Star Wars and Its Impact on the Celebrities of Today

2/7/08
Roy Verspoor
Roy@SmartassRadio.com

I’m over in a England and I don’t have internet in my room and beers here cost six American dollars, so, in between doing productive things, I thought I’d write something for SmartassRadio. With any luck it will be on the site in the next two to three months. What to write about though? Well, how about one of the greatest movie trilogies of all time.

Any person born in the past forty years has the pleasure of saying they grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy. For those of us born after the movies came out we still got to see them in the theater when they were re-released. Sure, they weren’t as good as the originals and the digitally edited Stormtroopers and Green Jabba the Hutt were completely unnecessary but at least Generation X got its taste of that cinematic magic. I’m getting a little misty just thinking about it all.

The Star Wars legacy has rippled into all reaches of popular culture. Many celebrities of today are actually modeling either their looks or career choices off the success Star Wars. Believe it. I’ve done some intensive research and found ten of the clearest culprits of starwarsian plagiarism.

1. The first is Samuel L Jackson. He is clearly basing his career off the one and only Lando Calrissian. Who has more ethnic-finesse and bad-boy stylings than Lando? Well...I guess Samuel L Jackson does, but he owns it all to Lando. The connections are uncanny. They’re both black. They’re both in Star Wars movies. Cloud City was in the sky, Snakes on a Plane was in the sky. Coincidence?!
   
   Next up, Carrot Top copying Jar Jar Binks. I know the chronology here is a little funny but carrot top definitely is not. This one is pretty self-explanatory; they are both annoying. Plus, they both make bad things even worse. Examples: Episode I and the Roast of Flavor Flav.

   
   The next connection is Harrison Ford; its plain and simple he is copying Han Solo. Unlike the rest of the Star Wars cast Harrison Ford decided he wanted to continue his acting career after the movies. Who knows why. Paradoxically, while I know Harrison Ford is still a legitimate actor, I can’t think of any other famous roles he’s had except Han Solo. He even did that spinoff trilogy where Han Solo goes out on his own to explore temples and fight Nazis. My conclusion: Harrison Ford just is Han Solo.

   
   Those first three you probably have already noticed on your own. Here’s a connection that you might not have realized at first. George Costanza and R2-D2. My main reasoning here is they’re both short and bald. If I were to extend the comparison Kramer would be C-3PO, Jerry would be Luke and Elaine would be Leia. Vader would be the Soup Nazi.

   
   I only recently noticed this one. I guess fourteen months of constant paparazzi coverage has final led to an actual human thought. Britney Spears is basing her appearance mostly on Greedo from the original Star Wars. Of course you remember Greedo confronting Han Solo in the Mos Eisley cantina. Han Solo wasn’t about to deal with his demands, no way, so Greedo gets shot under the table and his sexy school girl looks are burnt to a crisp. The metaphoric blaster shot for Britney was her pregnancy and her crazy.

   
   On a similar note, Kevin Federline seems to have lots of similarities to a destroyed AT-AT walker. Well, maybe not lots of similarities but definitely one big one; its really gratifying to see both of them fall.

   
   The next up: Dane Cook. He seems to have a lot in common with the Sarlacc. You might not be as nerdy/interesting as me, so let me remind you. The Sarlacc was the monster that lives in a sand pit on Tatooine. Jabba the Hutt liked to feed his victims to the Sarlacc. Once you were in its clutches it would slowly digest your body over a span of thousands of years. It would keep you alive the entire time and just slowly drain your nutrients. Its writhing tentacles would try to capture any living thing in reach. There is nothing funny about the Sarlacc. You can probably see how I made the connection.

   
   Next I’d like to draw your attention to the connections between Bill O’Reilly and another cantina alien, Ponda Baba. Now this connection is a little more subtle than the rest, but what I found really intriguing was that both O’Reilly and Baba have an ass for a mouth.

   
   Next up, Amy Winehouse and Admiral Akbar. I feel kind of bad about this one because I really like Admiral Akbar. He’s a real hero in my book and I’ve never heard anything about him doing horse tranquilizers. I even like his voice better than Winehouse. I think listening to him say, “Super Star-Destoryer” and “General Madine” over and over would be way better than hearing the pure irony of “Rehab”. The only real connection is the similar shape of their heads, as you can see.

   
   I’m pretty proud of this connection mostly because I don’t have internet but I still knew that the little creature that always sat beside Jabba the Hutt was called Salacious Crumb. I can just hear that little guy saying “you’re fired” as Luke falls to the Rancor. That’s one Star Wars re-edit I’d like to see. This connection is based pretty much on looks. Though, I could make a comparison and say that the enormous lump of fat and stink that Trump always sits beside is his own ego.

   
   Finally, I’ve pick two characters that are a little bit obscure. Frank Lemke and Garindan. The latter is a sly character from the hive of scum and villainy Mos Eisley. The former is a sly character from the hive of scum and villainy Denmark. They also have another similarity, I think it’s the glasses. Of course the character that DJ resembles is Chewbacca, but again I feel bad making the comparison because I really like Chewbacca.

   

So there you go. Ten instances of stars of today and one instance of Frank Lemke copying the stars of Star Wars. Think about it, I did the whole thing without comparing a fat person to Jabba the Hutt or comparing a box of cinnabons to Princess Leia. Pretty good. Pretty, pretty, pretty good.