What We Learned This Week at the Movies: Special Edition

Hello Dear Readers! It’s been a very busy week filled with at least two 12-hour work days. It’s also been my birthday week, and I was given several great gifts, hugs, thanks, songs, and some wonderful love from my amazing friends, students, and family. This week also included - of course - seeing a few films. One of them was with my fellow Nerd 5 blogger Jeff (what a wonderful b-day gift!). For you, dear readers, this means that we have a ton of articles in the works, including a few joint articles! One of them on Oblivion, which Jeff and I saw together, and well… just lot of good stuff in the works.

Which means that there’s not a regular What We Learned at the Movies this week, but while we're taking some time to gather our thoughts and put together awesome new material, we hope you enjoy the following video.

Let me set up what you are about to see a tiny bit. One of my students gave me the birthday gift of a VHS copy of Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace and a hammer. As a fan of the original Star Wars trilogy (and a person who can happily remember a time when it was the only Star Wars trilogy), you can probably guess my feelings on Episodes 1, 2, and 3. If you can’t here’s the quickest Nerd 5 Top 5 of all time!

Top 5 Reasons that Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace Deserves to Destroyed with a Hammer

5. Midi-Chlorians – The reason why not everyone can be Jedi. It all comes down to genetics? Way to kill the dream.

4. George Lucas Dialogue – For everything that Lucas does well, dialogue is not one of them. So bad…. Soooooo bad.

3. Darth Maul’s Death – Spoilers… the best villain of the entire prequel trilogy dies in this film!! Far too early…. Grrrr grrrr… (Jeff disagrees. Best lightsaber battle ever, best death).

2. Jar Jar Binks! – A character so bad, even Lucas himself shrinks from it. Check out The People vs. George Lucas for a quote from a writer of The Clone Wars TV show about how to treat the character of Jar Jar.

1. BECAUSE I COULD!!!

The following video is what happens when you put Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, a hammer, and me in the same room. Nerd 5 is proud to present The Phantom Menace Destruction.