Words of Truth

So Disney has acquired Lucasfilm for 4 billion dollars.  Some Star Wars geeks are weeping and wailing over this move.  My son informed me that this means Princess Leia is a Disney Princess now.  Jokes abound, what with “Bambi wan Kenobi,” “Beauty and the Sith,” and “Emperor Palpatine’s New Groove.” I can see how it could go bad, but there is also potential for good. As Luke said, “I see the good in you!”

I really liked Star Wars episodes 4-6 (the originals….we don’t watch that special edition garbage in my house.).  Empire Strikes Back was my favorite movie for many years, only to be dethroned by Apollo 13 in 1995. In part, Star Wars was one of the few bright spots of my childhood, which had enough bad things in it. I shared a Darth Vader costume with my brother one year for Halloween.  I had Star Wars action figures.  I used to play with them in the tub, and one day Boba Fett flew up in the air, over the shower curtain, and into the toilet.  The toilet water was murky (with Comet), and so I flushed to clear out the green murk so I could see Boba Fett.  I’d like to think he made it all the way to the ocean, but I don’t think so.

My best Christmas present as a child was a Millennium Falcon toy from my mom that I knew she couldn’t afford. It had a detachable top, and a real “smugglers compartment.”

Episodes 1-3 were not as good as the originals. If those movies were envisioned in their entirety in 1977 by George Lucas, then I completely support his decision to start with episode 4, because Phantom Menace was just that bad. If he had started with Episode 1, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.  Lucasfilm would have been sold to Disney for a buck and a handful of Pogs in 1992.

Don’t forget the dollar!

I have read the criticism of George Lucas, and I believe much of it is warranted.  His first mistake was to mess with the originals. You don’t take the Mona Lisa down off the wall and start repainting.  I sincerely believe that Disney’s first move as the new owners of Star Wars should be to release a “ORIGINAL EDITION” of the first three movies on DVD/Blu-ray.  That’s so I can finally throw out my trilogy on VHS.  I hate VHS.

The one on the left is the original trilogy. The one on the right is the “special editions.” I believe I’ve made my point.

Also, the decision to feature Jar Jar in the second trilogy was just asinine.  Star Wars fans almost universally felt like Lucas was mocking them.  I can understand the mistake of putting him in the first movie, but when fans have reactions like the one below, you have to understand that maybe he should just quietly disappear.  We hoped that he would, but he has roles in the next two movies. Argh!

We were not amused, George. Learn to take a hint.

Actually, I’m hopeful.  The main reason for this is that George Lucas is going to be a “creative consultant.”  A consultant is someone that gives you advice, and you say, “Oh, that’s nice.” And then you go ahead and do whatever you want anyway.  I know this, because all these medical shows have consultants, and they have so many medical errors in them it’s not funny.  So George can whine about the lack of “Jar Jar-like characters” in the new movies, but it won’t matter.

Is there a possibility that Disney may mess up the franchise?  Sure.  But I feel more at ease with the future of the franchise in the hands of a Disney committee than in the senile brain that brought you “Crystal Skull” and “Red Tails” (Both movies were bowsers).

Disney has announced that they will be releasing Star Wars episodes seven through nine, with episode 7 being released in 2015.  I hope they use the Timothy Zahn trilogy for the storyline.  I hope they pick good actors to play Luke, Leia, Han, and the rest.  I hope the pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

Thankfully Abrams has limited his obsession with lens flares to the title screen.

I’ve been watching this new J. J. Abrams (of Star Trek, the 2009 version) show called “Revolution” this fall. It’s the fictionalized (obviously) account of what would happen in our country if “the power went out.”  I understand it’s just a show. I understand it’s all made up.  But there’s something that has been bothering me the entire time.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

The premise of the show is that at this one moment, every single electronics device on earth stopped working.  It was not only electronic, but electric.  All cars stopped (batteries don’t work anymore evidently).  Planes dropped out of the sky. Light bulbs wouldn’t work. No. Electricity. Whatsoever. So there’s no power. 15 years have gone by since the power went out.  Now people use swords and crossbows (and rarely guns), live in smaller groups, and martial law reigns.  Everything is very pre-industrial revolution.

Some shows have a “hook.”  It’s the thing that keeps you watching.  “Lost” had them trying to get found.  “24” had Jack Bauer trying to stop the terrorists. Star Trek: Voyager had the crew trying to get home again. The obvious overarching “hook” in “Revolution” is: what exactly caused the power to “go out?”  They haven’t given the answer yet, but I’m not sure I can keep watching for more than a season without them telling me the answer.  I might just give up watching and wait for the show to be over.  One night, three years from now, I’ll look it up on Wikipedia.  “Oh.  That’s what happened.”

Now I’m not an electrician.  I’m not an engineer.  But I’m fairly certain that the principles of electric activity on earth are part of the natural order.  I’ve seen lightning on the show, so I know electricity is still present on earth.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but you can run a clock with a potato. You can make an electric motor with a magnet and some copper wire (plus a few other basic things).  So what could make these things not produce electricity anymore?

And finally, the thing that caused me to look askance at this show’s premise from the get-go:  the human body runs on electricity.  Each person is basically a large battery (see: The Matrix). This is why defibrillators (i.e. “shock paddles”) work to correct someone’s heart dysrhythmia:  the human body uses electricity through the entire organism.  The heart “beating” is initiated by an electrical impulse (hence, “Electro Cardio Gram” ECG or EKG…same thing).  Every time your muscles move, it’s due to the electrical signals sent down the muscle fibers by the positively and negatively charged ions of calcium and other ELECTROlytes (see what I did there?). And then there’s the human brain.  Every single message in your brain is passed along via electrical charge from one cell to the next.

So how will the writers of “Revolution” reconcile this basic fact of biology (that all their actors didn’t instantly die when “the power went out)?  I don’t know.  But I’m going to keep watching for now.

So the big news out of Indiana last night is that United States Senate candidate Richard Mourdock said the following during a debate, “”I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize that life is that gift from God. And, I think, even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen,” Mourdock said.

His opponents are twisting his words to mean the following:  God wants some women to be raped.  That is NOT what he said.  He further clarified his remarks by saying that he did not believe God intended the rape, but that God is the only one who can create life: “Are you trying to suggest somehow that God preordained rape, no I don’t think that,” Mourdock said. “Anyone who would suggest that is just sick and twisted. No, that’s not even close to what I said.”

So to recap, Mourdock is a pro-life Republican, and he stated his belief that babies conceived through the “horrible situation” of rape should not be murdered because of their father’s crimes.  Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

I keep hearing pro-life candidates and other people say that abortion should be “illegal except in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is in danger.”  I wonder what makes people draw the line there.  They believe that abortion is murder, but it’s only murder if the woman conceived the baby with someone she likes (or liked at the time).  According to them, abortion isn’t murder if the father is a rapist, too closely related to the mother, or if the mother’s life might be in danger.  I realize that the whole “life of the mother” situations are tough situations to be in, but who are we to play God?  This is like saying (on a much smaller scale) that my wife will starve if I don’t steal from the bank, so my theft should be justified because my wife’s need for food is more important than those people at the bank.  Situational Ethics never works. If abortion is murder when the mother “just isn’t ready to be a mother” then it’s murder when the father is a rapist.  That is all Richard Mourdock was saying. And yes, he has my vote.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say abortion is ALWAYS murder, no matter who the father is or the effect on the mother.  But I’m not alone out here on my limb.  God, the Creator of all life is with me.

Hollywood is doing it again.  They are trying to make films based on the Bible.  They almost always mess up the biblical stories they do. Very rarely do they even come close. They seem to think they can improve on the truth of the Word of God, and all they ever do is mess up the movie.

People who aren’t Christians see that the movie is about the Bible and they don’t want to see it.  People who are Christians see that the movie is about the Bible and they get mad because the director felt his version of events was better than what really happened.  As a result, the movie bombs, and the critics say our society doesn’t like biblical stories. Most of us Christians have learned to watch these movies with a huge bucket of salt (popcorn optional), since we know the director, writers, producers, etc are probably not evangelical Christians.

The other problem with making movies based on the Bible is that different believers have different views of exactly what happened in a given passage.  I’m not talking about the big picture here, I’m talking about little details.  Take “Prince of Egypt” for an example.  It does a good job telling the general story of Moses and the Exodus, but it gets many details wrong.  Here are a few examples:

• Moses was 80 years old during the Exodus. He didn’t look 80, and his brother and sister who were older than him didn’t look their correct ages either.
• Moses was not raised by Pharaoh’s wife as Pharaoh’s son as the movie implies, but by Pharaoh’s daughter.
• The Bible says Aaron spoke before Pharaoh, not Moses, and yet we never hear the man speak in Pharaoh’s presence.
• Not enough? Click here for a list of 35 biblical inaccuracies in this movie.

But that’s just one movie you say?  Do a quick search for “biblical errors” and the title of whatever biblical movie you think is error free.  I’ve only ever found one that even came close to biblical accuracy (defined as not straying from the account given in the Bible), and that was the movie “Jesus” which was released in 1979.  That movie sticks very closely to the biblical account of the life of Christ as told in the gospel of Luke. I watched this movie as a teenager with my Bible open, checking it for accuracy, and I only found one place where the movie had Jesus saying or doing something that was not in the Bible: He touched a little child’s hair and said, “Hello.” The Bible never records Christ doing this, but it isn’t against His character. If you want to watch this movie, you can do so for free at jesusfilm.org.

And so now there are at least four movies coming out that are based on the Bible:

• “Noah” starring Russell Crowe, directed by Aronofsky who also directed “Black Swan.”
• “Left Behind” (remake) starring Nicolas Cage. I foresee “National Treasure: The Mystery of the Missing People”
• “Gods and Kings” is a retelling of the story of Moses by Steven Spielberg. Because what we need is another movie about Moses. Oh, and Spielberg says he is going to give Moses the “Braveheart” treatment. Joy.
• Warner Brothers has stated they are in the beginning stages of making a movie about Pontus Pilate (a man of whom the world knows very little other than that he was a Roman prefect and that he presided over the trial of Jesus Christ).
• “The Redemption of Cain” starring Will Smith.  It is reported that after he kills Abel, vampires get involved.  Shudder.

And people wonder why I am looking forward to “The Hobbit.”  At least if Peter Jackson messes it up, I don’t have to get theologically offended.