Family Guy Presents: It’s A Trap!

Back in June I watched the Family Guy parody of The Empire Strikes Back.  I wasn’t as thrilled with it as I was Blue Harvest their original Star Wars parody.  This year they came out with the third parody taking on Return of the Jedi and titled it It’s A Trap!.  I enjoyed this one slightly more than Something, Something, Something Dark Side, but I still think it falls short of the original Blue Harvest.  At this point it seems like they felt like they had to complete the original trilogy.  Even the dialogue at the beginning of the episode speaks to the inevitability of them doing a Jedi parody and warns everyone not to get their hopes up too much. 

There are some funny moments in the film, but there are also some bits that just seem to go on way too long.  Case in point being the “signal” where the various characters nod to each other.  It would have been much funnier if it hadn’t went on for so freaking long. 

I think the funniest thing about this installment was something that had nothing to do with the actual movie.  It was the box.  Each of the DVD cases has been a parody of the one sheet for that particular film.  With the release of It’s A Trap! they decided to release the entire Family Guy trilogy in a box set as well.  The box is a spot on parody of the original DVD release box art for the original Star Wars trilogy down to the gold color that indicated the Full Screen edition versus the silver-colored Widescreen edition. 

There are some funny moments in It’s A Trap!, but they are more self-referencial humor than the Star Wars gags found in Blue Harvest.  When Roger the alien from American Dad appears and the characters discuss how they’ve run out of their own characters at this point, I had to snicker a bit.  I also enjoyed Chris (voiced by Seth Green) having to continually defend the work of Seth Green.  And the end where all the characters voiced by Seth MacFarlane talk about how MacFarlane is such a wonderful guy while the other characters all say he’s a real asshole had me laughing as well. 

Looking back I see I gave Something, Something, Something Dark Side 3 stars.  That was probably a mistake on my part.  It was probably closer to a 2 1/2 with It’s A Trap! rating a 2 3/4.  If you saw the first two, you know you’ll have to see this one as well.  There was a joke in the movie about how The Cleveland Show was going to do the prequels.  Part of me hopes this truly was just a joke.  On the other hand there is a part of me that wonders how that might turn out.

The Phandom Menace

No that’s not a typo in the title.  This is a documentary about Australian Star Wars fans awaiting the Australian premiere of Episode One: The Phantom Menace.  I was about 13 years old when Star Wars came out.  I loved it, and sat through countless repeat viewings.  I sat in line with Valerie Austin, Suzanne Higgins and Wayne Bailey to get in to the first showing of The Empire Strikes Back, and then we stayed over and watched it a second time.  I went to the midnight premiere screening of Phantom Menace at Marquee Cinemas with my wife, my son, and my best friend.  I have a touch of the Star Wars geek in me, but the people in this film often seem to have lost touch with reality.

Seeing these people in their Star Wars costumes and looking at their massive collections and special Star Wars rooms in their homes makes me think that maybe I’m not as crazy as I sometimes think I am.  Never the less I can handle that.  These people have a passion for Star Wars.  I have 5860+ DVDs scattered about my living room.  It’s all levels of craziness.  The thing I found so embarrassing were the guys saying how Phantom Menace was going to be the best film ever.  Even worse was watching some of them defending and praising a film that most people tend to rate as the worst in the series.  To the credit of the documentary, the filmmakers did go back a few weeks later and the film’s über cheerleader that had declared the film perfect, gave a slightly more level-headed take on the film.

The Phandom Menace was released on DVD by Eclectic DVD who had released several other off the wall titles that I had purchased.  I actually picked it up because of these other titles.  That and the fact that I found it at a very cheap price.

The DVD is not the greatest documentary I have ever seen, but it does nicely capture that moment in time when Star Wars fandom was at its most recent high point.  At only 62 minutes I give The Phandom Menace a 6 1/2 on the Night Flight scale.

Dark Star

Dark Star is a film that I can’t remember when I first heard about it, where I first heard about it, who first told me how great it was, and when I finally got to see it for the first time.  I recall seeing a few stills from the film in Starlog and I remember a couple of my friends carrying on about how funny the scenes were with Pinback feeding the alien.  Despite being made in 1974, I am certain I didn’t see Dark Star until high school.  I know it was definitely post Star Wars and Alien both of which were Junior High film going experiences.  My best recollection is that Pat Murphy and Steve Bates were the ones telling me (and fellow Unicorps member Kurt Kleiner) about the film during my sophomore year of high school.  I know I bought the Alan Dean Foster novelization and the edition I bought had a 1979 printing date as well as a blurb promoting Foster as the author of Splinter of the Mind’s Eye.  The greater mystery is when did I actually get to see the film.  My best guess is that it was probably one of the films I rented from Tronix or Captain Video when I first got my VCR.  What ever the official time, place and circumstances were, one thing I know for sure is that I went nuts for it.  

In high school, I went to a lot of movies and ran around with the S.C. Chorale.  But there was one other activity that ate up a bunch of my waking hours and that was playing D&D.  Dungeons & Dragons was my generations XBox 360.  Several of us played at least once a week, usually more.  One of the guys named his characters after characters from Lord of the Rings.  My characters were for the most part named after Dark Star.  I had a Pinback and a Boiler, but the character I loved to play was an Elven thief named Darsktar.  The name came to me while staring at the spine of the paperback on my book shelf.  Dark Star had inspired me.

It had been several years since I had last watched Dark Star and I had forgotten it was a John Carpenter film until I was watching the bonus features on Cigarette Burns.  I started thinking back on Dark Star and decided to revisit it.  The DVD I have features both the Special Edition and the uncut theatrical edition.  It seems that Dark Star stared as a student film that ran 68 minutes long.   Producer Jack H. Harris had the crew shoot an additional 15 minutes and then released that cut theatrically.  Later the filmmakers were given the chance to edit a Special Edition cut.  They did this by excising most of those 15 minutes.  I opted for the longer 83 minute cut for my viewing pleasure.

Dark Star is the story of five men in space blowing up unstable planets.  The captain ends up getting killed during a freak mishap, which was bad enough, but then an asteroid storm damages the communications systems and Bomb #20 starts getting false signals to detonate.  As if that wasn’t bad enough, another malfunction is preventing the crew from being able to actually eject the bomb.  Eventually it’s up to Lt. Doolittle to teach the bomb the concept of phenomenology to keep it from detonating and blowing up the ship.

Dark Star is a simple film with some amazing concepts.  Dan O’Bannon would take inspiration from parts of Dark Star when writing Alien.  Many of Carpenter’s musical cues are eerily similar to his later work on Halloween.  It is amazing to look at this film and remember that it was made by film students before Star Wars.

One other thing that I can’t forget when discussing Dark Star is the faux country western song Benson, Arizona.  I actually special ordered the vinyl soundtrack album from Varese Saraband while I was in high school.  I ordered it as well as Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead.  I listened to Dawn’s soundtrack incessantly, but I also became hooked on Benson, Arizona.  To this day I can not get that song out of my mind, and why would I want to? 

Dark Star is a 3 1/2 star guilty pleasure.

Family Guy: Something, Something, Something, Dark Side

The Empire Strikes Back holds a very fond place in my memories.  When the film was released, I stood in line with several of my friends to be there for the opening night’s first showing.  Back then West Virginia always seemed to be about a month late getting new releases, so the novel was out, the comic was out, and Starlog magazine had done several articles on the movie.  I tried to stay as sheltered and spoiler free as I could.  Fortunately in the pre-Internet world that wasn’t nearly as hard to do as it is today.  I did have to fight to keep from reading the comics, but I managed.

A little while back Family Guy did a spoof of Star Wars called Blue Harvest.  It was a very funny episode and when the DVD came out I rushed to Wal-Mart to get one of the deluxe box sets with all sort of extra goodies.  Last year they announced a follow-up, Something, Something, Something, Dark Side, a parody of The Empire Strikes Back.  It was released first on DVD and Blu-ray, but not in a super deluxe box set with all sorts of goodies like the first one.  I didn’t feel as much of a need to rush out and buy it.  I had planned to get it on Blu-ray when I did buy it, but I also figured there was a decent shot I might get a copy for Christmas.  That didn’t happen, so I just waited to find the Blu-ray cheap.  That never happened either.  What did happen is that I walked in Target and found the DVD for only $9.99.  Since it didn’t look like I would be getting the Blu-ray anytime soon, and since the Blu-ray wasn’t on sale, I decided to go ahead and pick up the DVD.  If I get the Blu-ray later, I can always pass the DVD on to one of the kids.

So after watching Empire back in 1980 for its first WV showing, what did we do?  That’s right we stayed over and watched it again.  This was the power of that movie (and the way you used to be able to go in and stay all day long at the theater on only one ticket).  I enjoyed Empire, but it wasn’t as fun and carefree as Star Wars had been.  Empire was deeper and ending the movie on such a down note was a rarity.  Now of course a downer ending that is to be continued is almost a complete anomaly.  Unless you count the second Pirates of the Caribbean film.  Having Johnny Depp’s Captain Jack Sparrow lost and in need of rescue was a little like having Han Solo frozen in carbonite.  How did Family Guy rate on their follow-up?  About the same.

Something, Something, Something, Dark Side is funny, but it has a slightly different feeling from Blue Harvest.  I’m not sure if that’s because it has been over a year since I watched Blue Harvest and when I did it was the TV edit.  The DVD of Dark Side is uncensored.  There are jokes that would have to be bleeped or cut to make network airing especially considering the current stance of the FCC which is more willing to respond to a mass produced complaint sent out by members of a right wing religious cult that has never watched an episode of Family Guy as opposed to looking at say actual ratings for the show.  Here’s a simple fact.  If the ratings remain steady or increase from week to week, the real viewers weren’t offended.  They want more.  Perhaps the FCC should print out an easy to understand guide on how to change the freaking channel and send it to the supposedly upset viewers.  Or have them describe in exacting detail what was so offensive to them and if they can’t, because they didn’t actually see it to get offended, then smack them with a multi-million dollar fine for fraud.  It never ceases to amaze me how quickly some self-proclaimed Christian will lie to advance their own cause.

Enough ranting for the day.  Something, Something, Something, Dark Side gets 3 stars.  Now I’m waiting for the Jedi spoof that they gave us a sneak peek of on the Dark Side DVD.  I just hope they do a better job finishing the trilogy than Lucas did.