Last Jedi Minute 16: Bird Remover

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Date

February 22nd, 2021

Summary

It's time for the porgs which can only mean Asterios & Sirancha are here as our guests! RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Guests

Asterios Kokkinos and Sirancha

Notes

Film

• Starts with Rey finding Luke's hut, and ends with someone's knockin' at the door (open the door and let 'em in)
• First appearance of porgs!
• Luke's hut door is made from part of his X-wing wing (it has the five red stripes).

Podcast

• This is the first team of guests on this season of the podcast.
• Referenced: Paul McCartney's "Let 'Em In" (Wrong show).
• Asterios and Sirancha are, without hyberbole, two of the biggest porg fans in the world.
  • This was her first Star Wars movie. As soon as they finished the movie they started their porgchatter podcast.
  • Together they now own about 40. Fans of their show will make porg stuff and send it to them. Note: See the video for examples.
  • Sirancha only went on to see this movie and Rise of Skywalker and that's it.
• We'll get into Ewoks vs. porgs later on.
• Luke waits until Rey is right there before he slams the door in her face. Referenced: "Batman '66".
  • Mentioned:The Giving Tree, using the whole buffalo.
• Luke didn't give himself the biggest hut.
  • Alex's theory is that the island was fully inhabited but with gross slug aliens and so it's ok that Luke massacred them and their """society""" and imported the lizard nuns to be his staff.
• If Luke really wanted Rey to leave him alone he could have made her leave, but he clearly loves the attention and wants to get Rey to nag him into helping.
  • Asterios relates to Luke and the infuriating feeling of when you get older and young people are enthusiastic about their jobs.
  • If somebody showed up at Pete's house with a price gun and said he needed to come back to being a retailer, he probably would.
    • But, what if he had left retailing after screwing up in the biggest way you can as a retailer (by mis-pricing valuable collectibles and selling them for way under market value!)?
  • Luke as the emo kid. Referenced: Emo Philips.
• The Porgs playing with the lightsaber.
  • The version of the clip where the one porg comes to a bad end - is this a cut scene or just the animators messing around?

Porgs vs. Ewoks

• Porgs are not OP (editor's note: OP means "so overpowered, e.g. in a tabletop game, as to be unfair, unrealistic, or just plain un-fun") like Ewoks.
• Chewbacca kills, skins, and dresses a porg while the rest of them just sit there and watch.
• We relate to the porgs because they're not perfect, there's no scene where they miraculously help our heroes. They're just bystanders, not characters.
• When one of the Ewoks dies it's supposed to be sad, but when a porg dies it's hysterically funny.
• However, they are similar in the sense they both feel like they were created by marketing departments for the purpose of selling toys.

Other notes

• Since girl porgs are gray and white and male porgs are orange and brown, assuming the two cuddling porgs are in a romantic relationship, this is the first gay couple on screen in a Star Wars, even before The Rise of Skywalker.
  • No official word on from Disney on this.
  • Mark Hamill has said that Luke's sexuality is open to the interpretation of the viewer, and if you think he's gay then of course he is[1].
• As per the description on the porg bookends (which are obviously Canon and cost upwards of $120), Porgs are naturally curious. That's why that one is pushing the button on the lightsaber.
• Once Luke returns to his hut, we see him folding up his formal Jedi robes. Why did he put them on in the first place? Was he expecting someone else to come calling? Or was that part of his morning ritual sun salutation that Rey interrupted? Or maybe he was just cosplaying.
  • Or he knows he's going to eventually go along with this, so he's going to get changed now.
• The explanation that they had to make the porgs because of the endangered puffins on the island where they filmed.
  • They weren't even allowed to physically shoo them away so they had to give them digital costumes, turning them into porgs.
  • We don't necessarily believe that's the whole truth, since just digitally removing them would be far easier. Doesn't Adobe have a bird remover tool?
  • The amount of effort they put into it makes it seem very intentional.
  • Maybe it's a little bit of both; they couldn't get rid of them completely so they decide to lean into it. Mentioned the TV antennas in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the shotguns / walkie talkies in E.T.
• An imagined behind-the-scenes look at filming the scene where a porg is flung against the window of the Falcon. After dozens of takes (with a pile of used endangered puffins built up), they realized they had to digitally costume the puffins as porgs so they didn't get in trouble with the World Wildlife Fund.
• Follow us on social media, it's like a weird house party that we're all invited to where every room is filled people worse than the last.
  • Join the SWMLS.

Meta Minute

• 28:36 podcast episode length.
• Alex greets the crowd with a Vulcan salute in the video.
  • In the same wacky font as they did for "Poofin' it!", the phrase "It's dot fun!" flashes after Alex successfully remembers what his website is called.
    • This is reminiscent of the welcome video from homestarrunner.com (which Pete has previously mentioned being a fan of) that has become something of a meme.
• If the guys continued at this rate of increasing the number of new guests each week by one every week, they'd exhaust the current world population in just 124,901 weeks (just about 2,400 years)! Of course if our current level of global population growth is sustained, they're going to need to get a few extra chairs.
  • Buuut if they are actually doubling their new guest count instead of just increasing by 1 each week, then they would reach 7.8 billion guests in only 31 more weeks (just three weeks more than there are left in the season.
• Sirancha has two Porgs in the shot and Asterios has a porg on his shoulder for much of the video.
• Two porgs appear in minute 91 of The Rise of Skywalker.
• According to The Art of Star Wars: The Last Jedi, porgs are a combination of a seal and a pug.
• Samus Aran is a bounty hunter and the protagonist of the Nintendo video game "Metroid".

Quotes

• Pete: We have you guys here because we love you.
• Asterios: <emphatically> I love those lizard milk ladies I wish we had more of them!
• Asterios: Listen, let's not get off on a rant...
• Asterios: They're just dumb birds and that's why I like them.
• Asterios: <bellowing> They're just better! They're better in every way! Alex: I can't argue with you about that. Asterios: I told you these guys were cool.
• Pete: (smoothly) Couple of handsome gentleman down there. Asterios: (showing stuffed animal porgs to the camera) This one's name is Snowball, this one's name is Drunky, and this one's name is Egg.
• Pete: You know what? Gay porgs!
• Asterios: <dripping with sarcasm> Oh yeah. I can't imagine why the world's greatest Jedi would want to stick a laser sword in Baby Hitler!
• Pete: Let's turn that bug into a feature. Let's lampshade the porgs.
• Asterios: You have no idea how much I'm not saying about porgs right now.

Links

Audio only

https://www.starwarsminute.com/2021/02/22/last-jedi-minute-16-bird-remover/

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGEQ-tOBtY4

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