Salutations, Rebel scum, and welcome back to the Star Wars Report. Your weekly look at the zip-zoop-zabulous world of bikini-clad princesses, busty Twi’lek dancers, and Natalie Portman in a leather bustier.
George Lucas is getting set to follow in the footsteps of Alfred Hitchcock, John Landis, and Lloyd Kaufman by doing his first ever Star Wars cameo in “Episode III.” Hard as it is to believe, Lucas has never popped into any of his own films, though he has, according to the Internet Movie Database, made appearances in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Missionary), Sesame Street’s “Follow That Bird” (Man in background), “Hook” (Man kissing on bridge), and “Beverly Hills Cop III” (Disappointed man).
With a résumé like that, his reasons for holding back become more apparent. Even so, there’s nothing but rumors as to where or how Lucas intends to insert himself into “Revenge of the Sith.” We can always hope it will be as “Innocent Bystander #4” in the scene where Ki-Adi Mundi drops a thermal detonator into a crowd of Coruscant death stick dealers, but reportedly his appearance will be fleeting and nondescript, in the opera house scene, where you’ll be lucky to pick him out of a computer generated crowd of thousands. The release of the “Special Editions” of the original trilogy and the prequels have already proven that the man has an almost scary love for filling every inch of every frame of his movies with useless crap, so picking out his face might be difficult upon initial viewing.
For me, I think it would’ve been more amusing to do something along the lines of having an entire pod of Lucases in the Senate chamber, or making all the troopers clones of Lucas. Hell, even a fiery death in an X-wing during the first Death Star assault would suffice. His choice now is pretty typical for a guy who’s been making stupefying decisions about plot and continuity since the beginnings of the “Star Wars” franchise.
More interesting to me (and more convenient for the purposes of this column) is his choice of names for his fleeting appearance. I mean really, “Baron Papanoida?” Even given Lucas’ father figure fixation (If I have to tell you “Vader” is Dutch for “father,” you probably stumbled upon this column by accident.) this is a pretty tame effort from the guy who gave us the likes of “Mon Mothma” and “Ponda Baba.” Rather than dwell on what is really only the latest example of inexplicable choices Lucas has made with regards to his movie franchise however, I chose to “humorously” examine the grand tradition of goofy names in the “Star Wars” films.
Get the rest of the report in part two of THE STAR WARS REPORT: “WHAT’S IN A NAME?”>>>
