Subject: BREAKING NEWS: Lucas trolls Star Wars fanbase!
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 1999 09:49:44 GMT
From: gerthein@wxs.nl (...and Gerthein Boersma)
Organization: None
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc

This just rolled off the telex, folks! Shocking news!

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LOS ANGELES -- The nay-sayers who thought The Phantom Menace was nothing
more than a bad joke were vindicated today when George Lucas himself
announced that that was, in fact, the whole point. The supposed new
installment in the Star Wars saga which was released over three months ago,
the writer/director has now revealed, is actually an elaborate hoax on the
part of the powerful movie-maker.

"The Phantom Menace is a phantom movie," Lucas explains, "an in-betweener
that I scripted on the back of a napkin while dining in Planet Hollywood
just to see if I could get away with it and rile up a few people in the
process." Judging from the lukewarm critical reaction and the heated
debates that the project has caused on the internet between Star Wars fans
and film connaisseurs alike, it appears that the film has succeeded on that
level. "Now that it's out of the box office top ten, I thought the time was
right to reveal my true intentions."

Lucasfilm insiders insist that releasing the fake film was in fact part of
their much-rumored Star Wars misinformation campaign -- designed to prevent
the plot of the real new movie, entitled 'Jedi Defiance' and scheduled for
completion early next year, to be exposed beforehand. Says Producer Rick
McCallum: "You don't expect us to reveal the plot of a new Star Wars movie
to any two-bit geek who has seven bucks and two hours to spend, do you?
What do you take us for, morons?".

But George Lucas suggests he had other motives as well, motives inspired by
the very group of people that have complained so vocally about the (lack
of) quality of the phantom film: the internet community, usenet in
particular.

"On these newsgroups there's a practice known as 'trolling'," the filmmaker
elaborates, "which I found to be a highly intriguing phenomenon. In short,
it's when you say or do something that annoys and aggrevates everyone that
sees it. That's what inspired The Phantom Menace -- it's my way of trolling
the Star Wars fanbase and indeed the entire movie-going public."

The internet itself  was a major inspiration on Lucas' faux screenplay. He
got the idea for the much-maligned midi-chlorians ('force-particles', so to
speak) from on outlandish rumor on gossip-site Ain't-it-cool-news. Says
Lucas: "When I saw how disgusted people responded to that story, I *had* to
add it in!". He admits to chuckling with glee when he saw how many fans
turned around to actually defending the laughable concept after they
believed it had become a fait a complis.

Even more directly inspired by the usenet trolls was the character of
Jar-Jar Binks, computer-generated idiot extraordinaire. Lucas: "One
particular breed of Internet-troll is known for their loud, obnoxious style
of communication, filled with typos and grammatical mistakes. They also
usually have simple, silly handles like 'Joblo' or 'Blinki'. I filtered
hundreds of their posts through a special computer application to come up
with a uniquely annoying brand of character and bingo, Jar-Jar Binks was
born." Indeed, Binks is a dead-on Star Wars equivalent of an AOL troll
writing in all caps with a slew of syntax errors, their posts punctuated by
a string of exclamation-points interspersed with 1's (the original draft of
the screenplay actually featured dialogue as such: "WEN YOUSA SINKEEN WESA
IN TRABBLE!!!!").

TPM's budget of $120 million seems like a lot of money for a joke, but
Lucas claims it would have been worth the laugh even if the "bone-headed
ticket-buying masses" and all-to-eager merchandisers hadn't reimbursed him
ten times over already, "...though now that it's done so well at the
box-office, I may actually have to consider releasing this thing on
video!". Nevertheless, while shooting the film, the director kept a close
eye on the cost, realizing that ultimately, a joke's a joke. "I wanted it
to be a believable hoax, of course, but where I could, I cut corners",
Lucas explains, which is apparently why the Neimoidian aliens and the Jedi
Master Yoda looked so cheap.

As Lucas gears up for the release of the real Episode 1, which he promises
will feature "No midi-chlorians, no Jar-Jar, no fart-gags and none of this
boring-ass taxation nonsense", the question remains: what about the not
unconsiderable group of people who truly loved The Phantom Menace? George
Lucas lightly shrugs them off, saying : "It just goes to show, some people
will swallow any old crap."