So I went to see Lord of the Rings over the Christmas holiday. It's a good movie and I enjoyed it, though I thought it dragged at a few points, much to the consternation of some of my Tolkien-loving friends. If you haven't read the books (as I haven't), some of the character names and places will zip past you, so pay attention.

Seeing LotR meant I got to see a trailer for Star Wars: Send In The Clones, or whatever they're calling it. This particular trailer featured an awful lot of Anakin and Amidala mooning over each other in a forbidden-teen-love kind of way. My initial reaction was "My God, they're making Anakin's Creek!" Fortunately, the latter half of the trailer was of the whizzy spaceships and robot headbooting that we've come to expect from this genre. I expect to see this movie, and I figure I'll probably like it. I liked "The Phantom Menace", but I should note that I was not one of those types who queued up several hours in advance to see the 12:01 AM showing. Those of my friends who did do that were rather disappointed with ST:TPM, but they had a lot invested in it.

I'm about to discuss this trailer a little. In doing so, I'm going to mention a plot point from "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi". I believe this item is fairly common knowledge - it's been parodied in many formats, including the excellent short film George Lucas In Love - but to be fully compliant with the US Anti-Spoiler Act of 1997, I'm obliged to encourage anyone who might not know what I'm about to say to skip to the next entry or another blog. You have been warned.

If I recall my Star Wars prehistory correctly, this should be the movie where Anakin and Amidala make with the Jedi horizontal-body tricks, thus setting the stage for the arrivals of Luke and Leia. We know that Anakin doesn't stick around to help raise the kids. I figure that after he knocks up Amidala, he abandons her, thus forcing her to give birth at a Wal-Mart and eventually find happiness and a purpose in life in a small Southern town filled with lovable eccentrics. Guess the Oprah demographic will approve the test-screening.

On another note, the trailer for the Spider-Man movie looked kickass. I might be slightly biased by the gratuitous wet-T-shirt scene of Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane, but then I've let lesser things than that affect my judgment. Chuck-Bob says check it out.