Wednesday, July 01, 2009

This Star Wars Flash Drive Just Blew My Mind

As noted previously, Geekanerd occasionally gets mail from the good folks at Mimobot, purveyors of adorably anthropomorphic flash drives and occasional gross misinformation. But their latest ad email utterly blew this Star Wars fan's mind, without even trying.


Take a quick glance at the new Mimobot in the center of this picture. Why, it's that evil jerk Anakin Skywalker, looking all mean and angry like he always does. Kid killer. He's clearly just been placed in his full body prison, the technological terror that is the Darth Vader armor. Neat.

But things are not always as they seem. Learn the eye opening truth about this figure, after the jump...


That's not the father, but the son! The jagged remains of the faceplate tip the savvy viewer that this is not in fact Anakin, but Luke's horrible vision in the Dagobah Mystery Cave. What threw me was the evil smirk - that's like the Anti-Luke face! I don't think Luke is even capable of making that expression.

The fact that I mistook Luke's little cartoon face for Anakin's really got me thinking about how scene at the Dagobah cave fits into the Star Wars saga, now that we've got the Prequels. If watch Empire without the Prequels, this scene comes off as a pretty typical "you will become what you fear most" sort of dream. However, if you watch the series from I to VI (and like it or not, that is how future generations will watch these films), the Cave dream takes on a new sense of dread and horror. With the events of the prequels in mind, there is no mystery about Luke's parentage by the time you get to Empire. So while we lose the "I AM YOUR FATHER" jawdropper, we gain a terrible ocean of dramatic irony. When we see Luke's face in the Vader mask, he may not understand the symbolism, but the audience certainly does. Luke is approximately the same age as Anakin was when he was turned, and the visual of Luke's face in the Vader mask now directly recalls the "earlier" visual of Anakin being sealed inside. These are the real stakes of the film; the possibility of two Evil Skywalkers running around the galaxy, being just awful.

But how similar ARE Luke and Anakin? Their personalities are very different, but much of that can be chalked up to nurture; Luke spent his entire life on remote farm with a caring family and Anakin spent the first half his life as a slave and the second half as a fanatically revered demigod. When you take this into account, Anakin's personality really isn't so bad. The only thing he and Luke really share is an easily confusable one-track mind, and it's this quality that played a big part in Anakin's fall. In the earlier scenes on Dagobah, we've seen that it's Luke's short-sightedness that's holding back his Jedi training, so the Cave dream is especially urgent. While Anakin was never a particularly likable character, Luke is thoroughly decent and kind, and prospect of his fall to the Dark Side is a lot more upsetting than Anakin's.

So yeah, flash drives! The Vader Unmasked Luke Variant is only available at this year's Comic Con, so if you're unlike us and have a ticket, stop by the Mimobot booth to see it with your own eyes.

2 comments:

Degan said...

Forget seeing them; if you're at comic con then get one! And please oh please... get us one too! We want one, oh how we want one!

Anonymous said...

It is told that in medieval England, full lace wigsthere was a tradition to pile small buns in front of the marriage couple. full lace wigsThe pile was stacked high enough so that the bride and groom could barely see one another. If the bride and groom managed to share a kiss over the stack, lace wigsit was supposed to symbolize a lifetime of prosperity. However, during the reign of King Charles II, a French chef paid a visit to London and he observed the cake piling ritual. The chef found this ritual inconvenient and he decided that he would use short lengths of broom sticks to separate the layers.wedding invitations The cakes had to be prepared in advance and due to the lack or refrigeration, they had to be frosted in lard to stop them from drying out. Before the wedding ceremony, the lard was scraped from the cake, however, cheap wedding dressesin later years to improve the taste of the lard, sugar was added and the lard was left on the cake as a form of decorative icing. These cakes must have resembled the more familiar wedding cakes which we are used to seeing today.