I’m officially declaring this week Photoblog Catch-Up Week, since I’ve got such a backlog of photos I’ve been meaning to post. First up:
Unfortunately this isn’t particularly near the Hobbit Center in Laguna Beach. It is, however, in Lake Forest, the city known for its Middle-Earth street names.
The pairing with the Plaza Suites sign does make me wonder, though: the last time I checked, accommodations on Dagobah weren’t particularly extravagant!
You may recall that Burger King had a marketing tie-in with Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. You may also recall that the movie came out last May. It seems that the Dark Side continues to dominate the destiny of at least one Burger King franchise. This picture was taken today (January 1, 2006):
OK, it may have deflated a bit, but 7-8 months is a bit long to keep an inflatable Darth Vader on your roof.
(10 points to the first person who identifies the reference in the title.)
Ah, Comic Con! The show doesn’t seem much bigger than last year (and they’ve already filled the convention center floor), but there are more people. Last year, Friday was quite comfortable, but this year it was more crowded than I remember.
Let’s see… News from panels so far. Serenity and Mirrormask are apparently opening the same weekend (September 30), so I’ll be spending an entire day at the movies. Sergio Aragones and Mark Evanier are working on a script for a CGI Groo the Wanderer film. They apparently held out for years for a deal that gave them enough creative control to satisfy them. And early next year they expect to release the 4-part comic book, Groo vs. Conan.
The Jim Henson Co. 50th anniversary panel was great fun. In addition to seeing some early experimental muppetry, we learned that they will be producing a sequel to The Dark Crystal that takes place several hundred years later, and a prequel anime series.
Katie went to the big Warner Bros. movie panel, featuring Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, V For Vendetta, The Fountain (from Darren Arenofsky), and The Corpse Bride, all of which look promising.
And if you have a chance while in San Diego, don’t miss Fellowship!, a musical parody of The Fellowship of the Ring. With the exception of one running gag that got old very fast, it was a great send-up of the movie (and it was also fun looking for tropes and in-jokes from musicals).
This year is absolutely crawling with Jedi costumes. So many that we didn’t bother to take pictures, except for one Anakin & Obi-Wan pair where the former actually looked like Anakin. There’s also a booth selling high-quality light sabres with removable, light-up blades that are sturdy enough you can duel with them. The cheap ones run for $120.
We went to see Howl’s Moving Castle (Miyazaki’s latest, excellent as always) tonight, and as we walked past the Oakley store, I suddenly realized: that’s why General Grievous looked familiar!
Though Katie pointed out, it also looks rather like the Omni-Droid.
I was thinking about Star Wars, the “bringing balance to the Force” prophecy, and RPG character alignments, and realized that while you can neatly map the Jedi and Sith to good and evil (Anakin’s confusion notwithstanding), you can’t map them so neatly to order and chaos.
The Sith are a chaotic organization. They thrive on emotional chaos, they spread chaos to meet their ends… but when they get in charge, they impose order on everyone else.
The Jedi are extremely ordered. They try to purge emotions, they deny attachments. They’re hidebound by tradition. The organization is very structured. And yet they fight not to impose order but to protect it. The Jedi actually strive to preserve the balance of law and chaos.
I’m actually reminded a bit of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion series, in which the cosmic balance between order and chaos is treated as its own faction. The Eternal Champion, in his various incarnations, always fights for the Balance, bringing order to Chaos worlds and chaos to Order worlds.
So the Sith are chaotic, but impose order, while the Jedi are ordered, but fight for balance. The problem, of course, is that the Jedi are not balanced themselves. Anakin does three things to correct this:
Luke and Leia have the opportunity to re-create the Jedi without all the baggage that dragged the old Jedi order down… and they can rebuild it with Jedi who are actually in balance themselves.
