GeekFurious the Podcast - Episode 201: Coming Clear

Vlad and Magnus talk about many topics (this is a very chatty podcast, more like how we talk privately) including Star Wars, fake outrage, writing your own stories, fan fiction, Agents of Shield, Metallica, writing "strong female characters", Chuck, Breaking Bad, Lost, Battlestar Galactica, and much more.

This is an extremely long podcast with no edits. Even the things that cause us problems are left in. Only listen if you love listening to us talk or if you have nothing better to do. Or if you are really into hearing two guys talk for hours about how self absorbed people are or how hyper romantics can't let go.

About an hour and forty seven minutes in, we think the podcast isn't being recorded. Fun times. Also, at some point I say that I'm glad I broke the heart of a girl who loved me. I definitely should have cut that part out of the episode. Even though I tried to explain what I meant, it sounded much better in my brain. Wow. I'm an awful human being. -- Magnus

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Lucas says Han NEVER shot first. Really George?

Unless you've been living under a rock (or actually have a life), you probably heard that Uncle George stirred up some controversy last week by stating that Han Solo never shot first. In his mind, Greedo always shot first. My initial reaction was to cry 'Bullshit again George!'. But just to make sure and considering I had nothing better to do with myself, I decided to do a little investigating.

In the interview George states that in the Special Edition he inserted a wider shot to clear up the confusion that it was Greedo who shot first. The original scene which was filmed in close ups was apparently considered too confusing by George because it didn't make it clear as to who was shooting whom first.

Sigh. Let's go to the videotape for the millionth time.



Were you ever confused? Didn't think so. The issue is not that George changed the scene in the SE, but that the original canonical one has now been deemed as never being what we thought it was in the first place. Basically, the badass Han Solo we were introduced to 35 years ago was never what he George intended. According to George, we the fans wanted Solo to be a cold blooded killer, but he actually isn't.

You're fucking with us, right George?

The smell of bovine excrement is getting exponentially stronger, so let's go to the source - the original 1976 novelization written by Lucas himself (well, ghost written by Alan Dean Foster actually, but I digress) to see if we could find some clarity on the issue. The description of the scene reads:

"Light and noise filled the little corner of the cantina, and when it had faded, all that remained of the unctuous alien was a smoking, slimy spot on the stone floor.

Solo brought his hand and the smoking weapon it held out from beneath the table, drawing bemused stares from several of the cantina's patrons and clucking sounds from its more knowledgable ones. They had known the creature had committed its fatal mistake in allowing Solo the chance to get his hands under cover."

To me, this lines up with original scene. There does not appear to be any inference of Greedo shooting first, or at all. Sure, you could argue that the way it's described is vague and the "light and noise" might be mutiple shots but that is a real stretch.

Next up, the original 1977 Marvel comics adaptation which was based on the novelization.



You'd think that if the scene was vaguely described in the original novelization then an adaptation would reflect that right? There isn't anything remotely vague about these panels. Clearly someone shoots first and it's not Greedo.

I could go on and list other sources, like the script itself and so on but what's the use? I think we all know what there's the truth and then there is George's truth. I guess Steve Jobs wasn't the only one with a reality distortion field. Must be the air up in Northern California.

I simply have a hard time believing that George's admitted poor choice of editing and audiences' collective 'inaccurate perception" of Han Solo can justify his new claims. Our perception of the character was based on what was shown to us, we didn't all get it wrong. It's that pure and simple.

You can chalk it up to artistic prerogative, revisionist tinkering or whatever. Unfortunately, I am starting to think it's senility.

What say you?

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Review - RED TAILS

I went into this movie ready to hate it. I wanted to hate it. After listening to George Lucas describe it as a movie that was historically light, I couldn't imagine not hating it. And the fact that I had read reviews that described the action as Star Wars in World War 2, I was more than ready to watch it and write the most scathing review this side of Endor.

Having seen it, I am convinced that the negative reviews are inspired by the trend to shit on anything made by George Lucas. Sure, this movie wasn't written by Lucas (it's actually written by John Ridley, of THREE KINGS, and Aaron McGruder) nor directed by him (directed by Anthony Hemingway, who has had an impressive TV directing career). But this is George's passion project and has been for around two decades. Also, the fact that Lucas, as essentially the money behind the project, defined the manner in which it would be delivered to the masses, seems to be a major factor in the negative hype.

If you don't know what RED TAILS is about, let me break it down very quickly. During World War 2, there were these highly intelligent, highly qualified Africa-Americans who were not allowed to fly airplanes because of massive racism in the country. Some people (maybe even most) truly believed that black people didn't possess the intellect or physical ability to fly airplanes. When it was decided to let African-Americans have the chance to fly, the War Department tried to subvert the process by increasing the requirements to ridiculous levels. Unfortunately for them, the pilots who eventually became part the Tuskegee Airmen, met and exceeded those standards. A few months into the pilot training program, then first lady Eleanor Roosevelt took a check ride with one of the trainers and proclaimed the unit fit. From that point on, the Tuskegee Airmen became a big story and it became more difficult for them to be simply swept under the rug.

Unfortunately, this movie doesn't deal with any of that. It instead puts us right into the Tuskegee Airmen flying missions in Italy, something that was an entire ordeal in itself and would probably have elevated this movie in the eyes of some critics. Yes, I think it was a mistake to not include this bit of history in some form (it is somewhat referenced in the movie but to no great extent) but Lucas wanted this to be more of an old-time action movie with a mostly black cast, and he sure got that.

I don't want to write a traditional review where I break down the story, you can find about 300 of those all over the Internet. Instead let me define a few things. First of all, World War 2 fighter planes, and the history surrounding them, has been something of a passion of mine since I was about 11. I've studied nearly every single thing there is to know about the aircrafts, for all sides, and the history behind the different squadrons and fighter groups. So, I went into this knowing too well the history behind the events either depicted, incorrectly depicted, or not depicted in the movie.

HISTORY
As promised by George Lucas, it is light on history. Some settings are accurate, and we do get a side story about a captured pilot that is based on fact. We also see the fate of one of the pilots that is based in some respects on history, and a couple of action sequences are based on actions by the 332nd. But for the most part the movie skirts around history. This should have bothered me more than it did but I was surprised to find myself able to avoid being hyper critical.

DRAMA
There is a fair amount of drama in this popcorn action movie, but it isn't as cartoony as I expected. Reading other reviews, I went in thinking the whole movie was a live action comic-book but it's more like an old-school war movie. It is a bit corny but seems to drift fairly easily between something made for kids and something made for adults.

ACTION V. REALISM
This thing is full of action. And despite the trailers making me think the planes would move unrealistically, like they did in the horrifically shitty movie PEARL HARBOR, I was only bothered by a couple of scenes. The planes seemed to move around in some realm of reality and the pilots (outside of one) didn't fly around with their oxygen masks off at 30,000 feet, something that I was fully expecting later in the movie. My biggest gripe is that we didn't get enough point-of-view dogfight moments where we could see the combat from the perspective of the pilot. I think that is far more dynamic than constantly moving out of the cockpit to look at the planes.

HUMOR
There is a fair bit of banter between the pilots as they joke around the way young men do and likely did. Perhaps the language they use isn't accurate to the time (I don't know) but it added a lot of personality to the different individuals, and helped later in the movie when most of their faces were covered by the oxygen mask.

CHARACTERS
I think this is where Lucas nailed his idea of making it accessible to teenagers. The characters have unique personalities that make it easy to root for, or against if you like, these individuals. When one of them is shot down, or dies, or is captured, you feel for them and their friends. However, by making this more of a popcorn action flick instead of a straight up action drama, the movie never rises above being an enjoyable action movie. It doesn't feel very deep on any level. Even when it tries to inject depth to a couple of our characters (one an alcoholic, the other in love with a local girl) it only seems to barely get there. This is where making this a more serious movie would have benefited.

RED TAILS is a good action movie that could have been better had the filmmakers taken it more seriously. Still, it is worth catching and is easily the best WW2 flight combat movie made by Americans since 1990 (MEMPHIS BELL). Plus, having a nearly all African-American cast should be applauded since I am sure there are many black kids all around the world who have never seen a movie quite like it.

If I had to rate it, I'd give it:

78 out of 100

It is nowhere near as bad as some critics would have you believe. It is not as good as I bet the filmmakers were trying to make it either. But you won't regret watching it unless you are really pissed off and want to hate it. George Lucas deserves a break, people. This is the best thing Lucas has produced since "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc." No, it's not as good as those but I figure they'll now use that in their promotions.

This is the best thing Lucas has produced since "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Raiders of the Lost Arc." -- GeekFurious.com

No? Oh well, a man can dream.

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Geek Furious The Poopcast #5 - PINEAPPLE!

In this episode, we discuss so many things that you will need to freebase energy drinks just to get through it all.

Head Geek Furious and Greek Geek discuss so many things that this podcast goes on for 2 1/2 HOURS! Bring snacks and pillows. Chuck, Star Wars, Fringe, Matrix, Metallica, Korn, Bon Iver, Grammys, Oscars, Peter Jackson, Tolkien, Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, news, censorship, liars, charity, We Heart Chuck, Chuckfest, Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski and so on. Many dirty words like fuck face, cunt, cunt face, fuck faced cunt, fucker, mother fuck, shit, bullshit, asshole, dickrash... OK, I lied. There is no dickrash.

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George Lucas Finally Rights a Wrong! Vader's "Noooo"

As you can all see in the video below, George Lucas has made an AWESOME change to the original trilogy (yet again), that actually makes the movie soooooo much better.

What is the addition? Check this out! When, at the end of Return of the Jedi, Vader decides to save his son from the evil Emperor, he now says "No!" Not once, but fuckin' TWICE!

YES! This finally answers the question we have been debating about absolutely nowhere for 28 fuckin years! Did Vader mean to give the Emperor a hug of support that just went wrong or did he mean to kill him?!

NOW WE KNOW!



Thank the gods for BATTLESTAR GALACTICA.

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Red Tails: Blood in My Stool

Write: Head Geek Furious

Lucasfilm has release the trailer for their big World War 2 movie, RED TAILS, about the first African American fighter squadron. The true story behind the men who were involved is great and very inspirational and George Lucas and his company seek to rape their memory with this venture by making it into Star Wars over Germany circa 1944.



Since it wasn't bad enough that Michael Bay made the worst prison sex movie ever, called PEARL HARBOR, George Lucas has decided to take his childhood raping skills to the only war it is still cool to talk about, and about a group of men who were inspirational and paved the way for changes within the military and eventually the whole nation.

But why do that and make it realistic? I mean, how could it possibly be fun to watch a movie where the air war over Nazi Germany is depicted in the way it happened? Obviously, P-51 Mustangs knife fighting it out with FW-190s and BF-109s at 400 knots is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo boring that it has to be made cartoony and stupid! And thankfully, that is what George Lucas has delivered with his little movie that he has been working on for 200 years.

And I know that most of you will have no clue why I am saying the movie is unrealistic, but my greatest passion is flight and my biggest sub-passion within that one is World War 2 combat fighters. And no ME-262 would do a split-S in the middle of a B and Z run on B-17s while being pursued by slower P-51s!!!! Only an idiot would toss out the advantage they had in an air battle (in the case of the 262, tons of speed) to even the playing field for the P-51 for any amount of time. Sure, a split-S would logically increase energy for the 262 but the process of turning into the maneuver would make the aircraft an easy target for a pursuing P-51. And those 262s were not good about taking damage. One little bullet in the engine and they sparked up like a rocket.

Crap... I sound like a nerd now.

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