Vacuum Energy and the Star Wars saga? Heresy!

In advance of the next episode of the Star Wars saga being released, and since I'll be up late tonight, I'm going to put down some random thoughts about the Star Wars movies over the next several hours. If writings that differ from the Lucus-approved interpretation of the movies offend you, consult your Star Wars canon lawyer before proceeding.

• Remember the death stick peddler from Attack of the Clones? According to the official Star Wars website, his name is Elan Sleazebaggano. There's even a scuzzy, slythmongering, street punk action figure! But at least he's not nurf-herding.


• The Jedi Council is run by idiots, part I: did anyone else notice that the mythical Chosen One who will bring balance to the Force alluded to in The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones seems to apply to Luke rather than Anakin Skywalker? Maybe the charge of idiot being leveled against the average Mace Windus on the Jedi Council is a little harsh, but it seems to me that maybe Yoda might have been able to guess that "Dark Side starting to cloud the future" plus "powerful Force-sensitive kid shows up at the exact same time" equals "kid becomes a Dark Lord of the Sith someday".


• The Jedi Council is run by idiots, part II: the Jedi Council considers romantic relationships by Jedi to be a major transgression, but orders Anakin to sit around guarding his childhood love interest on impossibly romantic planet Naboo.


• The Jedi Council is run by idiots, part III: the Jedi Council knows that Anakin betrayed the Jedi Order and massacred a village of Tuskan raiders, but (as reported in the official site) the Jedi Council will give Anakin a starfighter and send him into battle anyway (and Anakin really starts to like being in battle). If I were a betting man, I'd be wagering that one or more "Colonel Killgore" or "Apocalypse Now" references show up in Episode III.


• The Old Republic is run by idiots: in the timeframe between The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones, Queen Amidala gets demoted from Queen to Senator while Jar Jar Binks gets promoted from nothing to Representative. Obviously, the fact that Jar Jar Binks even shows up in the Senate chamber at some point is clear evidence that the Old Republic has decayed into a terminal state.


• Does anyone who doesn't get a paycheck from LucasArts believe in the virgin birth of Anakin Skywalker from The Phantom Menace? Shmi Skywalker's explanation that Anakin just didn't have a father really came across like a polite euphemism for her usual duties as a slavewoman. An alternative theory that I've heard, given her non-emotional response to forever handing her child over to Qui Gon Jin, is that she was too hopped up on drugs (or death sticks?) to remember.


• One of the few people to actually intrigue me about Attack of the Clones was Jango Fett. Early in the movie, Jango's murder of the assassin who attacks Padme, the leading opponent of the formation of an Army of the Republic, looks like a coverup to protect someone such as Chancellor Palpatine (presumably the leader of the pro-Army faction). That Jango is working for Palpatine is only underscored by his use of a kamino saberdart (gotta love the Star Wars official site) that was obviously a "message" that the clone army was finished. Yet, when a Jedi Knight shows up on his doorstep, presumably as expected, Jango not only throws the blame for the whole thing on Darth Tyranus (i.e. Count Poopie) but makes an immediate beeline for Count Poopie headquarters.
  
  Given the ease with which Yoda commandeers the clone army to attack Darth Tyranus on Geonosis, it seems pretty unlikely that Darth Tyranus was the one who paid for it all. Thus, Jango Fett comes across as some kind of double or triple agent; sort of an intergalactic version of the Lee Harvey Oswald of Deep Politics And The Death of JFK.