Yes!
This is actually a fascinating study, I thought about empire by reading some of what you wrote more than ever before. The points you make are really quite profound and hilarious at times. Also, you made a video diary? Where can we view it? Thanks!
Thank you.
The older ones, from the first 30 days, are up if you look at the archive. I will be posting batches of one week at a time until they are done. They are mainly to document that I watched it each and every night. Fair warning - they are of a guy sitting on a couch at 2 am talking about The Empire Strikes Back and obsession - you would be hard pressed to find something more boring on the internet.
Making no promises but which makes more sense to do next 101 Days of Star Wars or 101 Days of Jedi?
After my persistent nagging Kim said once the wedding and honeymoon are over, this winter, she wouldn’t mind if I gave it another shot.
101 Days of Empire - Epilogue.
It worked! I created an obsession where there wasn’t one and had a fun time doing it. I know it might sound odd but out of 101 days only 2 were annoying; the write-ups some days were tough as you can imagine what it would be like to write about the exact same subject for 101 days straight. I am really genuinely glad I did it, I feel like I pushed my analysis skills and honed my ability to stay incredibly focused at length. It really felt like a honor getting to write these and knowing that people were out there reading these was what pushed me to keep on writing night after night.
30 Days of Empire by the numbers:
- 12,857 minutes of movie watching.
- Total time devoted to Empire: 13.8 days straight.
- Total words written: 75,063.
- Money spent: Ask me no questions and I will tell you no lies.
- Notebooks filled: 2.
- Notes transcribed: 28,912 words, 53 pages.
- Hours of video diaries shot: 23.
Thanks goes out to:
- Styro for being the original bounce off person.
- SpdRacerX, Girl-Detective, Tiefighters, Cthulhucore andYes2SuccessDesign for help promoting the blog
- Geekvariety for the fact checking, tips, mental support and promos
- HulkSmashes for advice and help creating the daily questionnaire
- Ron Workman for creating momentum and being an awesome dude
- My fiance Kim for putting up with me.
So what now? Well I made sure to skip a day before writing up Day 101 to make sure that I couldn’t continue the streak. I’m going to working on some video clips and the two new versions of Empire I have just started working on.
Day 101 of Empire.
I know this hasn’t been William Shakespeare or even Frank Shakespeare but thank you for reading along.
I know Empire more than anything else in my life. I don’t know if that is cool, tragic or pathetic. I know more about this movie than any person should know about anything. I have honestly seen the entire film, at this point, frame by frame. I have learned to keep my attention and focus level up for much longer than before. I have also learned that like our grade school teachers told us posture is important in helping attentiveness.
Kershner said that C3PO’s role was comic relief I tend to think of him as narrator for the children but if Kershner meant that he missed out, C3PO should have said “I for one welcome our new giant robot dog leaders” back on Hoth.
Obi-wan looks so bored when he is trying to convince his protégé to stay in order to save his life; he looks like he is teach a tax prep course for the 6th time that day.
The droids have such a huge memory capacity it makes me think they would be such a huge security risk that you would never have them inside a command center.
Best part about a lightsaber – you never have to clean off the blade.
“The evil lord Darth Vader obsessed with finding the young skywalker…” I think is the best way of summarizing this experiment: the evil old Ken obsessed with reliving the nostalgia of my youth. 
Empire ends with optimistic uncertainty.
Lastly here is the dumbest thing that was written in my notes stuck for the last 64 days:
What if Lucas smoked DMT and Star Wars does exists in another universe, ok that’s pretty dumb but remember Cameron came up with Terminator while having a fever dream.
Questionnaire below the fold
This is me about to start watching The Empire Strikes Back for the 100th time in 100 days, right after filming my video diary.
Day 100 of Empire.
I thought I would change it up for this one, so I watched Empire with the commentary track on. They brought up some great points like how Kershner was somewhat hamstrung by the character limits put on him by the portrayals in Star Wars. Unfortunately, I had to stop about a hour into it and restart the film without the commentary. I really wanted to listen to Kershner’s commentary because he is the one who spoke the least about the film publicly but his voice in tone and speed is terrifically annoying which was rather heartbreaking to me.
Yoda refers to Luke as a boy but then a few minutes later says Luke is too old to begin training, look make up your mind swamptroll.
R2D2 getting sad on Dagobah – what constitutes “life”, when you consider the droids have fear. self-preservation, self-awareness, worry and pain?
Lando is running a massive city and mining operation, it’s pretty presumptuous to expect him to be there in person when you arrive completely unannounced and he has only 5 minutes to drop what he is doing and run to greet you.
This has been driving me crazy but this one crew member always reminded me of someone on late night TV but I couldn’t figure it out until his afternoon.
He reminds me of Brian Stack on Conan O’Brien
Also I think one of the crew members is a little person (the seated guy in the middle)
What’s even more coincidental i spotted a 7 foot extra during the panic on Bespin.
I was wondering if Chewbacca and a Wampa could get it on due to there being no other wookies in the original trilogy… Oh crap, I just shipped Chewbacca and the Wampa. What is wrong with me?
Questionnaire below the fold
Day 99 of Empire.
So Luke is all “NOOOOOO it can’t be” but he is being a bit of a bitch, he went from having no father to a father who is rich, powerful and evil; 2 out of 3 ain’t bad. Vader went from being a mosquito’s slave to the second most powerful person in the galaxy all while being disabled and having no friends but some old creep. No one else got to pick their parents, Luke, it’s either this or Christmas at Aunt Beru’s cousins again.
Spike was showing the prequels yesterday so I watched a few hours of them and pushed back watching Empire until later. Puppet Yoda will always look better than CGI Yoda. The main problem I was having with the prequels is that Lucas had 16 years to work on them, he should have been closing plot holes in the original trilogy not opening up tons of brand new ones. I’ll just say this the love relationship between Anakin and Padme it was so forced that it made pizza-guy porn scenes seem more natural.
I was watching the cave sequence last night and I thought about the cave sequence and how it presents you with your deepest fear. So I began to think about what would be in the cave for the other characters.
- Chewbacca – Edward Scissorhands
- C3PO – a set of Monkey bars
- Han – Luke and Leia sucking face
- Leia – Luke and Han sucking face
- Yoda – Jar Jar
- R2D2 - an escalator
- Vader - Captain Needa prepping to perform brain surgery on him.
- Boba Fett – Jabba in the princess Leia bikini
Since I gave Chewbacca his collection of arm flailing moments I might as well let C3PO have his moment in the sun.
What’s so special about Vader’s armor that he deflects Luke’s lightsaber hit on his shoulder?
Questionnaire below the fold
Hypothetically speaking, if someone was to make a version of Empire that was black & white with score only or a non-kid friendly version of Empire where C3PO speaks indecipherable electronic noises. How would people prefer they distribute it?
Hypothetically speaking of course.
I looked at it frame-by-frame, it looks like just a random piece of rubble. I guess it's to fulfill that trope of pebbles falling off a cliff to show how long a drop it is.
I think you nailed it, not as interesting but spot on.
I always like to think the piece that falls is Luke's severed hand.
I like to imagine Episode 7 will begin with a young child finding a hand and a lightsaber.
Day 98 of Empire.
Gen. Rieekan says “A death mark is not an easy thing to live with” in response to Han but in reality they all have “death marks” on them. The Empire is out to kill each and every one of them and the Empire is trillions not some overgrown slug-pimp.
Luke seems like the type of guy who collects fake samurai swords.
Leia says to Lando “we don’t need any of your help.” Right after Lando’s men freed them, seems like kind of an ingrate maneuver.
The final scene of the film, on the rebel medical ship, I always wonder why there aren’t some rebel generals asking them where the fuck were you guys?
Lobot is called simply “Landos Aide” in the credits. Grrr.
What is it that falls down past Luke when he lands on the antenna?
How the hell is Luke going to reach all those dials and switches all the way up there?
I just noticed this the other day but C3PO’s head is really creepy in this scene something about the eyes reminds me of an unblinking corpse and the red on his face gives him more humanity.
Lando has the most to lose. He actually sacrifices the greater good of the millions of people in Cloud City to try to save Han. Arguably the greatest show of friendship in the trilogy.
Questionnaire below the fold
