Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Kessel Run movie poster

Cory Doctorow at 2:47 pm Sun, Jun 10, 2012

— FEATURED —

Science

Last chance to enter the Armchair Taxonomist challenge!

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

Book Review

We Can Fix it! - a graphic novel time travel memoir

Science

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle


Oldredjalopy DeviantArt piece "The Kessel Run" is a bit Star Wars, a bit Cannonball Run, and a whole lot of awesomesauce.

The Kessel Run (via Super Punch)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE:  Copyfight • happy mutants • illustration • star wars

More at Boing Boing

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Hackers prepare for first "national holiday" in their honor

  • inkfumes

    I like this on many levels.

  • Halloween_Jack

    The only prequel that ever should have been made. 

  • Slartibartfatsdomino

    I had to look up Nien Nunb

    -10 Star Wars credits for me.

    Also, are the blue-skinned lady whose species I’ve forgotten or the blond lady anybody I’m supposed to know?

    • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

      Isn’t La Bleu the opera singer from The Fifth Element?

    • http://www.facebook.com/Shakespeere Russell Berry

       The blue chick is a twi’lek :)

    • Steve Collins

      The blue lady’s a Twi’lek. Neither woman is a known character to me, but my Star Wars knowledge is pretty intentionally limited to episodes 4, 5, and 6; and Shadows of the Empire.

    • EH

      I believe the blonde is Susan Anton. ;)

    • EeyoreX

      The “blonde lady” is Nien Nunb in his pre-larval phase.

    • Squazz Muntbacker

       Comedy demands they just bill “Farrah Fawcett” along with the fictional stars.

  • jayson

    The artwork looks good, but I wish people would spend a little more time with the typography when doing retro-designs like this.

    • theyallhateme

      Consider the source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cannonball_run.jpg

      • Warren_Terra

        The font looks pretty close, but there’s something about the  positioning and sizing in the original that’s not replicated here: this is centered, and graduated in size; the orginal has the second rank a larger size than the others and not all the rows are centered.

        • http://evilbobdayjob.blogspot.com/ Deidzoeb

          The font looks right on a Retina display.

    • ophmarketing

      The typography is actually spot on.

      • http://grumer.org/ Avram Grumer

        The logo at the bottom is really good. The names at the top are close, but not quite right. 

  • 10xor01

    Coming in 12 parsecs to a theater near you! 

    • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BPPOQQCU53LHMTRN7I2WQNMP2Q gradivus

      A parsec is a measure of distance.

      • 10xor01

        Precisely.  And this joke zoomed by at about 300,000 km / second.

  • http://mightybob.com thatbob

    I’m trying to figure out if leaving the women unbilled on the poster is in reference to an old sexist paradigm, or evidence of a new one.

    • Tribune

      or a lack of named female characters that would fit?

    • http://www.facebook.com/Shakespeere Russell Berry

       Neither of those characters were named in the movies. I suppose they could have made up names for them but that wouldn’t have made much sense…

    • Warren_Terra

      How sure are you that Chewbacca, Greedo, Boba Fett, Jabba, and Nien Nunb are male?

      • ToddBradley

        Chewie’s totally a chick.  She’s the only character in the entire series who preens her hair.  Besides, Han sure ain’t gonna stop and ask directions when they get lost.

  • Snig

    I remember this one, it had Jabba the hut before he got heavy. 

    • Just_Ok

      Jabba the Front Stepp?

      • http://lemoutan.blogspot.com/ Lemoutan

        Pizza the Hut?

        • bcsizemo

          I thought he was Jabba’s cousin?

    • jimh

      Jabba’s basically the Dom Deluise of this version.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        Wouldn’t Jabba be the Dom Deluise of Star Wars?

        • jimh

          You notice that they’re never in the same room?

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Is that also true of C3PO and Charles Nelson Reilly?

          • jimh

            Antinous: No, Roddy McDowall.

  • stuiethegod

    Ack parsecs are a unit of distance not time… sorry, really nerdy pet peve of mine.

    • https://launchpad.net/~jae John Eikenberry

      Explained on Wookieepedia.
       http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Kessel_Run

      • Steve Collins

        I appreciate that this explanation exists, but it will always feel retcon-tastic to me. 

        • Donald Petersen

          I, for one, will be forever grateful to Ann Crispin for making the effort to come up with a way that Han’s line makes perfect sense, rather than settling for him being ten pounds of bantha poodoo in a five-pound sack.

          • Antinous / Moderator

            I thought that it worked better when he came off like a sleazy guy in a bar who’ll say anything to get laid.

          • Donald Petersen

            Even though the line was written that way, Ford didn’t play it that way, and I think he played it right.  Solo’s a pilot by trade, the Falcon is indeed “the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy” (when in proper tune), and if he’s desperate for clients in order to pay off the Hutt, the last thing he needs to do is brag about his ship using incorrect jargon that would be glaringly obvious to pretty much anyone looking to hire a ship in a spacefaring society.  Han Solo is an egotistical scoundrel whose first instinct is to look out for Number One, but I’m glad Harrison Ford resisted any direction to play him as an incompetent nimrod.

            So either Ford didn’t realize the line was wrong, or just hoped we wouldn’t realize it.  In any case, Guinness reacts skeptically (as if he doesn’t believe the claim, not as if he thinks Solo can’t tell a minute from a mile), and Ford reacts to that skepticism with further claims (eventually proved valid) about his ship’s performance, not with any embarrassment about being discovered to be a lying dipshit.

            Solo may have been scripted to be “stupid” in this instance, but Ford didn’t do it, IMHO.  Thank the Maker.  Uh… that is, thank Ford.  ;^)

        • tylerkaraszewski

          Oh god I just realized what “retcon” in torchwood is named for.

      • stuiethegod

        I understand the logic behind Solo’s line, but is still gives me the nerd rage when people say things like ‘It’s been parsecs.’

        • Jake0748

           Let it go Stuie.  We’ve all been there.  Pick your battles. :)

        • Donald Petersen

          People say things like that?  Man, we must move in seriously different circles.

    • ToddBradley

      That was an awesome pet peeve to have about 35 years ago.  Get over it.  Way more people alive today have heard of a parsec in relation Kessel than in relation to Bessel.

  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Brian-Whittle/1215485531 Brian Whittle

    the lack of scale bothers me

    • Jake0748

       How much does it bother you?

    • jimh

      Perhaps you think you’re being treated unfairly?

  • http://www.markcrummett.com crummett

    Who’s the blond?

    • Antinous / Moderator

      His name is Chewbacca.  He’s a wookie.

  • http://twitter.com/jhuinink Jim Huinink

    I like a Kessel breakaway, myself. 
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPT4dNNgmOM

  • Aeron

    If that sign says 18 parsecs then they actually UNDERSTAND!

  • franko

    why is the Rodian missing an arm?

    • Nudeviking

      He’s not, a paper scrap caused by the Millenium Falcon busting through the poster is covering his elbow.  If you move your eyes slightly to the right of the blue breasts you can see his forearm.

  • JhmL

    Want. Can give the other prequels in return.

  • ocker3

    So Nien Nunbis is important enough to put in the title credits, but not enough to put on the poster? They didn’t need Both of the tie-fighters, they could have slotted him in under the Twi’lek woman’s hand, introducing an interesting insinuation

    • disky00

      You aren’t actually mad that a character isn’t featured on a parody poster for a film that doesn’t exist, right?

      • ocker3

         It’s incongruous

  • Captain Obvious

    LOL AWESOMESAUCE…in this post!  My friend Brandon made that word up while I was there and I thought it would never catch on.  Un-believable to me that it did.  By the way, it was an adaption/opposite just a few months after I made up Weaksauce, which was a few years after I made up Toobesauce.   Also, he said awesomesauce-em because it had a better ring to it. They originally all came from playing video games and constantly saying “aww weak”(getting killed unrightfully), and “who ordered the toobsauce” while noob-tubing(grenade launchers) through far away windows, thereby turning whoever in the room into sauce(by way of noob toob, aka Toobsauce.

    After a while I accidentally said “aww weaksauce” effectively combining the two and it caught on like fire for some reason.
    It was beyond freaky when a few weeks later a person I had never met said at a concert by me, then months later I heard it on a made for tv Mtv movie.  How unbelievably surreal……..

    Believe it or not-Doesnt matter.
    Surely this is the first time you have heard a reasonable explanation of where Weaksauce awesomesauce and tubesauce aka toobsauce came from.
    Might sound insane but its been happening my whole life.

    I could even tell you where “bow chicka-wow-wow” came from as well since I made it up when I was 12 years old…  Which would also finally explain exactly why its used to describe a hot person…but I wont for now.  The answer would greatly surprise you and makes me laugh every time I hear it.

    Ciao

    • disky00

      When will your memoirs be published? My preorder is guaranteed.

      • Antinous / Moderator

        In the meantime, maybe you could subscribe to his newsletter.

    • jimh

      Actually, I coined the word “weaksauce” at a Taco Bell in 1991.

  • http://ejimford.com/ E. James Ford

    Excellent! Would be even moreno if the poster also included Jamie Farr.

  • http://twitter.com/otterdisaster Bruce Otter

    Cool. I always thought Smokey and the Bandit was the story of the Kessel Run, what with the time limit factor and the smuggling aspect and the fact that Star Wars and Bandit came out around the same time. Plus, The Bandit’s sidekick was ‘The Snowman’ like the abominable snowman, yeti, bigfoot. You know, Chewbacca.!

  • http://pulse.yahoo.com/_BPPOQQCU53LHMTRN7I2WQNMP2Q gradivus

    The sign should say “MINIMUM DISTANCE 18 (parsecs).”   A parsec is an astronomical measure of distance.  ”It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than twelve parsecs” means a very tight course.

  • http://twitter.com/Shamos Shamos Fisher

    The blonde is modeled after Suzanne Somers, most likely a nod to her being in Lucas’ AMERICAN GRAFITTI.  Personally, I would’ve preferred Farrah!