“I guess that’s two strikes against me.”
I feel kind of bad for Gary Whitta. A few days ago he was just a geek who wrote some movies, and now everyone is digging up everything he’s ever said or written about Star Wars. Why? Because Lucasfilm named him the screenwriter for the first Star Wars spin-off movie on Thursday. By Friday, people had already found audio of him talking about wanting to use the Jedi Training Academy in Walt Disney World to ruin little kids’ vacations. ONE OF US. ONE OF US. GOOBLE GOBBLE, GOOBLE GOBBLE. I’m sorry, I don’t know what just happened. I must have spaced out for a minute.
It seems that Whitta has a history of posting on the message boards of NeoGAF, a gaming website. I think you probably see where this is going. You see, message boards are on this thing called the internet, and people have a tendency to say not-so-nice things on the internet. In this particular case, Whitta said some things about the films of the company that would eventually hire him. Way back in 2008, he responded to a post about the Star Wars prequels with:
Guess what, those movies f*cking sucked too.
In 2011, he spit some hot fire at the release of the Special Editions on Blu-ray:
OG editions of Episodes IV, V and VI ACQUIRED! Ripping them to AppleTV this afternoon, then I plan to watch the trilogy the way I remember it! F*ck Lucas and his vandalized Blu-rays. He’s turned us all into scavengers, scraping around in the trash cans of the internet for our childhoods.
Speaking of scraping around in the trash cans of the internet, that’s exactly what’s happening right now. Let this be a lesson to anyone who ever wants to get a job doing essentially anything in any field of work: Don’t use your actual name as your screen name when you post anything on the internet. Seriously, that should be the first thing you learn the first time you go online. That little paperclip guy should pop up and say, “I see you’re trying to access the internet. Don’t give your real name or address out to anyone, you dumbass.”
What does this mean for the Star Wars franchise? Well, it’s certainly nice to know that the first spin-off film is being written by a guy who hates all the lame crap that the rest of us hate. The higher-ups may feign comprehension of our complaints, but I really don’t think they truly understand any of it. They think, “They say they don’t like these things, but we made a butt-ton of money on them. Does not compute.” Does that mean he’s going to write a great script that fans will love? Not necessarily. This is the guy who wrote After Earff Earth. One thing is for certain: as long as people keep digging up Whitta’s old rants, J.J. Abrams can rest a little easier knowing that we’re all too preoccupied to focus on him for the moment.
Via Bleeding Cool