IT Insights Blog — Star Wars

A friend and coworker of the IT Insights Blog Squad likes to begin the day with 32 ounces of the finest caffeinated beverage money can buy. Many of you out there might assume this would lead to a discussion of coffee, but you'd be wrong. Then, after thinking it over a bit, you would probably realize, "Ah, so he's a cola guy. Which is it, Coke or Pepsi?" This would also be wrong, and at this point the guessing would likely default to energy drinks like Monster and Red Bull.

Many years ago, Oscar-winning actor Alec Guinness told a famous story about meeting a young Star Wars fan in San Francisco. The eager youngster, a "sweet-faced boy of 12" accompanied by his mother, claimed to have seen the original 1977 film more than 100 times. The tweedily British Guinness, on the record even before appearing in Star Wars as harboring great reluctance to embrace what he termed "fairy tale rubbish," was taken aback.

William Shakespeare is still celebrated today, more than 400 years after his death, because he wrote some of history's most enduring dramatic works. Also because he knew that people like puns. Shakespeare's plays are loaded with puns. He's not the only one, either. The ancient Romans — who, incidentally, feature prominently in a handful of plays by one W. Shakespeare — also loved a good pun.

Everyone, at one point, has had a moment of frustration in which they said more or less the same thing Princess Leia does during the scene in the trash compactor in Star Wars. Han Solo has just finished bawling her out, and Leia snaps, "Could be worse." What happens next is the first indication of the trash monster, followed by Han glumly stating the obvious: "It's worse."

Earlier today, the the people at Disney who are in charge of movie trailers finally released a teaser trailer for the new Han Solo movie, creatively titled Solo: A Star Wars Story. If you're an objective observer, by which we mean someone whose cats are not named Threepio and Artoo, then you probably shrugged and said, "Could be fun," if you watched the trailer at all. Oh, and if you didn't ... behold: