Mark Hamill Teases Star Wars Episode IX… in 1983

Busy day here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office… much if it involved with trying to figure out what the hell time it is (we don’t handle time changes well here, particularly not on a day coming after a day we started drinking at about 1:30 p.m.). 

But the big news of the week continues to be the acquisition of Lucasfilm by Disney, and the ramification of that purchase, including the announced new movie for 2015. It was actually the topic of conversation amongst the regulars at the bar yesterday (here’s a hint: if you’re looking for a new local bar to talk comics and genre stuff, find one where the head bartender has a Rebel Alliance logo tattoo), and whether or not the movie would follow any of the comics or novels that have come up since the early 90s.

Well, the announcement has been made that, whatever the movie is gonna be, it won’t be based on any existing released stories… but whatever it is, it might have been percolating for a while. And here’s some evidence: an interview between Mark Hamill and Maria Shriver from 1983, before the release of Return of The Jedi, where Hamill freely talks about a third trilogy… and that he might be back for the final, at-the-time theoretical ninth movie, “sometime in 2004.” Proving that Mark Hamill has no better sense of time than we do.

Then again, he might have just been addled and contact-intoxicated by the volume of mousse in Maria Shriver’s hair.

In A Galaxy Far, Far Away… in 2015: Disney Buys Lucasfilm, Announces New Star Wars Film

Editor’s Note, 8:45 p.m.: Updated after the jump

We are still without Internet service here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office, thanks to that bitch Sandy, so all we can handle today is a brief, quick hit update, sent via my dwindling 4G plan, using my smartphone as a hotspot, hopefully before my cell provider becomes hip to my grievous violation of the terms of service of my contract.

Thankfully, that quick hit is about one of the biggest that could possibly occur in the world of genre geeks.

To wit: reportedly, Disney has bought Lucasfilm from George Lucas for 4.05 billion dollars.

Oh yeah: and Disney has announced they will be releasing a new Star Wars film in 2015.

So what the hell’s going on, George?

Brain Bleach: El Hefe Vador

You know you’ve wondered about the possibility – what if Star Wars and Mexican wrestling had a wacky, spandex and leather wearing baby. Admit it.

What? Just me?

Well, wonder no more. With the advent of Jason Chalker’s La Guerra De Los Luchadores, a show print he created for Art Wars: Intergalactic Art Show, you too can see what would have happened if, as he put it:

I wonder what it would have been like if Star Wars was originally a low-budget Mexican luchador movie?

Check out the awesomeness, after the jump.

Vindication, or: Freezing Out Jar Jar

Back in 1999, a high school buddy of mine and I caught that case of Skywalking Pneumonia that seemed to be going around that May, and we went to see Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace for an opening matinee. A couple of hours later, we walked out and said, “Um… it had lightsabers. Lightsabers are cool. Right? I mean, I thought they were… cool… and there were – Exactly what the fuck just happened to us? Why do we suddenly miss Ewoks? And if I hear the word ‘Meesa,’ I swear before God I will plow this car into a fucking abutment!”

Since then, there’s been a lot of hyperbolic talk about George Lucas raping childhoods, while Lucas defended himself by saying The Phantom Menace was meant to be a kids’ movie, but the bottom line is that a lot of people see the movie as a filthy aberration. And I am one of them… to the point that I never paid to see another Star Wars movie in the theater again (I was, um, provided a copy of the 2002 leak of Attack of The Clones, and I saw Revenge of the Sith at a free advance screening sponsored by the radio station I worked for).

Well, it is now thirteen years later. And despite Lucas’s tone-deaf verbal defenses of the movie in the face of fan revolt, there is finally, all in one day, two pieces of concrete evidence that we fans were right.

Merry Christmas! I Bring You The Gift Of Cinema (Sort Of)!

Christmas celebrations are in full swing here at the Crisis On Infinite Midlives Home Office today. There’s a good chance you’re probably busy today with holiday related drunkenness celebration yourself! Good for you! However, if you’re not and home alone today, looking for something to take your mind off that fact, I have just the thing to make you feel better about yourself. Go get a beer or twelve and come back. You’ll need it for what I’m about to show you.

Have you guessed our little surprise yet?

Our Christmas present to you, after the jump!

We Were Geeks Once, and Young

You know, I reread some of my reviews on this site where I complain that the writing on some comic book sucks, or that the plotting is hamfisted, or that the writer’s betrayed the characters and sometimes I forget that there was a time in my life when, if you’d told me that someday I’d be able to get thirty comic books a week, or that I’d be able to have a place where I could spend all my time just talking about comics, well… I’d have shrieked “Stranger danger!” and run like hell. Seriously: have you looked at yourself? You must have a van.

But seriously: it’s easy to forget how much this stuff has meant to me over the years, or how seriously some of it has affected me. Partially because I’ve simply gotten older, partially because I’ve reached legal drinking age, and partially because I’ve decided that if they diagnose me with cirrhosis while I’m in a blackout, it doesn’t count.

But sometimes I see something that reminds me why I love this shit so much, and why it hooked me from when I was a kid. Something like this video of a four-year-old boy discovering the horrible truth behind the parentage of Luke Skywalker for the first time:

Luke, I Am Your *SPLORT*!

Ok, I found this via BoingBoing. It seems to fit the pattern of everything I’ve watched this weekend somehow being Star Wars related. By the way, thanks Star Wars Episodes 1-6 Blu-Ray release. I am in no way scarred for life by the godawful yellow sweater vest Mark Hamill wore in the Special Effects Of Star Wars featurette included in the bonus materials you get for buying the whole enchilada.

But anyway, here’s kittens with light sabers: