Internal Nerd Rage: Joss Whedon Speaks Ill Of The Empire Strikes Back

Not a lot of time here today at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, but this little tidbit caught my eye: Joss Whedon just did an extended interview with Entertainment Weekly, which is in this week’s issue. But the magazine released a couple of quotes to tease readers into picking up the issue, and only one of those quotes was enough to send half of geek fandom into a seething frenzy of hatred!

Specifically, Whedon discusses his feelings about The Empire Strikes Back, the Star Wars movie widely held to be the best of six movies and variety of television specials to date (although I have a special place in my heart for The Star Wars Holiday Special. Because the last time I saw it was in college, on grainy VHS, while I was hammered).

And amazingly, coming from the man who clearly loved Han Solo enough to basically create a television series and major motion picture based on a suspiciously similar character, those feelings are somewhat negative.

Empire committed the cardinal sin of not actually ending… which at the time I was appalled by and I still think it was a terrible idea.

Yeah, I hate it when movie franchises don’t have an ending. That’s why I’m so glad that they ended the Alien franchise after James Cameron’s Aliens! Yup, just the two movies. That’s how I remember it. There certainly was no attempt to lure fans back to the theaters with some twisted tale about cloning Ripley!

…yeah, sorry. Lot of caffeine today. What’re you driving at, Joss?

Well, it’s not an ending… It’s a Come Back Next Week, or in three years. And that upsets me. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn’t end I’ll go to a French movie. That’s a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can’t just build off the first one or play variations.

On one hand, I want to agree with Whedon, for one simple reason: The Matrix: Reloaded. Which, even though it only asked fans to hang in for six months, ended so badly and unforgivably that the third Matrix could have featured the reincarnation of Jesus (actually, it kinda did… ugh…) and I still would’ve walked in with two strikes against it.

But the way I’ve always seen it was that Star Wars was George Lucas’s attempt to recreate the old Flash Gordon serials from hs childhood… and those things were built on cliffhangers. Besides, The Empire Strikes Back did have an ending: Leia and Chewbacca escaped Bespin, with Luke close behind, and lived to fight another day! Sure, Han was taken by Boba Fett… who has always struck me as the most overrated character in modern genre history. I mean, all Fett did was follow the Millenium Falcon to Bespin, and Darth Vader was aready there! Vader caught Han and stuck him in Carbonite; all Fett did was haul his carcass away! At best, that makes him a space trucker in Empire… and in Jedi, hell! All he does in tie Luke up for about three seconds, and then he gets killed by a Goddamned blind man and a fucking hole in the ground!

So at best, all Boba Fett is is a minor villain who distracts attention, emnity and nerd rage away from the high-profile guy so he can regroup for a while… kinda like I’m being right now.

You’re welcome, Joss. When you speak of me, speak well.

(via Entertainment Weekly)