Fuck George Lucas. Give Me A Job.

Battlestar Galactica Season 2 is out soon and I already have it on order. I was thinking about the show and realised that it's pretty much just the "Ultimate" version of the old show. "Ultimate", as in the way Marvel's Ultimate line of comics that set out to update their stable of characters and make them more relevant. And I was wondering, as I do, "what else could be Ultimatised". And it came to me:

How cool would Ultimate Star Wars be?

Firstly, you get rid of George Lucas altogether. He's already proven he can screw up a good thing. But then you go back and look at his old notes and you watch the first trilogy and you get a feel for it and...you just recreate the experience for a new generation.

Let's see. The first thing that comes to mind is a new cast...
For Luke, Leia and Han, you want some (relative) unknowns, like the first time around. Keep Jessica Alba and Colin Farrell the hell away.

Obi-Wan Kenobi was originally supposed to be played by a Japanese actor. So you bring in Ken Watanabi. Samuel L Jackson can start making up for his appearance in the prequels by becoming the new bad-ass Lando. Peter Mayhew can still be Chewie.

David Hyde Pearce as the voice of a definately-less-gay C3-PO, who sounds more like a butler - being a protocol droid - than a whining nancy. More like an Alfred to Luke's Batman. Dry, sarcastic humour.

Han not only shoots first, his blast takes off most of Greedo's head.

And you have to keep the weird-ass almost-incest out of the first two movies.

Yoda, having been living like a hermit in the Dagoba swamps for years is far less mischevious, and much more surly. And he swears. He gets all the best swears.

Speaking of swears "That's because droids haven't been known to pull people's fucking arms off" sounds more natural to me.

Yoda and Obi-Wan use swords, not light-sabres (albiet swords made of an alien alloy that will stand up to a light sabre in a duel). The light sabre was invented by the Sith as an instrument of torture, allowing you to cut pieces off your subject, and simultaneously cauterize the wound. It only became a weapon later, popularised by Vader - the most sadistic motherfucker in the Empire. Luke builds one after his sword is dropped from Cloud City at the end of Empire. He's just found out his hated enemy is his father. He's pissed off enough to want to hack chunks off him.

Vader's whole back-story has to be retconned, too. You can't see the devil as a child. You never saw Freddy Kruger as a kid. There was no"Hannibal Lector, the Early Years". And he certainly never said "Yippeee!!". It takes the scary out of them. And Vader would be scary as hell.

And sorry, fanboys, but the whole slave-girl Leia thing doesn't make sense. It made sense when Jabba was a human (in the deleted scenes from A New Hope), but why does a fat worm want scantily-clad beautiful women around?

Ok, I'm sure we could squeeze it in somewhere...

What else? Stormtroopers are already pretty cool, but they'd have to be better shots. And they'd have to take more than a single blast before they dropped dead. They were cloned with no pain receptors, they don't go down until their chests are smoking holes, or their heads are pulped.

And there you have it. Like with BG, you mix in some of the old ships with the new and you've got yourself a hit, I guarantee it*. In the words of the new Han Solo, "Fuck, yeah!".

*Well, maybe you would have before Lucas took a steaming dump in his own nest.