philosoraptor42

A long while back the_gel made this loltastic video of him playing "Kinect Joy Ride" without moving his arms. (He comes third. Check it out here.) So when GEL decides to do a video looking into the new Kinect Star Wars game, what's he going to find when he tries out Pod Racing?

(Video link)

4:50 - You know what time it is!
7.10 - Race finally begins



(via the-gel)

Update: Turns out in the second video that the game is automatically set to auto-steer. Though I still think it's pretty strange that a Kinect game would have the "you are not able to lose" mode as the default setting.

This was originally a comment on the Topless Robot website and I've received 11 likes for it. I'm quite pleased with the comment and it seemed to represent the turn of the tide from general Jar Jar Binks hatred in the comments, to a rather more nuanced view on the position with many echoing my sentiments. Anyway, below is a version of the comment with a few small changes and edited for grammar.



Here's a little observation. This occurs to me because of a recent "Horror Etc" Podcast (check it out - that post also includes an absolutely awesome Star Wars picture), where one of the podcasters showed his daughter, who had never seen any Star Wars before, all six of the movies (in release order) and asked her views.

Anyway, she liked Jar Jar Binks because she thought he was funny. No surprise there.

However, I've worked out what is wrong with Jar Jar hate. Look back at The Phantom Menace. What is actually good in it, particularly for a young child? Ignore how much you hate Jar Jar for a moment, pretend he isn't there. Now what else is there to be happy about?

The film begins with talk of taxation and trade routes. Heck, even those of us old enough to know what that was on about didn't care about that bit! The Jedi then turn up in the glamorous position of.... negotiating some kind of business settlement...? Okay, so after a while they start fighting robots, but asides from the presence of lightsabers this isn't really anything special and let's face it, we are missing the main things we need in order to enjoy it: (a) a sense of context and (b) endearing characters. These Jedi look determined and are good at fighting, but they don't have any real individuality.

So eventually they meet up with Jar Jar. And, let's face it, Jar Jar is the first good guy in the movie who actually has a personality. (He's probably the only character you could successfully identify in Red Letter Media's character guessing game.) What's more, sure his style of humour is lowest common denominator slapstick and that's what everyone hates, but if you accept it for what it is then it does the job. If you compare Jar Jar to little Anakin I'm not actually sure that Jar Jar comes off the worst of the two.

My main point is as follows. The Phantom Menace is a pile of old rubbish. When you are a young child used to the kind of dire rubbish that is often foisted on children and you are taken to this big budget spectacle by your parents, you are inevitably asked at the end what you thought. You don't get to go to the cinema all the time, so you are disinclined to say "well that was stupid" and heck, you've seen worse. So your natural reaction to a film is to think of what bits were most appealing. After all, there's been so much buzz on Saturday morning TV that there must be SOMETHING good in it right? So which bit was moderately entertaining? Well.... I suppose the clumsy cartoon rabbit who speaks in a silly voice was moderately entertaining. Of course, you don't express yourself like that when you are young, so you are more likely to say: "Jar Jar was funny."

Don't look down on their perspective. We are more susceptible to hype as young children than in later life because we don't have such good critical thinking skills to work out when we are being fed rubbish. A child saying that Jar Jar Binks was the best thing about "The Phantom Menace", even if that extends to owning Jar Jar Binks merchandise, is about as eloquent and damning a critique of "The Phantom Menace" as you going to find....


That said, I thought Darth Maul was pretty cool. ;)



(video link)

Other videos:
- Parody trailer for The Phantom Menace 3D, highlighting many of the problems with the movie.
- Ahmed Best, who voiced Jar Jar Binks in the prequels, shows his comic talent reprising the role in this hilarious Robot Chicken sketch.
- The Red Letter Media hour-long critique of The Phantom Menace starts here.