in which I spoil Star Wars (so don't read if you've been living under a rock), and show how nerdy I am

One of my favourite luxuries is falling asleep to a movie I've seen approximately a million times before. There's something about listening to dialogue and sound effects that lulls me more than having music on (I have trouble sleeping without background noise). And since I've seen the movie so many times, I don't have to even watch it; I know what's going to happen, and I can pretty much picture it in my head. I can even stretch one movie out for a couple nights; each night I just start the DVD at the last point I distinctly remember before dropping off.

Of course, at some point I wake up when I hear the DVD menu's soundtrack looping incessantly, and I have to crawl to the foot of my bed and turn off the player, but usually that doesn't wake me up enough to make it hard for me to fall back asleep immediately.

Anyway, last night it was Return of the Jedi. The very beginning (in which Darth Vader arrives at the shell of the new Death Star), made me think of what a horrible mess George Lucas made of everything. That start, with the Nazi-esque ranks of Imperial officers, and Vader's ominous line, "The Emperor is not as forgiving as I am," has SO MUCH PROMISE. And, compared to the prequels, the rest of the movie isn't that bad (although I think it could have lived up to that fantastic beginning much better). While I'm on the topic, the line, "Inform the commander that Lord Vader's shuttle has arrived," is also somehow awesome.

Anyway, in Timothy Zahn's simply amazing trilogy of books (I feel like the world would be a better place if he'd written the plot outlines for the prequels), he distinctly points out the fact that the Empire's officers were all human males. EVIL. And I read somewhere that in early drafts of The Phantom Menace, Queen Amidala was going to be overtly racist towards the Gungans. How much more interesting would that have been? And since Palpatine was also from Naboo, it would totally give us a clear base for his suppression of non-humans as the Emperor.

Speaking of Amidala/Padme (and Padme is a goddamn stupid name), I think we could have left a little something up to the imagination with the birth of the twins. Leia (in Return of the Jedi) claims to remember her; we couldn't have her abscond with Leia to Alderaan, and die sometime in the interim before A New Hope? The naming scene and the whole "no will to live" scene really just killed Revenge of the Sith for me. Also the "NOOOOoooooOOOOOOOOO," although I've gotten a lot of mileage out of doing that whenever something slightly bad happens.

Alright, I really ought to go for my run right now, so I'll just list off a couple other things I'd change: ditch Shmi and Jar Jar altogether, make the disappearing dead Jedi thing standard, amp up the love triangle (I'd be okay with there being doubt over who was Luke and Leia's ACTUAL father), definitely not bring Boba Fett or even Jabba up at all, can the cutesy shit with kiddie Anakin and his pals, and make the Clone Wars more interesting and more... better.