Steve Sansweet sells me a timeshare

I'm a hopeless fanboy. George Lucas has more of my money than I ever will. He's dropped two billion dollar turds in the past decade, and I'm going to line-up early for a third.

I was at Wondercon yesterday; after a brilliant panel Q&A with Joss Wedon and 1/3 of the cast of Firefly/Serenity, and a monologue-esque pseudo Q&A with Kevin Smith (happy to say he's reopening the Askewniverse "to pay the bills") and a sleepy Jason Mewes; I watched 45 minutes of faux-exciting regurgitated featurettes and videogame trailers spewed by Steve Sansweet (maybe his last name means "without sweetness" an apt description) head of Zombie...er, Fan Relations at Lucas Film. Desiree squirmed dutifully in pain and boredom by my side, Miles fell asleep, Leann and Caitlin feigned interest. It sucked.

We sat through two short documentaries about other conventions, two half a year old on the set documentaries, several pitches to pay for fan club membership, a screening of the Revenge of the Sith trailer from last November, a couple of videogame trailers, and the straw that got my off my ass: a recap of last years Clone Wars cartoon with not even a still from the new season that debuts in less than a month. Maybe when droves of slavish nerds in costumes started bailing, Steve could have intuited that the "power point" approach wasn't working. Peter "Chew-fucking-bacca" Mayhew was in the goddamn building; at least Sansweet could have shown the initiative to give a shout-out. What the Fuck?

I was hoping that with Emperor George promising that he would retire from Star Wars after this final feature, that maybe some talent from below could breathe a soul back into it. Knights of the Old Republic is far and away the most genuinely Star Warsy game ever, I hear its sequel sucks, thanks largely to George's meddling in the plot. Timothy Zahn and Michael Stackpole have written some great Star Wars novels, and now with the end of the Chewbacca-killing- Yuzhan-Vong-suck-ass "New Jedi Order" (pulling titular inspiration from Bush the Elder's foreign policy and prowrestling?) super series arc, maybe there will be a return of inspired original stories, not confined by continuity. Fiction is about characters and conflict, not workability of the science, midi-chlorians or obsessive "fact" checking (remember this is about made up people in made up places doing made up things). The Clone Wars cartoon was everything I hoped the prequel movies would be; fast paced action with a background of war on a galactic scale and a crumbling corrupt decadent government, all that is missing is a conflicted relationship between master/apprentice/queen with shades of Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot maybe. God save the kids from Lucas' "I haven't touched an adult woman since the 70's" clunky emotionless bullshit.

If Sansweet is the "fan voice" at LFL and if what he spewed at Wondercon is the best he can deliver, we are screwed. At one point Steve assured the crowd "as long as you want Star Wars, Star Wars will be there." What he failed to mention is that by "want Star Wars" he meant buy the crap we have for sale. What he fails to understand about Star Wars being there, is that the themes explored in both Star Wars trilogies are timeless, and belong to human consciousness, not some flannelled dude with a goiter. The original trilogy was essentially an oedipal space western: son supplants father in position of power, good redeems evil, and everything is broken and dusty. The prequels could have been a great Greek tragedy, or a space Spartacus with a Jedi risen from slavery rallying the slaves of the galaxy, or the aforementioned Arthurian love triangle. But Lucas blew it.

Hopefully the fans will cast off the abuse and keep making films like Troops and Dark Redemption; writing fanfic and zines; and maybe the fan sites can get more like starwarz.com and not just parrot the LFL media machine.

I think Star Wars still has the potential of telling good stories, if Lucas backs off.

The most hopeful news about the future of Star Wars came in the Kevin Smith Q&A:

Q: I've read a lot of rumors about you and a Star Wars TV show.

A: So have I, interesting rumors aren't they.

Every other question he answered directly and with a whole lot more words. I, for one, would line-up around the block to see wookiees and Yoda tell dick and fart jokes.

Oh yeah Batman Begins, looks like it might not suck. Christian Bale said about his character; "Batman isn't the mask, Bruce Wayne is" and "in the beginning I think Bruce Wayne thought he was taking on a job with an end, he had a fairly naive approach" that shows more understanding of the Dark Knight than Mr. Mom, the ER guy and Mad Martigan all rolled together.