boba fett

By: Peter Martin

To mash up two wildly different movie quotes: I wish I knew how to quit Star Wars, but just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. This time, it's prompted by a collection posted at online magazine Dark Roasted Blend, which has rounded up a massive amount of links under the all-encompassing theme Star Wars for Your Mind, Heart and Soul.

I knew that SciFi Squad readers had recently voted Star Wars the best sci-fi movie franchise of all time in The Ultimate Sci-Fi Fan Poll, but with all due respect, the true mark of admiration and/or inspiration and/or madness is to spend time and money creating Boba Fett's full-size armor out of LEGO. Or crafting the Millennium Falcon out of a single sheet of paper. Some things are in questionable taste: the charred remains of Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, packaged in plastic as a toy. Then there are the mash ups, like Snow White and the Seven Stormtroopers. Professional creations are not ignored, like original concept art by the great Ralph McQuarrie, which makes The Empire Strikes Back look like an old Republic Western, or a series of recent theme park advertisements featuring our favorite characters dealing with the logistics of modern travel.

Obviously, we love this kind of stuff. Check out the gallery below to get started, and then head on over to Dark Roasted Blend, where you can find links to all the crazy stuff they've collected together for your perusal. I think I know how I'll be whiling away my next few available hours.

Welcome to TV Geek Week -- a new weekly column about sci-fi TV news and programming. Don't forget to click through for this week's TV picks.

Is George Lucas finally moving ahead with that promised live-action Star Wars TV show? Sources say yes. Sources also say the show will be produced in Australia by a hand-picked crew of Aussie TV vets. And we might even get to see it before the end of 2010. But I got a question: Do we really want a live-action Star Wars TV show?

Well, yeah, of course we do. For most of us, the original Star Wars trilogy was a thrilling entry point into the bizarre and inspiring world of science fiction. For an '80s kid like me, Star Wars was nothing less than a dazzling blast of awesome that I couldn't get out of my head. There was nothing cooler. (I wore the sh*t outta my Yoda jammies.) I'd love to see a Star Wars TV show deliver the same unpolished pluck, heart and spirit of the original trilogy, but we all know that's not gonna happen.

You've seen the prequels. You've seen The Clone Wars. It's likely the new series will be heavy on cartoony CG effects and kid-friendly concepts and light on the simple but engaging storytelling we fell in love with decades ago. Word is the series will focus on "relationships and emotional landscapes." Normally, I'd say that's a good thing. What's a TV show without engaging relationships and characters motivated by emotion? But we've already seen the new Star Wars' version of relationship drama, and it is very, very bad. Remember that "Sand sucks. It is so rough and sand-like, but you are so soft" nonsense between Anakin and Padme from Episode II? It only got worse from there.