This shift (Saturday) has has featured me having wet pants for its entire duration to this point, although by now, they are merely moist. (Ah, but who for?) Looks like they might dry off in time for me to bike home through the rain again.
Now then, there's been a lot of badmouthing of the magnificence that is Star Wars lately. Some of this is perhaps understandable, what with LOTR coming out and everyone going 'ooooh!' and getting justifiably excited about this very good film, and what with rumours of boy bands making possible cameo appearances in Episode 2 (the facts as I am led to believe stand currently as follows: NSync were shot as extras, they just stand around in the background, they approached George Lucas and not the other way round, and no final decision has yet been made as whether they will make it to the screen or not, despite what you may have heard.) A lot of hard core Star Wars fans got very upset at this prospect, and when the net's leading Star Wars site theforce.net asked for submissions about it they got 1000 replies in 2 hours, of which they said "only 750 were printable." Now part of me is right there with these 250 unprintable posts.
However,on the other hand, who cares? It's not like I would even recognise them, and it's not like they take any active part in the movie. So what's the problem? (on the other hand: NSync. Urrrrgghhhh.)
BUT despite this, here's a few reasons why I think people should give George Lucas a break for a second:
1) The Phantom Meance is not that bad. It's just not.OK, so it isn't anywhere near as good as any of the original 3, including ROTJ (yes, I used the initials, I'm allowed, I'm a SW nerd, and while I'm in this bracket let me add that the Ewoks are not that bad either - again, OK, so Wookies would have been cooler, but if you stop to think about it this would require quite a major plot rethink. Trust me.) Granted, Jar Jar Binks is a pain in the arse. One too many large fish ate another large fish (one occurrence was OK, a second 2 minutes later was just redundant.) Some of the dialogue is nothing to write home about. But there were equally things that were just extremely cool and uniquely Star Wars. Who could complain about that lightsaber fight? Who was bored during the pod race?
Who was failing to pay attention to the events that would lead to Episode IV coming quietly about?

There were more reasons that were coming up here, (did you forget how COOL the Millennium Falcon was? DID YOU???) oh yes there were, but sadly due to the old 10 minute work time constraint, and the fact that this post has been here unposted for an age, I can't be arsed typing them all. But go here. For this shows you all that you need to know about Star Wars being super awesome.
Better perhaps that you give me the putative reasons for Star Wars sucking. (Nice, I expanded my vocabulary.) Then I will shoot them down like so many unshielded TIE fighters.