30 Questions My Girlfriend Asked Me About Star Wars

To celebrate Independence Day weekend, my girlfriend and I watched all three original Star Wars movies back to back. We'd caught bits and pieces of the Prequels on TV earlier in the week, and I was surprised and thrilled to find her taking an interest in one of my strongest areas of geek trivia.

What follows is a list of the top 30 questions she asked me during our Star Wars marathon, and my unresearched answers (corrections and nitpicks are welcome).

A NEW HOPE

1. Are those real people in the Stormtrooper outfits?
Most of them - there are leftover clones as well.

2. Imperial senate?
Dummy senate. They disband it in this movie.

3. Why does the first droid blow up? Deus ex machina?
Expanded Universe would have us believe R5 blew himself up to help Artoo.
follow-up: So we should assume R5 believes in the rebellion?
I would say a) he probably just wants to help a fellow droid and.... b) maybe he does just want to help the rebellion, which stands for freedom and self-determination, and droids seem like they could hold those values too. I mean Artoo certainly does.

Unwise decisions, questions of motivations, and questionable force powers, after the jump...

4. If Threepio were given a message, would he want to deliver it too?
He would want to deliver it if he was told to, but it's not as if Artoo was PROGRAMMED to deliver it. He's doing it because he wants to help the princess. Threepio might kind of forget about the whole thing if he got a new master.

5. Why is Obi Wan her only hope?
Cause he's the only Jedi she knows about.
follow-up: How does she know who he is?
Her step-dad, Bail Organa, knew him and told her about him.

6. Why did Obi Wan put Luke on Tatooine, if that's where Darth Vader is from?
Anakin doesn't know he has children; he thought he killed Padme before she gave birth. So there is no reason he would ever go back to Tatooine, in fact he might stay away from Tatooine since it reminds him too much of his old life. Also Shmi Skywalker was part of the Lars family for some years, so Beru and Owen Lars would feel a responsibility to take care of her grandchild.

7. Why doesn't the bar ("cantina" - Ed.) allow droids? is it some kind of racism allegory?
Maybe because they don't drink?

8. Why is Obi Wan going alone to disable the tractor beam?
He knows that Vader will sense him and come looking for him.
follow-up: Why is Darth Vader just wandering around the hallway?
Maybe he's on the way to another meeting?

9. Why does Leia appear to know who Luke is talking about when he says "I'm here with Ben Kenobi?" (she only knows the name Obi Wan, I thought)
Um. She just hears Kenobi and parrots it back. It's a high stress situation.

10. Why did it take Obi Wan so long to get to the tractor beam?
He's been sneaking around corners to get there, and it's a gigantic space station - he could have traveled like a mile.

11. Why did Obi Wan let Darth Vader kill him?
He knows that luke will save the princess, and he can't beat Darth Vader. Also he can come back using the tricks he learned from Qui-Gon.

12. Why does the rebel general say "may the force be with you"? Can regular people use the force?
Everyone is bound together by the force, Jedis just can use it in a literal way. Plus Jedi's have probably been kind of canonized as saints by the rebels, since they're all dead.

13. How do we know that Darth Vader is like, the best pilot?
He was a good pilot in Episode Three, and when he was 9 he piloted pods, which humans are not supposed to be able to do.

EMPIRE STRIKES BACK
14. Why don't the droids freeze in the snow?
They're made of space metal - Artoo can survive in the void of space. Also Threepio did say his joints were freezing.

BONUS COMMENT: "I bet Artoo knows everything that happened in the prequels, and is really uncomfortable right now."

15. What kind of clambake is Vader in?
It's a private re-generation chamber.

16. Don't the rebels worry about what happened to Luke when he goes to Dagobah?
He can do whatever he wants.

17. Doesn't Yoda know Artoo?
He's seen lots of droids before.

18. Can Luke understand Artoo?
When he's hooked up to a computer he can, otherwise he has to guess. Artoo may be saying "That's Yoda! He was on the Jedi Council" but Luke wouldn't know.

19. Why is Yoda acting like a drunk?
He's testing luke's patience and empathy.

20. How did Boba Fett see the Falcon float away with the trash? Why didn't he tell the Empire?
His ship, the Slave I, has great sensors - he didn't tell the Empire cause he wants the bounty.

21. Why does Vader torture Han and not ask him any questions?
So that Luke can have a vision of his friends in pain. Anakin only had future visions of his loved ones in pain, so he assumes that's how it works for Luke too (and it does).

22. How does Darth Vader keep up his lightsaber skills?
He's already got them - he was super powerful in his prime. He might train with the Emperor too, who beat Yoda in lightsaber combat.

23. Why does Luke try to contact Leia but not Han Solo?
Short answer because she's force sensitive, long answer, he's "stretching out with his feelings" to find someone he knows to get him help, and since Han is in carbonite and dead to the world, he can't sense him. and since Leia is force sensitive anyway, he can sense her very strongly and can easily communicate with her.


RETURN OF THE JEDI

24. Does Vader even care about ruling the galaxy?
Anakin always thought that he deserved a lot of power, because he was told for most of his life that he was "the chosen one." He talked with Padme about ruling everything so he could have things just like he wanted them.

25. What's Jabba's job?
He's like a mob boss - he controls the crime syndicates on Tatooine. Hutts are like gangsters of the galaxies.
26. How did Leia know how to get Han out of the carbonite?
She knows what she's doing. She could have asked Lando how to work it. There's just a little switch on the side.

27. Has Leia ever seen an ewok before? She seems not surprised to see Wicket.
These guys aren't scared by any aliens - they were just on a sail barge with tons of horrible creatures and a giant slug monster. Plus they work with aliens. They can take a little teddy bear guy in stride.

28. Is Artoo annoyed at the ewoks?
He's pretty easy going. He's just going with it.

29. Why can Leia remember Padme?
She has force memory past powers. She can remember images, even though she was but a wee baby.

30. Why does Anakin know how to come back from the dead?
That's hard; the Emperor told him that his Sith master could bring other people back from the dead, but not himself. So even if the Emperor taught Anakin how to do that, which I doubt he did, Anakin couldn't bring himself back. I think that Obi Wan and or Yoda pulled Anakin's spirit out of the force continuum, which they could do since he joined the light side at the last minute.

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Top Five Mexican American Geek Icons

It's Cinco De Mayo! Apparently this holiday is celebrated more in the US than in Meh-hee-co proper, EXCEPT for in the town of Puebla, which is right around where my family is from, so there's legitimacy for you. And though Mexico is not particularly renown for it's exportation of geek culture (it's no Japan, I'll tell you that much), I could think of at least five (or CINCO; get it?) nerd icons of Mexican ancestry, and I'm not even including myself. So what follows is a collection of folks both real and fictional, born inside and outside of Mexico, all of whom are totally freakin geeky.

5. Pedro

Pedro Sanchez hails originally from the town of Juarez, where apparently they bust up pinatas that look like real people all the time. The filmmakers never pull the curtain too far back on Pedro's inner-workings; we become well aquainted with Napoleon's specific areas of geekdom, but we never get a good idea of what Pedro's special skills really are. But it's a cool spin on the mixed-race buddy-comedy formula that Pedro's ethnic makeup is never mentioned or possibly even noticed by Napoleon, as the two are united by their shared asbergian deadpan. Sweet.

4. Guillermo Del Toro

Del Toro first scratched the surface of the American geek's concioness with Mimic, which I saw in theaters for some reason. But he really made his mark with Blade II and Hellboy, showing he had a certain flair for adapting geek source material. Now that he has the prestige of Pan's Labyrinth on his resume, he's gearing up for the motherload of nerdy adaptations; Tolkien. He's in post-production for The Hobbit, and is talking a big game about using super-advanced animatronic techniques for the creature effects, racking up some big points in my book. Isn't everyone sick of CG? Filmmakers think it looks real, but it doesn't. You know what's real? Puppets. Puppets and robots. They exist. Del Toro also said in an interview with MTV that he has some European comic book artists in mind to bring to the design team, and all of this makes me think that dude is a serious nerd and will do right my favorite Tolkien book.

3. Betty Suarez

I don't care what anyone says, Season 1 of this show was some of the best network TV I've seen in years. It's pretty awful now, but nothing good ever lasts, unless it's on HBO. Betty is pretty much everything a leading lady on a prime-time series isn't supposed to be, including not-white and an over-analyzing, socially awkward nerd. Betty is not just a girl with glasses who will one day be made effortlessly into the belle of the ball; she's a overly enthuasitic know-it-all who is fairly confident in her high-functioning brand of nerdery. She's also unabashed about her Mexican hertiage, as seen in the above still and tons of plotlines about going to Mexico or getting hassled by the INS, that sort of thing.

2. Jaime Reyez

The greatest Mexican superhero since El Santo, the third Blue Beetle is the most funny, unique and sympathetic teen hero in comics today. Or at least he was during John Rogers two year run, now that he's done I hope the new writers can keep the spark alive on this book. Jaime protects the town of El Paso, Texas (right next door to Pedro's hometown!) from supervillians and alien invaders, and manages for the most part to have a pretty good, largely angst-free time while doing it. Throw in some hard working immigrant parents, some spanglish speaking friends, and a red and orange texas backdrop, and you've got a book that feels new and authentic, even if it is written by a white dude.

1.Robert Rodriguez

An auteur with an obsessive attention to detail and a willingness to push things right over the top in the name of awesomeness, Robert Rodriguez makes movies for action geeks, horror geeks, sci-fi geeks, and you feel the love of a fanboy coming through every frame. Robert gave American audiences the only great Mexican action hero of the 20th century with El Mariachi. (or does Zorro count? I think he's Spanish. So's Antonio Banderas, of course, but why split hairs.) He's featured Mexicanos in just about every film he's written since then, and gave us one of the greatest poster taglines ever; "Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T?" Rodriguez's films feel specific to what he knows and enjoys, yet their enthusiasm and eagerness to entertain make them accessible to all audiences. Next up from Double R should be a direct-to-DVD version of Machete, the freaking awesome looking revenge flick starring Danny Trejo, which you saw the fake trailer for in Grindhouse. It looks like it's getting held up in production, but I hope it gets made. If anyone can make Trejo a leading man, it's Rodriguez.

That's it! Now go drink Miller Chill and eat chips! Happy cinco!

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The Onion Thinks They Know From Geekdom

The Onion AV Club has posted their list of 20 Pop-Cultural Obsessions Even Geekier Than Monty Python. Now, are they saying Monty Python is the geekiest thing most people can think of, or that Monty Python is the zeroed out middleground for geeky obsessions? Python fans certainly distinguish themselves as some of the most quote-happy members of Geeksville, although I think at this point Simpsons fans have surpassed them in that department, as Python fans grow old and lose their memory along with their ability to reel off the Cheese Shop sketch in a horrible British accent (I'm not talking about myself, I've still got it). Here's the Top 20....

1. Star Trek
2. Ren Faires
   
3. Fantasy Sports Leagues (props for reaching out into non-traditional areas of geekiness)
   
4. Michael Jackson (the article makes a good case for it)
   
5. Wikipedia
   
6. Battlestar Galactica
   
7. The Rocky Horror Picture Show
8. Joss Whedon
9. Meida-Specific Role Playing (like when you and your friends pretend to be Pokemons on AIM. Not that I did that.)
10. Magic: The Gathering (w00t)
    
11. World of Warcraft
12. The Simpsons
13. Doctor Who
14. Frank Zappa
    
15. Game-Show Tape Trading (this sounds like something Seth MacFarlane would do)

After this, the list gets really lazy and just starts hitting non-specific branches of nerdery. Hit the jump for the last five and some analysis on what is conspicuously absent.

16. Anime (All anime?! Really?)
17. Cosplay
18. LARPing (not exactly POP culture, but whatever...)
19. Second Life/MySpace/FaceBook (According to the Onion these are all methods of fake socialization and therefore basically the same. But I think we all know SecondLife outgeeks those other two by a mile. SecondLife is made up of the .001st percentile of the geekiest people on earth, serial killers, and Ron Paul supporters. And I'm not saying any of those things are bad, okay!?)

20.Fanfic

The article write-up includes this curious line: "Yes, there are also interesting scripts, like a Home Improvement where Mark gets addicted to drugs, or a Fight Club epilogue that finds Tyler Durden eerily resurrected, but who wants to read that?" Oh yes, those poor outsider fanfic artists who daringly reimagine what might have happened if Tyler Durden came back to life. Now, I have not had the pleasure of reading any Fight Club fanfic, but I'm willing to bet he comes back to life in all of them.

Notably missing from this list are:

Comics
Too hot right now to properly be considered a geeky fandom, I suppose.

Star Wars
While no one can deny Star Wars has some insane fans, those who start up Stormtrooper garrissons and don't not believe the Force is real, I'm guessing this fandom is too diluted by casual fans and widespread acceptance to get on the list.

DnD
I don't care if they do already have WoW and LARPing on there, there is no excuse for leaving off the grandaddy of them all that is still practiced today!

Anyone else's favorite fandom get left off?

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Geekanerd's Top Ten Video Games, Comics and Movies of 2007

If you haven't already OD'ed on year end Top Ten lists, here for your categorizing pleasure are your Geekanerd Editor's picks for the Top Ten Video Games, Comics, and Movies of 2007.


For the top ten games, keep in mind that Albo's only systems as of the writing of this list were PS2, DS, PC, and Wii.

Albo's Top Ten Video Games

1. Portal - As if you didn't already know from our Portal love-fest, this game knocked me on my socks with its great writing and elegant design.

2. Super Mario Galaxy - The second best reviewed game of all time also takes second on my list. It's great, but doesn't have the originality of Portal.

3. Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition - Some may scoff because this game first came out two years ago, but it's still one of the best action games I've ever played and the Wii version is the best version out there.

4. Bioshock - Some minor problems aside, this game plops you down in such a well-developed world you'll wish more developers left the safety net of WWII for their shooters.

5. Guitar Hero III - As I said in my review, I love Guitar Hero and more Guitar Hero loves me.

6. Puzzle Quest DS - While the design itself is a little shoddy, I have to include this for the sheer addictiveness factor.

7. Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass - Controlling Link has never been this much fun, and the care put into the production design (papercraft storytelling!) reassures me that Nintendo doesn't take my business for granted.

8. Mario Strikers Charged - The Wii was lacking a solid non-casual multiplayer game before Strikers came along, and with it came online play! Finally.

9. Hotel Dusk - More of an interactive novel than a game, this one challenged my notions of what a game should be.

10. Odin Sphere - While long-winded and too epic for it's own good, the beauty of the 2D animations in this game made me wish more developers didn't automatically jump to 3D for their games.

AHR's Top Ten Comics

1. Shortcomings - Funny, true, and exceedingly painful. It's been obvious for years that Adrian Tomine is a talented writer and artist, but this is his first masterpiece.

2. Blue Beetle - Somehow John Rogers has discovered a formula for comic book story-telling that ensures I will cry at the end of every issue. Beyond the emotional punches, this series consistently delivers great action and sharp writing with LOL moments to spare. Long live Jaime Reyes.
Related: Our reviews of individual Blue Beetle issues.

3. Notes From A War Story - An older book by Italian artist Gipi that was just published in English this year. A crime story about three teens trying to make it big as gangsters in a warn torn country, this book has none of the graphic violence typical of mainstream American crime comics, but is still the most unsettling thing I read all year, with an ending that haunted me for days.

4. Batman - The Batman and Son arc is all well and good, but the highlight of Morrison's 2007 run was his Club of Heroes muder mystery, in which GM once again takes some long-forgotten DC basement bin heroes and turns them into fascinating, true to life characters. Also worth noting is issue #663, a one-shot that consists of page after page of pulp horror prose that gives the reader a deeper look at Batman and the Joker than could have ever been put across in mere world balloons.

5. The Umbrella Academy - A stunning debut from Gerard Way, bolstered by art and colors by top of the field artists Gabriel Ba and Dave Stewart. Funny, dark and exciting with a distinctively young voice, here's hoping this is the start of a long career in comics for Way.
Related: Our reviews of individual UA issues

6. Shazam! The Monster Society of Evil - Jeff Smith retells the Capitan Marvel story with sensitivity and artistry, while also achieving a classic, high spirited feeling of golden age DC superheroism.

7. After The Deluge - Jeff Neufeld's non-fiction webcomic tells the stories of five very different people surviving the biggest natural disaster of our lifetime. Neufeld's beautiful single color illustrations manage to capture first person experiences of Hurricane Katrina more poignantly than any article or documentary I've seen.
Related: Our past coverage of AD.

8. Welcome To Tranquility - A great new series by Gail Simone, with an memorable cast of characters who we come to know extremely well through highly stylized backup stories told via comic genres ranging from 1920 adventure serials to modern day manga. Inventive and funny, with killer art by Niel Googe.

9. Avengers: The Initiative - You may have gathered I'm not a big Marvel fan, but I loved this series, particularly the first several issues. A low to the ground look at what the future of superheroing could look like in a post-Civil War world, again with a great new cast of characters.

10. All Flash #1 - The one-shot that brought back Wally West as the Flash and introduced the world (or me, at least) to artist Karl Kershel, aka the talent to watch in 2008.
Related: All Flash scans in Panel Discussion

(Dis)Honorable Mention: The Irredeemable Ant-Man - Great series with pitch black humor, featuring an anti-hero (get it? ANT?) so deplorable that one of the most enjoyable moments of the series was when he finally gets caught and tortuously beaten by the "villain" of the series. Too bad it had to end, but I guess even Marvel readers can't stand someone who's that much of an asshole.

Albo's Top Ten Movies

1. King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters - A perfect movie in every way that comes to mind. Read our review.

2. The Lives of Others - I know this was technically a 2006 film, but I saw it in 2007 and it was too good to not mention.

3. No Country For Old Men - Yes, it's fashionable to like this movie.

4. Children of Men - Another one that came out elsewhere in 2006 but only hit our shores in '07, I can't remember another movie that evoked such an intense sensation of danger in me.

5. Grindhouse - Say what you will about the quality of the two flicks involved, but seeing this four hour schlock-fest in the theaters was a rare experience I'm sorry so many people missed.

6. 300 - The movie that made me dread the Watchmen movie a little less.

7. Juno - Funny with a heart, and the official arrival of the talented Ellen Page.

8. Knocked Up - More babies, good laughs, also with heart.

9. Zodiac - A consistently tense thriller without all the usual gags.

10. Beowulf 3D - If I had seen it in 2D would I have liked it? No, probably not. But flinching from flying debris was really fun. Now everything else seems dimensionally deprived.

AHR Top Ten Movies

1. Sweeney Todd - Smart choices abound; Burton cuts what wouldn't have worked on screen, gets tightly wound, intimate performances from his stars, and does cinematic justice to the most brilliant musical ever. Read my review for lots more.

2. Juno - As stylized as the script is, the characters in this movie reminded me more of the girls I knew in high school than any movie I've seen. Ellen Page makes the most of the best comedic part written for a teenage girl...ever.

3. Lars and the Real Girl - This movie quickly transcends it's jokey premise with a painfully convincing performance by Ryan Gosling, as a man whose social anxiety takes him to some strange places. Also notable for featuring a small town in which people are believably portrayed as basically good at heart, a rare thing and difficult thing to pull off in a non-hollywood film.

4. I'm Not There - Daring and masterful. While the brilliant/boring ratio is just a hair too close to be totally excusable, breathtaking moments abound, and a three minute music videoesque sequence set to Ballad of a Thin Man was the most exciting cinematic passage I saw all year.

5. King of Kong: A Fistful Of Quarters - The most consistently entertaining movie on this list. A careful study of the twin demons of disappointment and ambition, with thrillingly innovative editing and storytelling techniques.

6. There Will Be Blood - Not my favorite P.T Anderson movie by a long shot, but a solid showcase of taught, artful filmmaking that speeds by in what feels like much less than two and a half hours. Daniel Day Lewis's final monologue will be performed by boys in acting classes for years and years to come.

7. The Host - The action movie of the year, that will change how you think about being chased by a monster. The child in peril subplot is almost unbearably grim, but the tension and empathy you feel for these characters must be experienced to be believed.

8. The Lives of Others - This movie actually only reached American shores this year, so I'm putting it on. Hard choices and heroism on display in a way that never feels manipulative, even in the final tear-jerking moments.

9. My Kid Could Paint That - The monster of televised fame reached new heights of horror this year, and this very personal documentary shows how the talks shows giveth and the talk shows taketh away, as a six year old child prodigy goes from celebrated human interest story to suspected fraud.

10. Paprika - Twists and turns without ever losing the thread of coherence. A beautiful challenge to watch.

Honorable Mentions: Persepolis, No Country For Old Men, Grindhouse, 300, Wristcutters, Enchanted, Hairspray.

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