The Force is With Us
Like many kids who grew up in the late 70s and 80s, the Star Wars movies have held a special place in my heart. This place has shrunk a little bit in the last few years due to the complete suckiness of the first two prequels. So I knew that when the final movie came out, I'd have to find a way to reconcile my Star Wars love with the atrocious dialogue and acting that my slightly grown-up mind can no longer tolerate.
Thank God we're in Tibet. As Meg and I wandered the streets of Lhasa yesterday, we came upon a theater selling tickets for the opening night of Revenge of the Sith, and we realized, the perfect way to watch the last Star Wars movie was in dubbed Chinese! YES! Gone are the lovey-dovey, yet unromantic, lines in stilted English; in their place is incomprehensible Mandarin (or Cantonese, like we know the difference). Political complexities that bored us in previous movies faded away and we were able to focus on the rockin' action and sweet computer effects. Plus, if you haven't heard Yoda speak Chinese, you haven't lived. Of course, we suspect we may have missed some of the plot subtleties due to the lack of English, but we think we got a pretty decent hold on the storyline. Here goes:
[spoiler alert]
Apparently, this movie is about bad hair and its effect on man's ability to raise children. At the beginning of the film, a guy named Ana-tse with really bad hair is teamed up with the dude from Trainspotting, who apparently has kicked his heroin habit and now has really good hair (and beard). They're trying to rescue some old senator guy who has really bad hair. They manage to do it after killing some robots and after Ana-tse wins a lightsaber duel with another old guy with pretty good hair for his age (it sounded like his name was something Dooku, but we figure that must just be a bad Chinese translation). There seems to be a key moment where Ana-tse wants to spare the old Dooku guy, but the evil Senator tells him to give in to his jealousy for the Dooku hair and kill him, which he does.
Later on, Ana-tse starts having bad dreams about his girlfriend giving birth and screaming in agony at the thought that her baby might end up having Ana-tse's hair (as opposed to his sexy dark brooding eyes). Ana-tse realizes that his hair is presenting a barrier to his relationship and to his future effectiveness as a father, and thus seeks out advice from the Jedi Council. Unfortunately, he is given a lot of unhelpful advice from Yoda and the bad-ass motherfucker from Pulp Fiction. They apparently tell him to just shave his head, as they once faced similar problems in their youth, but found that getting rid of all earthly attachments of hirsuteness led to peace and serenity in their lives. Meanwhile, the guy from Trainspotting tries to sell Ana-tse on the benefits of meditation and discipline to improve the quality of his hair growth, but Ana-tse remains skeptical.
Ana-tse ends up seeking council from the bad-hair senator guy, who seems to tell him that if he masters the powers of the dark side of the Force, he'll be able to have even better hair than the guy from Trainspotting. (It wasn't clear to us why Ana-tse believed the guy given his ugly coif, but we don't want to nit-pick). Ana-tse ends up buying into the dark side-good hair theory and starts killing everyone in sight, starting with the bad-ass bald motherfucker from Pulp Fiction and eventually progressing to a bunch of kids with pretty good hair. Up until now, I had a lot of empathy for Ana-tse and his bad-hair plight, but c'mon man, you can't be killing the kids! Geez.
Anyways, there's a climactic scene where Ana-tse's girlfriend flies out to try to tell him that even though he has bad hair that might get passed on to their children, she's willing to forgive him and let him help raise the kids if he just stops killing everyone. But then the dude from Trainspotting shows up again and his hair is so excellent that Ana-tse just can't take it and flips out all over again. Ana-Tse says something along the lines of "Either you're with my hair or you're against it", but the dude from Trainspotting is definitely NOT with Ana-Tse's hair. They fight and Ana-tse tries some radical experiment where he burns all his follicles with hot lava, but that doesn't end up working out too well.
The movie ends with Ana-tse reconciling himself to his bad-hair fate and deciding to wear a black helmet for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, a nasty custody battle over the fate of the kids (plural, twins it turns out) is averted when the Latino guy from LA Law shows up. Yoda advises everyone involved to not mess with the lawyers and to chill out for a few decades to see if the kids end up having the good hair that will enable them to fight the bad guys someday! LA Law guy (who has great hair, by the way) takes one kid, and the Trainspotting guy takes the other, though eventually decides he might want to return to his smack habit and thus leaves the kid in the desert for a random couple (with pretty decent hair) to raise him.
The End
Overall, we thought it was a pretty good flick. We hear that some conservatives in America are mad because they feel like the movie takes some swipes at our President, but honestly, we wonder what movie they were watching?! W's got good hair, certainly better than Kerry's, so we think he'd support the deeper messages of this film. Maybe he just didn't like it because the trial lawyer and the former smack addict get the kids in the end.
--rahul
Thank God we're in Tibet. As Meg and I wandered the streets of Lhasa yesterday, we came upon a theater selling tickets for the opening night of Revenge of the Sith, and we realized, the perfect way to watch the last Star Wars movie was in dubbed Chinese! YES! Gone are the lovey-dovey, yet unromantic, lines in stilted English; in their place is incomprehensible Mandarin (or Cantonese, like we know the difference). Political complexities that bored us in previous movies faded away and we were able to focus on the rockin' action and sweet computer effects. Plus, if you haven't heard Yoda speak Chinese, you haven't lived. Of course, we suspect we may have missed some of the plot subtleties due to the lack of English, but we think we got a pretty decent hold on the storyline. Here goes:
[spoiler alert]
Apparently, this movie is about bad hair and its effect on man's ability to raise children. At the beginning of the film, a guy named Ana-tse with really bad hair is teamed up with the dude from Trainspotting, who apparently has kicked his heroin habit and now has really good hair (and beard). They're trying to rescue some old senator guy who has really bad hair. They manage to do it after killing some robots and after Ana-tse wins a lightsaber duel with another old guy with pretty good hair for his age (it sounded like his name was something Dooku, but we figure that must just be a bad Chinese translation). There seems to be a key moment where Ana-tse wants to spare the old Dooku guy, but the evil Senator tells him to give in to his jealousy for the Dooku hair and kill him, which he does.
Later on, Ana-tse starts having bad dreams about his girlfriend giving birth and screaming in agony at the thought that her baby might end up having Ana-tse's hair (as opposed to his sexy dark brooding eyes). Ana-tse realizes that his hair is presenting a barrier to his relationship and to his future effectiveness as a father, and thus seeks out advice from the Jedi Council. Unfortunately, he is given a lot of unhelpful advice from Yoda and the bad-ass motherfucker from Pulp Fiction. They apparently tell him to just shave his head, as they once faced similar problems in their youth, but found that getting rid of all earthly attachments of hirsuteness led to peace and serenity in their lives. Meanwhile, the guy from Trainspotting tries to sell Ana-tse on the benefits of meditation and discipline to improve the quality of his hair growth, but Ana-tse remains skeptical.
Ana-tse ends up seeking council from the bad-hair senator guy, who seems to tell him that if he masters the powers of the dark side of the Force, he'll be able to have even better hair than the guy from Trainspotting. (It wasn't clear to us why Ana-tse believed the guy given his ugly coif, but we don't want to nit-pick). Ana-tse ends up buying into the dark side-good hair theory and starts killing everyone in sight, starting with the bad-ass bald motherfucker from Pulp Fiction and eventually progressing to a bunch of kids with pretty good hair. Up until now, I had a lot of empathy for Ana-tse and his bad-hair plight, but c'mon man, you can't be killing the kids! Geez.
Anyways, there's a climactic scene where Ana-tse's girlfriend flies out to try to tell him that even though he has bad hair that might get passed on to their children, she's willing to forgive him and let him help raise the kids if he just stops killing everyone. But then the dude from Trainspotting shows up again and his hair is so excellent that Ana-tse just can't take it and flips out all over again. Ana-Tse says something along the lines of "Either you're with my hair or you're against it", but the dude from Trainspotting is definitely NOT with Ana-Tse's hair. They fight and Ana-tse tries some radical experiment where he burns all his follicles with hot lava, but that doesn't end up working out too well.
The movie ends with Ana-tse reconciling himself to his bad-hair fate and deciding to wear a black helmet for the rest of his life. Meanwhile, a nasty custody battle over the fate of the kids (plural, twins it turns out) is averted when the Latino guy from LA Law shows up. Yoda advises everyone involved to not mess with the lawyers and to chill out for a few decades to see if the kids end up having the good hair that will enable them to fight the bad guys someday! LA Law guy (who has great hair, by the way) takes one kid, and the Trainspotting guy takes the other, though eventually decides he might want to return to his smack habit and thus leaves the kid in the desert for a random couple (with pretty decent hair) to raise him.
The End
Overall, we thought it was a pretty good flick. We hear that some conservatives in America are mad because they feel like the movie takes some swipes at our President, but honestly, we wonder what movie they were watching?! W's got good hair, certainly better than Kerry's, so we think he'd support the deeper messages of this film. Maybe he just didn't like it because the trial lawyer and the former smack addict get the kids in the end.
--rahul
posted by Meghul at 8:58 PM
1 Comments:
I love my dorky friends so much!
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