I didn’t know what to expect when I saw that movie, but I remember leaving the theater in a cloud of confusion. I wanted to like the movie, but something smelled real bad about the film. I saw it again the following week and started to pinpoint the flaws in the movie but I still wasn’t sure whether it was me or the film itself. I put it out of my mind until years later while waiting for some company to arrive, I popped in my friend’s DVD to pass the time. It was beyond dreadful and I haven’t the urge to ever see it again.

Well, believe it or not, I have. Not in one full sitting, but rather in this excellent post mortem review provided by a fan who is both intensely creepy and wonderfully insightful. This review is an analysis of the Star Wars train wreck and why it failed as a narrative. If you write stories or you are a filmmaker, do yourself a favor and check this out. I gotta say, it’s nice to be entertained while learning something in the process.

For the first time, The Phantom Menace is doing something right. It’s showing artists what NOT to do and that is where it’s value lay.

Watch This: 70-Minute Video Review of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (slashfilm.com <- new window)

I love the A New Hope poster which has been subtly changed to “A New Epidemic”. The prequel posters look to be better than the movies themselves. It’d be pretty kick ass to see a zombie jedi, dragging his lightsaber behind him like Linus’ blanket.

This raises an interesting question. Why isn’t there a Charlie Brown zombie. Wait. There already is.

I think the moral of the story is that zombies go well with everything, but they are especially flavorful when combined with a good heaping of Star Wars. With the Stars War book Death Troopers proving to be successful zombie venture, I wonder if George Lucas might be scratching his beard in thought while sitting on top of his bazillion dollars.

Zombies Invade the Star Wars Movie Posters (io9.com <- new window)

23 Awesome Star Wars Zombies (totalfilm.com <- new window)

Death Troopers is a recently published book set in the Star Wars universe and brimming with zombies. Although from briefly scanning the Amazon reviews, it looks like no lightsabers make an appearance.

From the blog entry:

When the Imperial prison barge Purge — temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels and thieves — breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope seems to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back — bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours, nearly all aboard the Purge will die in ways too hideous to imagine.

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors — two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board — will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting onboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn’t really empty at all. The dead are rising, soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Had this book been released a few years back, I think I might have bitten (har har), but as it stands these days, I’m a little Star Wars’d out.

‘Star Wars’ Gets Into The Halloween Spirit With Stormtrooper Zombies In ‘Star Wars: Death Troopers’ (moviesblog.mtv.com <- new window)
Death Troopers @ Amazon (amazon.com <- new window)