for a "team building" outing and treat us to a movie on its opening day. In the past we saw each of the LOTR movies, each of The Matrix movies, etc. The 8 of us would meet at one of the nearby theatres and bossman would show up with the prepurchased tickets and we'd go in and watch the movie and have a nice lunch afterward. On one occasion, one whole theater was rented out by some other division in our company. (I could tell by their badges that they still had on) Those wonderful days are now just a fleeting memory. Under our new regime, that kind of activity isn't looked upon as acceptable practice. It's really too bad.

What's worse, I may have to shell out my own money to see Episode III. Egads!

Then again, the whole family will want to all go and see it anyway. The kids have been getting themselves all in a lather (not literally) by pulling out the old VHS tapes of episodes 4,5,and 6 and watching them this past weekend. (It's funny to hear them talk amongst themselves during the movies as they point out various things onscreen and say "that's just like in Battlefront" (in reference to one of their xbox video games (Star Wars Battlefront, I think)) as if these old relic movies were the result of their video games and not vice versa) And then on Saturday night, the cartoon network was showing the full length movie of the Clone Wars (all 25 chapters) (Clone Wars volume 1 DVD contains only chapters 1 through 20), so that was quite the treat. Anyone know when they'll release volume 2 of The Clone Wars on DVD?

And then on Sunday, Fox tv broadcast Episode I. Oy! Talk about overload! After watching Episode I, I realized why I so dislike that movie. (I'm nitpicking now, so you can skip this part) It's not that the JarJar Binks thing was bad enough, but so many little niggling issues about the plot and the action that just gets under my skin. Like what you ask? Like near the final third of the movie when the Padme/Amidala group invade the building that the viceroy was in, and they open a door and there appears Darth Maul, just standing there. Let's see, 20 people with blasters, yet no one fires a shot. And so for drama, Quigon and Obiwan casually walk up and announce "we'll handle this" as they tastefully remove their outer robes. Puhleeze. Or like when in the grassy meadow as the Gungans meet the droid army. So no one fires a shot while the droids are being deployed out of their ships. Talk about a perfect time for some pre-emptive bombing. But we all sit there and watch how the droids are unpacked like some bizarre set of christmas tree lights and how they can so nonchalantly get into formation, without worry of the enemy firing upon them. Grrr.

I could go on and on, but I'd just get my panties all up in a knot. Or something like that.