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TROOPS – A Star Wars Parody Does COPS

TROOPS is filmed live, on location. All suspects are guilty. Period.

I adore the Star Wars parody TROOPS,  featuring a cool and funny blend of the 80s television reality show COPS, with Star Wars: A New Hope. It’s got 10 minutes of cinematic-level goodness and is great fun. I’m super impressed with the visual quality of this tiny film. It looks like Star Wars! It even feels like Star Wars.

Storywise, it’s also clever, presenting a  behind the scenes look at how some Extremely Competent Stormtroopers try locate the Empire’s missing droids…and then exactly what went down  at the Lars residence on Tatooine. (Remember Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru? Remember how we saw their charred corpses? Now you’ll know what happened. This version is now cannon to me.)

Owen and Beru play a nice part in the latter half of the video, although it doesn’t show them in the most flattering light. But then, the show COPS pretty much depicted humanity at their nadir, so it fits in perfectly.  And I loved the first Stormtrooper in this short.  He really thinks he’s the good guy here, bringing peace and order to the galaxy (with blasters).

I never watched COPS when it was on the air (I don’t like watching other people’s misery), but I really love COPS parodies, to a fault. There’s a few of them out there. I think TROOPS might not be the single funniest one, but it might be the most spot-on, and does fill in a gap in the Star Wars narrative  —  one you never knew existed. Remember that most of the SW saga plays from a certain point of view…

What do you think of TROOPS? Did you ever see the original show COPS? Are we showing our age here? 🙂

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More, on RunPee.com: 

Undercover Boss – A Star Wars Parody on SNL

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Every Stan Lee Cameo in the Marvel Cinematic Universe

stan-lee-cameos-in-marvel
Stan Lee with his new Borg implants.

We all know about Stan Lee. He’s one of the big name co-creators of Marvel Comics, is a co-producer and co-writer for the movies,  and seems to be a little bit nuts. He’s been inducted into the Sci-Fi & Fantasy Hall of Fame.  He’s also, in one way or another, in every Marvel Cinematic Universe movie since Iron Man 1 introduced the modern superhero film. For a man who’s 95 years old, we’ve kind of got a wee crush on him and his wacky humor.

Just for fun, here’s the entire complication of Lee MCU cameos, from 1989-2018, plus a special appearance in the fabulous music video Guardians Inferno. [pullquote]You’ll have to sit back and enjoy all this as a sort of mini-movie, since it takes a half hour to view it all.[/pullquote] We’re not including his X-Men Marvel cameos here, or from any prior Marvel franchise (those other Spidermen, or the Fantastic Fours), or even the ones in Deadpool, since this article is long enough. We’ll pull those together for another time.

What’s cool about this Stan Lee mini-movie is that Marvel has confirmed Lee has an actual character within the MCU — as a Watcher Informant.

But, one of these is reportedly Lee’s absolutely favorite MCU cameo. Can you guess which one, before it comes up?

2008 – Iron Man

2008 – The Incredible Hulk

2010 – Iron Man 2

2011 – Captain America: The First Avenger

2011 – Thor

2013 – Iron Man 3

2013 – Thor 2: The Dark World

2012 – Avengers

2014 – Captain America  2: The Winter Soldier

2014 – Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 1

2015 – Avengers 2: Age of Ultron (THIS is Stan Lee’s favorite MCU cameo. The reason? It’s a subtle two scene event, where he asks Thor for a drink, who responds by saying it will kill him…and then is later seen being carried out. Blink and you’ll miss it.)

2015 – Ant Man

2016 – Captain America 3: Civil War (This is the infamous “Tony Stank” Fed Ex scene)

2016 – Dr. Strange

2017 – Lee’s two-part cameo in Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2 (Seeing both makes his ‘secret character‘ make sense.)

2017 – Taking place between GotG2 and Avenger’s Infinity War, this video is just plain fun, giving Lee his full celebrity due (not a canon part of the MCU).

2017 – Spiderman: Homecoming

2017 – Thor 3: Ragnarok

2018 – The Black Panther

2018 – Avengers 3: Infinity War.  This is leaked footage and pretty new, so it’s not as clear:

2018 – Ant Man and the Wasp  — JUST IN!….UPDATE, next day: this is no longer available…blame Disney, who went in and blocked it. Poopers.

Allrighty. Here’s another version. Let’s see how long this one lasts. The scene is short and cute.

Updated again: Really, Disney? You know we’re just going to keep posting these, so peace out! Here we go again:

More will be added as the saga continues and the clips become available. Sources say Lee hates to fly, and it’s getting harder for him to do these appearances, so he shoots a bunch of them back to back now. I hope he sticks around long enough to see the saga through. (Although at this point at the box office, it may never end. Everyone reading this could die before it’s done.)

Which is your favorite Stan Lee cameo? Comment below!

Stan Lee – His Marvel Cameos are a Secret Character

More Marvel Articles on RunPee:

Movie Review – Guardians of the Galaxy 

Movie Review – Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2

Deadpool is (sort of) a Cross-over Character Between Marvel Franchises

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Everything Wrong With The Jurassic Movies (YouTube series)

YouTube has some ongoing series related to movies that are so clever and fun, like the Honest Trailers, or How It Should Have Ended. Here we have the Everything Wrong With shorts (each about 15 minutes). [pullquote]These are funny and insightful, and if some of the nits they pick are petty[/pullquote], even they admit some movies just don’t have much that went wrong. Like in the original Jurassic Park film — a classic that still holds up after all this time. (In our RunPee Rewatch, we gave it a rare A+).

In one place now, enjoy the whole Jurassic oeuvre and have a good-hearted laugh at What Went Wrong.

See, here, the first JP “Everything Wrong With” is only 3 minutes long (contrast with the 15 minutes for JP III). Not even these guys could pick a lot of fights with this truly good film:

With Jeff Goldblum headlining the show for The Lost World, the movie should have been a lot funnier. But it’s still the 2nd  best Jurassic film, and the plot mostly hold it together with a coherent story, super gymnastic dino fighting powers aside:

In this third movie, JP III, everything went wrong, and it killed off the series for about 15 years:

Jurassic World reinvigorated the franchise by going back to basics and hiring Chris Pratt, who brings a vitality and casual humor to everything he does:

For comparison, there’s also a Everything Great in Jurassic World.

Since the Everything Wrong guys haven’t released their video for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom yet, this will do for now:

(SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN FALLEN KINGDOM)

And for a bonus video, can you name every dinosaur that escaped in the end of Fallen Kingdom?

I nabbed them all. (But then, my nickname could have been DinoGeekGirl.) Which dinosaurs did you recognize?

 

 

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Tour the Millennium Falcon with Lando Calrissian

I’m really chuffed to show off this little video, a real treat — a tour of the brand new Millennium Falcon from Solo: A Star Wars Story, with that other double-crossing, no-good swindler of a space rogue, Lando Calrissian. Donald Glover (the new Lando, smarmily stealing Solo’s film) is in all his elated glory here. His custom-designed Falcon is in dapper shape, something we never got to see elsewhere (typical lines: “What a hunk of junk,” “You came here in THAT thing? You’re braver than I thought,” and “That’s garbage!(….)The garbage will do”).

Glover proudly introduces a fully stocked wet bar, gleaming gaming table, bouncy bed, extensive cape closet, and all the bells and whistles of his surprisingly white, clean, and shiny party-barge. Captions with arrows depict everything you see within. This is pretty fun viewing:

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Stan Lee – His Marvel Cameos are a Secret Character

stan lee smiling portrait
The man is seriously always grinning. Excelsior!

Notice how every Marvel movie, whether in an obvious bit or a tiny moment, has a unique and fun Stan Lee cameo?

Fans came up with a theory and Marvel/Lee  finally confirmed it…he actually has a ongoing, arc-based role as a Watcher Informant. His job is to keep an eye on the galaxy’s superheros and report on them, while maintaining his cover as “just some old dude.”

Here’s his “big” moment  (actually, in a 2-parter, so you will need to view both to “get” it) from Guardians of the Galaxy, Volume 2, where he gives the latest update to his Watchers.

Part One:

Part Two:

Another, most amusing clue, comes in the recent Avengers 3 – Infinity War, where he crankily asks a school bus of children if they’ve never seen a spaceship before. (Poor quality is from leaked footage – sorry. But still cute.)

What would we like to see? How about in his next MCU film, maybe Ant-Man and The Wasp, that he actually has a larger part, and we learn a bit about who/what he is…and has an actual task to do?

The man is 95, so we think if his character is going to “come out” as it were, better sooner than later. He may not make it to Avengers 4.  That would be a real shame. And Avengers 4 will have enough characters to juggle, that it’s probably not the best time to roll out Stan Lee’s big moment. We say, make it now.  🙂

UPDATE (11/12/18) : Unfortunately, Stan Lee passed away today and he didn’t have that sweet extended scene I hoped for in Ant Man & The Wasp. He does have a fun small cameo, though.  Business as usual. There’s a possibility Lee has cameos pre-filmed for 2019’s Captain Marvel and Avengers 4. We can hope. Stan Lee, you are missed already. Thank you for envisioning such a creative and detailed universe. 🙁

UPDATE (11/13/18): IGN.com reports  Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers 4 co-director Joe Russo confirmed the late Stan Lee already filmed his Avengers 4 cameo, with a few surprise other movie moments in the can. So we’ve got that to look forward to. #RIPStanLee #Excelsior!

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Chewbacca Sings Silent Night (and it actually works)

Sometimes I just can’t help myself, and watch all kinds of dorky Star Wars fun from the endless free entertainment provided by the internet. And no, I don’t mean the abysmally received Star Wars Holiday Special. (Although you can find THAT on the internet too, if you have 98 minutes to kill watching something that even Lucas sends Imperial probe droids out to destroy).

Since Chewie has had one of his most active movie roles ever in Solo: A Star Wars Story, I figured it would be appropriate to share just how well a big walking carpet can sing.

Enjoy!

More Star Wars Story fun on RunPee.com – Featurette: Becoming Solo

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How Star Wars Should Have Ended (the entire series)

Here it is, in one place. Every Star Wars video made by HISHE (How It Should Have Ended), up through Star Wars: The Last Jedi, or maybe Solo, if it’s up yet. If you haven’t discovered this web series, you’re in for a treat. Keep in mind that their solutions would offer vastly shortened movies, with plot points that seem obvious in retrospect (ie – having the giant eagles drop the One Ring into Mount Doom, instead of having the Fellowship truck all over Middle Earth and, in some cases, die along the way)…But here they all are, in an in-universe chronological order (and not including the animated movie/show, or the dreaded Holiday Special).

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Star Wars: Attack of the Clones

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Star Wars: Solo

Hey, this one’s not yet been made! So, like any good Star Wars fan, you’re going to have to wait. You still have a good half hour of HISHE videos here to enjoy.

Star Wars: Rogue One

Star Wars: A New Hope (Special Edition)

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Star Wars: The Last Jedi