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Sunday, February 13, 2011

Heroes and villains

My son is now incommunicado for two weeks in the middle of the Mojave Desert, training at that ersatz Afghan village the Army has set up there. Before he left Alaska, the last time we Skyped him, he offered to show us the body armor and helmet he had been issued. We said we'd like to see it, and he put it on.

It was a little disconcerting to see him in the armor; he looked like those soldiers you see on the news reports from the war front.

I said, "Johnny, when you were a little boy and watched Star Wars, you probably identified with Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Little did you know you were actually going to grow up to be one of the Imperial Storm Troopers."

I can only hope when he deploys to Afghanistan that The Force is with him. 

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nah, the storm troopers in Star Wars were all Brits. Johnny's still one of the good guys. ;)
G

John Craig said...

G --
Where did you get that the Imperial Storm Troopers were all Brits? The only British accent I recall was from C 3-pio(sp?).

Anonymous said...

All the death star officer guys were Brits - the troopers didn't talk much. The rebs in contrast were yanks. Of course we learned later on that the clones were all made from a Maori/Kiwi bounty hunter - but certainly not from a yank. I suppose that apart from Hollywood enjoying casting Brits as bad guys (even when they are playing eurotrash terrorists like Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons in the Die Hard series), a movie made at Pinewood is inevitably bound to have lots of Brit actors and extras. But apart from Obi-Wan, Qui-Gon Jinn and C3P0, Brit good guys were pretty thin on he ground in the SW series. And of course the uber evil emperor was a Brit, as were most of his Sith sidekicks, including Dooku (Christopher Lee) and the excellently gymnastic Darth Maul.

BTW, they even do it in the cartoons - think Scar in Lion King (Jeremy I again) or Shere Khan in Jungle Book (George Sanders). It's a wonder poor little British kids haven't been given an evil complex by Walt and his animators.

G

Anonymous said...

PS It's not only me. :)
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/Why%3F:Do_all_the_evil_people_in_Star_Wars_have_a_British_accent%3F
G

John Craig said...

G --
I've long noticed how Hollywood likes to give its villains upper class British accents. But I hadn't realized this movie had been made at Pinewood. And I had forgotten all about the death star officer guys having British accents (or did that come in the later movies?) I never saw any of them after the second in the series.

Which brings me to the main point of my comment, which is that you are really betraying your inner nerd by demonstrating such detailed knowledge about the series.

John Craig said...

PS -- One of the most pathetic things about Hollywood movies is the way they telegraph their good guys and bad guys. A Brooklyn accent automatically means someone is good, and a clipped upper class British accent means someone is evil. If any group other than the ruling clique in Hollywood did this they'd be accused of ethnocentrism.