#44 - Star Wars and Indiana Jones Nuked the Fridge.

It was the decade when...

George Lucas crapped all over his old franchises.


Cease and Desist Notice to Mr. George Lucas.

Dear Mr. Lucas:

It has come to our attention that your actions over the past decade in the production of the films Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode 3: Return of the Sith (hereafter referred to as "Star Bores") as well as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (hereafter referred to as "Grandpa Jones") infringes upon the rights of millions of moviegoers to preserve their childhood memories unscathed. This is a clear violation of your contract with the public to create films worthy of the legacy that you, yourself, began in 1977. Your recent actions have been grossly negligent, displaying a complete lack of regard for taste and artistic merit. Star Bores and Grandpa Jones represent a failure to satisfy the duty of care mandated for a filmmaker of your status.

A partial list of the infringing acts are enumerated herein:

1. In Star Bores, you created a mise-en-scene so digitized and robbed of human emotion that R2-D2 was the most psychologically-realized character in the films.
2. In Star Bores, the romantic dialogue between your two protagonists, played by Natalie Portman (hereafter referred to as "Weepy") and Hayden Christensen (hereafter referred to as "Darth Fey-der") was so purple and hackneyed that it would not pass muster either in a) a nineteenth century operetta or b) a Lifetime Channel television movie.
3. In Star Bores, you cast Darth Fey-der, an actor so annoyingly petulant that it was nearly impossible to believe he would ever transform into James Earl Jones.
4. In Star Bores, you expected the viewer to actually care about bickering between the Galactic Senate, the Jedi Council, the Corporate Alliance, and the Trade Federation -- a dense political bureaucracy as entertaining to watch as roll call at a Congressional committee on tax code amendments.
5. In Star Bores, you promoted Jar Jar Binks to Senator. This act alone is an offense to anyone who ever purchased so much as a Star Wars lunch box.
6. In Grandpa Jones, you cast Shia LeBoeuf -- nerdy, mousy Shia LeBoeuf -- as a leather-clad 1950s "Wild One" greaser, a role so incongruous to the performer's skill set that the decision can only be regarded as an ironic joke. To add insult to injury, in an act of sheer recklessness, you then named the role "Mutt" (hereafter referred to as "Dog").
   
7. In Grandpa Jones, you could not resist having your Skywalker Ranch computer nerds bring their Crayola crayons to pixelate all over the screen, all but destroying the visceral verisimilitude for which the Jones series is known.
   
8. In Grandpa Jones, you wisely bring back Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood but then give the actress almost nothing to do, besides looking frustrated and delivering necessary exposition.
9. In Grandpa Jones, you filmed a scene where Dog repeatedly get his balls busted by CGI jungle flora whilst he stands astride two moving Jeeps like a castrated Colossus.
10. In Grandpa Jones, our hero, one of the most beloved screen characters in history, escapes a nuclear explosion by hiding in a "King Cool" refrigerator which is then propelled by the nuclear blast away from the atomic destruction, at which time our hero rolls out unscathed, admiring the mushroom cloud visible in the now-far distance.

For the foregoing reasons, we hereby demand that you cease production of any new films, retiring from the entertainment industry. If you refuse to comply, we will be forced to file a complaint in the appropriate court and commence a legal action. Mr. Steven Spielberg, your co-conspirator in the Grandpa Jones project, has received a copy of this correspondence.

If you choose to ignore this notice and greenlight further projects based on these franchises, you can expect millions of dollars in profit but everyone will hate you -- and you will ultimately lose in the court... of public opinion.

We expect a response from you or your representative within two weeks of receipt of this notice. And no, your Jedi mind tricks will not work on us.

Sincerely,

You AUGHT to remember...