Episode I: Examined

I should be writing. I know, I know... this is writing, but not "work writing." I'm procrastinating. But I don't feel too bad.

If you're anything like me, you have a myriad of problems with the Star Wars prequels, but not enough time to dedicate to going film by film, instance by instance, dissecting all that is wrong and bad with the three films which brought the series into lame land.

There is, however, at least one man who is nothing like me. He has gone to the trouble of not only thinking it all through and producing a video critique, but he even includes interviews with friends to prove his points.

Attached is Video One Part One of SEVEN in his series on why Episode I is, in his opinion, awful. It's ten minute long. It's safe to assume that the other six installments are all around 10 minutes, too, so if you additionally assume it took him 2 days to work on each clip (there's a lot of editing work put into these), and assume he took a couple days to write each chapter, that comes out to around 30 days -- an entire month -- dedicated to this thing.

Now I don't feel so bad that I'm not writing that screenplay I promised myself I'd finish by the end of 2009. But I do feel a little bad that he stole my idea* (a while ago a friend and I talked about creating a short video podcast dedicated entirely to what's wrong in the prequels. We assumed we had enough material for at least 25 episodes).

This is the only chapter I've had enough time to watch**. Some day I shall probably get through the other six (time is on my side: if it takes me years and years, that won't make The Phantom Menace any better).

Enjoy.

*I'm sure a million other people "had" this idea as well. It's to this guy's credit that he actually followed through on something and did it. It's this same logic I use to not complain about groups like The Jonas Brothers. Yeah, their music isn't so inspired and a lot of people could have written it. But you know what? They didn't. These guys did.

**Not from working, mind you.