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Star Wars Premier: The Line People

proudtobeageek writes "A friend of mine, an attendee of a midnight opening of Star Wars Episode III, took the opportunity to conduct a short documentary/interview of the costumed movie goers. He has his short movie available here on his blog."

16 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Re:It's sad, in a way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    perhaps society has failed you instead, for making you believe someone is a monster because they eccentricly dress up as a character in a movie every few years and have a bit of fun.

  2. Re:Whoop-de-doo. by rm999 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All he said is that he is tired of it. "Cool" is a concept that doesn't mean anything once you are about 25.

  3. Re:It's sad, in a way by Lisandro · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But their "loser"-status can't be all their fault. At some point, we as a society have turned them into these monsters by shunning them, excluding them, or mocking them for their odd and sometimes strange behavior. Perhaps it's some mild autism that they suffer from, or maybe some other neural disease that makes them "different" from most of us (and I use the word loosely) "normals".

    Come on, isn't that a *tad* too much? Their behaviour is strange to you; they are happy, they have fun and they don't hurt anybody. Why bother? You said it yourself, you have better things to do with your spare time than critizing movies. They don't, they like it. Tastes vary.

    Oh, and it's not a disease; these people are not sick. They just engage in activities most people find odd.

  4. Re:It's sad, in a way by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Oh clever little troll, I see you've managed to get modded up. While I do not consider myself one of these fans you so graciously pity, I would hold them above you for they certainly would not judge someone doing something they found odd since they know of the perception that society holds of them. Please explain how what you have to do aside from criticizing them is "better".

    How dare you judge these people. Who are YOU to judge them. You're the one posting on here about them despite claiming to have "better" things to do.

    If you ask me, the world could use some more "losers" like those fans waiting in line, and the sooner we get rid of judgemental people like yourself, the sooner people won't feel like they're "losers" because they have interests that differ from the norm.

    --
    Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
  5. Re:It's sad, in a way by zerbot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hmm... maybe the real losers are those who feel the need to define people who are different as losers instead of just letting people who aren't hurting anybody else just have their fun.

  6. Come on guys by Lurgen · · Score: 3, Insightful

    This isn't newsworthy. It's stupid and boring. Since when did /. become "News for Star Wars fanboys"?

    For the record, the story about Star Wars Episode 3 being downloaded a lot? Same category. Dunno if any of the admins have been paying attention, but movies get downloaded once in a while and at least one or two of them have nothing to do with Star Wars.

    I'm all for posting a story about the release of the film. It's a geek film. But half a dozen of the stupid things in a week is just plain rubbish. Slashdot is rapidly working it's way off my list of daily reads simply because I'm sick of reading the same articles over and over again. Seeing the same three articles every week is kinda boring: "Check out this Star Wars [blah]", "Google are about to take over the world", and "Microsoft sucks because Penguins are cute".

    BORING!

  7. Re:In other news... by Eminence · · Score: 3, Insightful
    "Revenge of the Sith" rang in a whopping $50 million on its opening Thursday, a single-day record boosted by eagerly anticipated midnight showings, and its total receipts since then beat the four-day $134.3 million opening of 2003's "The Matrix Reloaded." The George Lucas film has also grossed $144.7 million overseas for a total of $303 million worldwide.

    So, the title should have been "The Revenge of the Movie Industry" or "The Cash Sucking Machine Strikes Back"?

  8. Re:Only on Slashdot... by Vorondil28 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If you guys haven't already dl'ed it, don't bother -- it's not worth the bandwidth.

    Funny? No.
    Witty? Hardly.
    Informative? Not Quite.
    Worthy of /.? Certainly not.
    A pathetic attempt to plug an otherwise unremarkable blog? Bingo.

    --
    This sig rocks the casbah.
  9. I.e., enforcing conformity by Moraelin · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's more or less what I wanted to post, especially seeing all the sad posts cheering that other lame dog-with-a-cigar video. I'm not even a SW fan, but I found that video lame and not funny. I just saw a lamer not even making jokes, but outright insulting people to their face because of their passtime didn't match the prescribed role for their age and social category. (Eew! They're playing Risk! That's a game for 12 year olds!) If that's funny...

    It all boils down to enforcing conformity. If you don't act and dress like your prescribed role, you're an evil monster and a "loser". If you have a different passtime than the category you're pegged into, you're an evil monster and a "loser".

    If you play Risk (or god forbid Warhammer 40k or Battletech) instead of Chess, or MTG instead of Bridge or Poker, you're a "loser" and an evil monster. If you spend 4 hours a day in front of the TV with a console game and a controller in hand, instead of 4 hours a day on the same TV but on sports channel with a beer can in hand, you're a "loser" and an evil monster. If you spend all weekend working on your computer, instead of working all week on your car like a Real Man (TM), you're a "loser" and an evil monster. And god forbid that you dare wear anything other than the approved uniform for your category, because that _really_ makes you an unholy monster.

    If you don't want to be an evil monster, then, see, you have to dress like this, hold the beer can and remote like this while watching sports on TV, go to the same pub all the neighbours go to, etc.

    Even if you want to be a rebel teenager, see, you can't just go ahead and do it your way. Nosiree, bob. Only "losers" do things their own way. To properly be a "rebel" you have to mindlessly conform to the "teenage rebel" role. Here's the approved list of rebel clothes, music, passtime and conversation topics.

    Welcome to being sheep.

    And it seems to me like WTH is the problem with these self-appointed guardians of conformity? Do their property values go down because someone two streets away spends too much time with a computer or watches the "wrong" movies, or what? Seems to me that whether I wanted to wear a business suit, or a spandex super-hero suit and cape, or a Jedi robe with "I went to the dark side and all I got was this stupid robe" on the back (never wore any of the three, but just saying), it ought to be noone else's business.

    *sigh* Guess I might as well become a misanthrope now and avoid the christmas rush.

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
    1. Re:I.e., enforcing conformity by Deslock · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You bring up a lot of good points... people are often cruel and the pressure to conform can be overwhelming. But this isn't about being sheep; my board-game/Magic/role-playing buddies and I all thought the Triumph Star Wars video was hilarious. Hell, many of the Star Wars fans were cracking up while they were being mocked. Triumph has the same effect when he makes fun of Bon Jovi and their fans, Hollywood Squares, American Idol, and Hawaii. He could target jocks and prom queens and it'd be just as funny.

      We're all absurd in our own ways, so lighten up and enjoy the ride.

    2. Re:I.e., enforcing conformity by thenerdgod · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "If you play Risk (or god forbid Warhammer 40k or Battletech) instead of Chess, or MTG instead of Bridge or Poker, you're a "loser" and an evil monster." ...no, but if you play it obsessively, or spend more time interacting with people throught he medium of Warhammer 40k than you do, say, out at dinner with friends--or, if you dress up like Stormtrooper Q323-a and interact with other stormtroopers... ...then maybe you should stop interacting with your fellow human beings through a medium and do it directly. Stop meta-living and start actually having a life. It's too short to spend it in some faerie world of make-believe hiding yourself from those evil people who you fear are trying to make you "conform".

  10. WHY is it a problem? by Moraelin · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "But seriously, there is a problem. Over 40% of males end up living with their parents into their twenties these days."

    No, I don't live with my parents, in fact I live half a country away. Even visiting each other occasionally is a bit inconvenient. But I'm still left scratching my head "and the problem with being a family is...?"

    See, virtually all cultures and societies used to be centred around the family until recently. Whether it was a farm or a medieval blacksmith's shop or whatever, it was _normal_ for a house to be the home for a whole extended family, and it was _normal_ at least for the firstborn to stay with the parents until they die.

    E.g., when you read about the Vikings who sacked England or ended up elite bodyguards as far as Byzantium or Baghdad, those weren't really the cool ones. Those were the disinherited ones who had to fight or starve to death. The "cool" ones were those who inherited their father's farm and didn't have to fight. The ones who, in fact, lived with their parents not only into the 20's, but all the way until the parents died.

    The craze about being on your own, and thinking you're so cool because you have no support, and your starving or not depends on a PHB's whims is an industrial age invention. I.e., a very recent one.

    Is it really that much better. Yes, you're so cool, you live on your own, you have a big house and a car of your own. And it'll be so cool until you're old and sick. Then your choice will be to die lonely and abandoned in your home, or half-starved and still abandoned in the cheapest asylum your kids could find. Because now it would be sooo _uncool_ for your kids to have a parent in _their_ house.

    We churn generation after generation who _will_ spend the last decade of their life abbandoned among strangers, and die among strangers.

    Not saying that I have a better solution or anything, but it makes me sorta idly wonder... is it really that much of an improvement?

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
  11. In defence of the geek by pandrijeczko · · Score: 5, Insightful
    From the outset, I should say that I'm not *that* fanatical about anything to want to queue at wierd times for extended periods - whether it's for a new movie, game or concert.

    However, as a Brit, we have problems with violence on our city streets at night due to excessive drinking, we have to heavily police soccer matches to stop rival fans from waging war on each other, we have joyriders stealing cars and endangering themselves and every other user on the road, we have kids believing it's humourous to walk up to someone and just slap them purely to capture the event on a mobile phone camera...

    So while the people queuing in the documentary may be seen as "wierdos" or "geeks", they're probably people that also don't get involved in the type of antisocial activities that I described above.

    It's the "cool" people, in their constant strive for recognition amongst their peers, who usually end up being the antisocial people, not the geeks who queue for Star Wars and play Dungeons & Dragons.

    If anything, geeks demonstrate they're intelligent enough to have enough individuality to just go do their own thing and enjoy it.

    I say good luck to them...

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  12. Re:I don't get it by garett_spencley · · Score: 3, Insightful

    That's one of the reasons I don't go to movie theaters anymore.

    Not only is it insanely expensive ($15 / ticket now at the movie palace in my city! I can buy a DVD and own it for unlimited viewings for that) and you have to sit through 1/2 hour of commercials for coke, msn and countless cars plus the movies themselves are commericals now with all the blatant product placement .. but you still have all the idiots and teenagers who talk, kick your chair and leave their cell phones on for the duration of the movie.

    Why on earth anyone actually pays for that kind of experience these days is just beyond me.

    I love movies but I'd rather rent or buy a DVD and kick back at home in my underwear where I can watch the whole movie through and not have to worry about other people killing it for me.

  13. Re:I just don't find outright insults funny by netsavior · · Score: 3, Insightful

    translation: Get off my lawn

    you messed up some golden punch lines

    There is no insinuation or irony in telling a pregnant woman that her unborn son will be a nerd and never even see female genitals. It's just a very very nasty thing to say to a mother. It ranks almost up there with saying "I foresee that your son will die of cancer."

    First of all, jokes don't all have to rely on irony or subtilty, they can rely on TIMING.

    He asked when she was due... she told him and he said that she would remember it forever... becuase that is the last time he would see female genitals.

    as for comparing that to dying of cancer, I feel very sad that you consider yours, mine, and everyone's geekhood to be some sort of fatal curse. I consider it to be a welcome part of my personality.

    It takes a fragile person to crumble under an insult especially a funny one. That type of fragile person is also the type that would not go out into public in an insult magnet of a costume.

    Triumph is welcome at any of my Mtg tournaments and is welcome to insult my pregnant wife.

  14. Re:Amazing by alexjohns · · Score: 3, Insightful
    That was one of my personal all time classic movie moments.

    I still get weirded out by Leia kissing Luke in the first one, now that we know the real relation.

    And my favorite all-time classic movie moment comes from 'Jaws'. The police chief (Roy Scheider) is chumming, while Quint and Hooper are arguing inside the boat. The shark surfaces, and then Scheider's character backs into the room, cigarette dangling from the bottom lip, he says, "You're gonna need a bigger boat."

    God, I love that scene. Quintessentially perfect. The cigarette. The delivery. The expression. They should have given him an oscar just for that one scene.