Lando

I tried to get a discussion going in the Steel mini, but alas no luck. My brother and I have had a long running inside joke about Shaq and his various careers. This includes owning the SNES version of Shaq Fu (when SNES and Genesis were the dominant consoles), owning a tape of the best of Shaq's rap (which was made after only 2 or 3 albums), purchasing his candy bar the Mr. Big Bar, purchasing a TWIsM jacket off of ebay and probably a few other odd products. My favorite line is "it's like the hot dog without the bun"

If anyone is interested in watching this mess it's on hulu until 4/1 I am going to have to rewatch it.

Are any of the official canon books any good? I might be willing to give one of those a shot.

Oh and since Kazaam was directed by the guy who played Starsky on Starsky and Hutch, gifs from S&H are open season in any gif battles that may break out in this thread.

Well, if you speak Spanish, French or German, Kazaam is up on youtube for free. However what you do not get is Shaq's impeccable comedic timing.

Only the first frame of that image loaded for me and I was like "I don't get it, what's so funny? Am I missing something? Am I going to ruin my space cred if I ask?" but when I clicked view image it the whole thing loaded up. Nerd crisis averted.

I am not saying it's unlikely or unreasonable, it's just that it's taken as a given in TFA and it would be interesting had they explored it (at least for people like me that are Star Wars fans, but don't explore anything outside of the official movies other than a couple of video games). How and why he became Kylo could be really interesting, especially since he clearly doesn't look in a mirror and yell "NOOOOOOOO"

I am not surprised that it has been explored in some of the other material. I remember reading a while ago that George Lucas explicitly stated that virtually none of the books were canon, but that the video games were. I wonder if that is still true or if he authorized anything since I had read that. Still, I would like to see those explored in film.

Yeah, I think they should have just come out and say who was related to whom. It seems like there are just so few options that the reveals are either going to be anticlimactic with reactions of "I knew it all along" and "so obvious" or obscure and appeal to only the most die hard of fans and leave the bulk of people with blank stares. At least it's somewhat on topic. A few more rambling TFA thoughts:

Yeah Dan, I too am excited for the next episode and in spite of my criticisms of TFA I did really enjoy it. Has anyone seen the Samurai movie Sword of Doom? I think that this could be adapted into a very interesting Jedi movie. I had read that it was planned on being the first in a trilogy, but the 2nd and 3rd never got made.

And he made the rebels pay for it.

I heard that Snoke's campaign slogan was "Make The Empire Great Again"

I agree, it was handled in a clunky manner. Personally, I think it would be more interesting if Kylo thought that he was doing something good. He was establishing peace through order in the universe and believed that the dark side wasn't dark just misunderstood and was using the dark powers for a vision of good. However, Star Wars has always been about a blatant good side and a blatant bad side and I think it would be hard to insert that kind of fine tuning into it now. Very good theory. It had crossed my mind, but I haven't seen any of the clone wars stuff yet so was unaware of some of that back story. I probably won't get another chance to rewatch TFA until it comes out for home video. And I have heard people saying that Finn has known parents too.

Edit: I keep switching off between calling him Fin and Finn.

In the originals, Vader struggled with it a little bit. At least when it came to his family. After all, he showed that he had some good in him by killing Palpatine.

I saw TFA over the holiday break and I did really enjoy it. I had set my expectations low, even though the reviews were pretty positive. Most of the negative stuff about it is true. I thought Gleeson felt miscast as Hux and couldn't convince me that he was a bad man, Kylo seemed underwhelming (wasn't part of the reason of what made Vader menacing was that he had such a gift with the force, but I never got that impression with Kylo. He seemed unskilled with the force) and the story felt a tad derivative of the original trilogy. However, unlike the prequels it had that dirty feeling of the originals and there were no annoying cutesy aliens that were obviously aimed at kids and that was enough to bring me back into the galaxy far away and make my inner kid happy. I have said George Lucas should have just stuck to ripping off John Ford Westerns and Kurosawa Samurai movies, he's much much better when he isn't trying so hard to be original. Clearly he gives into his own dark side of the merchandising, but prying the series out of his hands is all for the better. I have always hoped that they would make a "Seven Jedi" movie, but I don't think it will ever happen.

Man, I had no idea that Cosby was a serial rapist back in 2012. Now the idea that he would have control over people's bodies has an extremely creepy overtone to it.

I am curious, were you a fan of the show?

Yes he does

I may have to edit my post to bold, underline and increase the size of the words "one of" since it's obviously not clear that I am not saying it is his single best film, but one of several.

They are one of my favorite bands. I like the couple of albums before it better. They're a very unique band, but not for most people.

At the end of the episode Paul said that he wanted to introduce his daughter to this first. I watched the bulk of this while watching my 3 month old son, which makes it his very first exposure to the Star Wars universe.

What the fuck is up with the scene near the beginning where Lumpy goes outside to the deck and looks down at the hundred plus foot drop and then proceeds to jump on and walk the railing (that later breaks and kills a storm trooper)? Talk about some shitty parenting.

To be fair though, she had 4 arms so it was at least alienface too