Star Wars
Whether it's Han Solo's unseen girlfriend, Anakin preparing for a podrace or a very human Jabba, these ten clips show that George Lucas' space opera was more fun before it was edited.

Star Trek
Klingon torture! William Shatner's original death! Skydiving Captains! Ten clips to give you a good feeling about what you've missed so far.

Robot Movies
Never mind the Transformers, it's the Terminator material amongst these five clips that are must-sees. Especially the Arnold bit from T3.

Super-Heroes Can Save Us
Fifteen clips from Iron Man, Hulk, the X-Men movies as well as Batman and Superman's long careers on celluloid to remind you that sometimes, deleted scenes can add little to a movie - and sometimes, they can add an entire character. Go check out the Superman clone you've never met before.

Bonnie Burton interviewed Kelly, and discovered that he has some pretty fleshed-out ideas for where Jabba should appear next. Could these be the seeds of Kelly's next project?

Kelly confessed that he loves Ewoks, and then said:

The Endor sequence in Jedi is my favorite part in any of the movies. If I was stranded on a desert island and I could only bring one Star Wars movie, it would be Return of the Jedi. The whole set piece with Jabba the Hutt and the desert sequence with the Sarlacc Pit are great. Salacious Crumb is one of my favorite Star Wars characters too.

Jabba is so disgusting. He's just this gigantic slug. And the coolest thing in The Phantom Menace is when you get to see Jabba's wife. In fact, I love to see a movie all about Jabba the Hutt being a gangsta. Or maybe a sitcom called The Hutts where it shows the crazy shenanigans and escapades of the Hutt family.

It could even be like The Sopranos where he just whacks other alien creatures, and executes people, and he leads this foul, hedonistic lifestyle. A Hutt show would be amazing. I want to see that! Do you think that would ever happen?

via StarWars.com (thanks Bonnie!)

There's some weird sense of humor at play in titling this episode "Defenders of Peace," considering the moral of the episode seemed to be "Being a pacifist will get you killed." Even the bright blue words of wisdom that start each episode had a particularly machismo quality to them, this week: "When surrounded by war, one must eventually choose a side." Oh, really?

The plot of the episode was pretty much exactly what you'd expect if you've seen Return Of The Jedi: Bad guys (Count Dooku's Separatists) invade planet of peaceful non-combatants (the Raccoon-like Lurmen, who seem to have switched from Irish last week to Scottish this week. Although, admittedly, the same Scotland that James Doohan came from) with big weapon of doom. Good guys (the Jedi and clone troopers) fight back. Peaceful non-combatants eventually fight back - including tying the legs of the bad guys and then knocking them over; Jedi homage or unlikely coincidence? - and the day is won. For a series that normally shines when showing fighting, the battle was disappointing, rushed and repetitive, with even the Lurmen's last-minute change of heart downplayed so much as to seem negligible.
The disappointment of what should've been the heart of the episode sunk whatever potential the episode had (Although I still have serious doubts about whether the episode had that much potential at all, considering its moral; there were moments where the script seemed to have been mixed up with a military recruitment film, with the peaceful Lurmen being described as cowards and without pride for not fighting, and no opposing view given at all. The show's closing "Yes, we have joined the fight... but at what cost?" was, if anything, a patronizing nod in the direction of the flipside, considering we'll never see the cost, and by the way, here's a trailer for next week's show with more awesome-looking fighting). What was left was an episode with voice acting that distracted too much (George Takei's lead villain Lok Durd was especially comedic, although perhaps not intentionally so), and a story that continually moved between the depressingly familiar and familiarly depressing. Definitely not one of the better episodes.

The box office bonanza that was Return of the Jedi must've blinded many TV executives, knocking their generally-sensible selves into some kind of pliable stupor when faced with the formidable form of George Lucas back in 1983. How else to explain the two Ewok-centric quasi-sequels to Return of The Jedi, Caravan of Courage and Battle for Endor, filling in the gaps left behind by Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill with Burl Ives and Wilford Brimley? Those made-for-TV classics* (released in theaters abroad because George Lucas hates the non-Americans out there) offered up everything that fans had loved about Jedi, with the small exceptions of engaging characters, exciting action, space battles, Jedi knights, lightsabers and Darth Vader, breaking the hearts and boring the shit out of every 10 year old on the planet at the time. Or maybe that was just me.

As if that wasn't enough, there was also Ewoks, AKA The All-New Ewoks, AKA half of The Ewoks/Droids Adventure Hour. This two-year series of animated adventures seeked to further undermine the idea that anything that had the Star Wars stamp had an automatic guarantee of, you know, actually being good, although it did help explain the family tree of Wicket, Princess Leia's favorite Ewok.

Is it completely unfair to look at the attempts to force a wide variety of Ewok adventures onto an ungrateful public as one of the first signs that the post-Return of the Jedi Lucas was creatively bankrupt and willing to milk his audience dry with dull, low-grade tie-ins to his artistic lightning in a bottle? Am I so wrong to think that it was the first step down a road that would, years later, lead Lucas to convince himself that Jar-Jar Binks was a good idea that fans would grow to like if they just gave themselves enough time? Perhaps.

On the other hand, there are those who disagree with my point of view so much that they'll sing gospel songs about it:

Can someone remind me who throws the hottest tree-top parties in the galaxy indeed.

(* - Not really.)

Star Wars Ewok Gospel [YouTube]

• Alien: Blowing up the Nostromo in order to kill one single Alien was one of the biggest (and best) sacrifices in movie history, and the resulting explosion as Ripley flees in the shuttle still stands alone as a perfect example of why you don't need 40 billion rendered polygons showing you just how the ship would look as it broke up into its component atoms. (You can see video of it above.) Plus, you have the audible countdown over the ship's PA system literally beating a ticking clock against Sigourney's ass every step of the way. It worked so good that they decided to repeat it in Aliens.
• Battlestar Galactica — "Exodus Part 2": Lee Adama's emotional outbursts might not win him another command anytime soon, because when he took over as the helmer of the Pegasus he got complacent and fat. However, he redeemed himself by sacrificing his superior ship (with its fighter-building ability) in order to save the Galactica, his pop, and everyone on the planet below. This still stands as one of the most powerful moments in the show. Just when you think everything is hopeless, the camera pulls extremely far back, and... boom. Pegasus to the short-lived rescue.

  
  

• Star Trek III: The Search for Spock: Captains of the Enterprise sure have been careless with their ships. What are they on, Enterprise-Q by now? However, the first time the Enterprise was sacrificed was probably the best. Faced with insurmountable odds, Kirk proves he's best at surviving by activating the ship's self-destruct sequence and letting it take out some nosy Klingons. As he watched it burn to cinders from the planet below, he asks Bones "My god, what have I done." Nothing that Starfleet will court martial him for, apparently.

  

• The Fifth Element: Even cruise ships aren't safe in this film, especially when carrying blue-skinned singing divas with stones buried in their stomachs. The poor luxury spaceliner Fhloston Paradise survives an attempt by Zorg to blow it to smithereens, only to find itself blown up moments later by someone with the sense to use a very short timer and not a wonky thing that you deactivate with a hotel cardkey. Cool escape pods, though.

• Tron: While fleeing Sark and his troops, Tron and his girlriend Yori narrowly escape on a Syd Mead designed Solar Sailer, which rides beams of light around Tronworld. Sark's massive carrier eventually catches up with it and opens up a ship-chomping hole, reducing it to pieces. The best comparison would be if a modern-day aircraft carrier chewed up a catamaran. Sark and the others leave the ship, and he orders it to be derezzed, which is what is really cool about Tron. If you need something, the system can rez it up, and when you're done, you just recycle it.

  

• Lost in Space: Bonehead Joey, er... Major West uses remote control to ignite the engines on the superior Proteus, full of futuretech and possibly life-saving equipment in order to get hull-burning space spiders off the Jupiter 2. However, not content to just let them burn up in the engine's wake, he also makes the ship self-destruct. Even though his ship has had its systems majorly trashed by the malfunctioning Robot, he still blows up the first sweet ride they find. Oh, and it manages to make their own ship crash. Genius.

• The Last Starfighter: When video game expert turned space pilot Alex keys the "Death Blossom" onboard his Gunstar, it turns into a hypersonic laser death machine. However, once it's in the post-orgasmic glow it's rendered dead and useless. They can't even steer out of the way of Xur's approaching ship, which shipicides itself into a moon. However, that bastard Xur got away, never to be caught since the movie didn't get a sequel.

  

• Independence Day: This is more of a shipicide from within, but when Jeff Goldblum and Will Smith fly up to the alien mothership and plant the virus, they're basically giving the thing a huge case of indigestion, which it doesn't quite recover from. Sadly (or maybe gladly) I couldn't get a clip from this since three of the Blockbuster stores I visited in Los Angeles don't carry ID4. Lame. But as a bonus, enjoy this clip mashing up Star Wars with Independence Day. Randy Quaid uses the Force.

  

• Return of the Jedi: While this one wasn't done on purpose, it's sort of a hilarious "Oops" moment as a rebel A-Wing pilot banzais into the bridge of the Imperial Flagship Super Star Destroyer Executor. This causes the ship to veer out of control and crash right into the the new and improved Death Star. Either that was one extremely lucky hit on the bridge, or whoever built the windshield of that thing needs to be fired. It can withstand the rigors of laser fire and hyperspeed, but can't take the impact of a measly A-Wing? I wonder if that have a transportation safety board that investigates these things.

  

• Vanilla Sky: Cameron Diaz gets an honorable mention in this film for tanking her "ship" (okay, a Buick Skylark) off a bridge in an effort to die in a warped suicide love pact with Tom Cruise. Let this be a note to you love 'em and leave 'em types out there: if you scorn someone, they may seek revenge, fuck up your face, and force you to go into a bizarre cryogenic freeze / lucid dreaming / virtual reality state of existence. Just so you know.

  

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