Anakin Skywalker had a choice. He didn’t have to turn to the dark side. What would his life have been like if he had remained a faithful Jedi, stayed married to Padmé Amidala, and raised Luke and Leia?
He’d enjoy a fairly quiet life as a family man, focusing on building a home instead of an empire. Italian artist Renata Castellani illustrated cute and funny scenes from this alternate Star Wars.
-via Geek x Girls
Click on the play button now. Do it! This music video by Nick denBoer is easily the neatest, most original that I’ve seen all year.
It's the song “Sausage Samba,” a track on Friendly Rich’s new album Bountiful. By carefully editing scenes from Star Trek: The Next Generation, denBoer’s video shows mysterious grilled sausages approaching, then boarding the Enterprise. Captain Picard sings throughout the delightfully trippy experience.
It is, of course, a remake of an episode of the original series.
-via Technabob
(Image Via Amazon)
When you’ve enjoyed as much success in Hollywood as Neil Patrick Harris your life can feel like a fantasy roleplaying game, complete with epic highs and unexpected failures, encounters with both kings and monsters, and a heroic persona that reflects your extremely high charisma score. Neil’s life is charmed, to say the least, so it’s only fitting that he has chosen to style his autobiography after a Choose Your Own Adventure book.
It's called "Neil Patrick Harris- Choose Your Own Autobiography", and between those gloriously illustrated covers the readers get to decide which way to go because, as the cover says, "You are the star in N.P.H.'s life story!"
It's the most original idea in the world of autobiographies since Freud released that coloring book version of his diaries called Tell Me About Your Mother, With Color!
-Via Nerd Approved
There are fans who read every book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series before watching Game of Thrones on TV, fans who got into the dark fantasy series through the HBO show, and those who only know about the series from what they've read online.
Each category of GoT fan thinks they know a thing or two about the epic series, but even the most diehard GoT trivia junkie will discover something they don’t know about their favorite show on BuzzFeed's list of 49 Things You Never Knew About Game Of Thrones.
Okay, so many of these things have been on other “things you don’t know about…” lists, but this comprehensive list takes the cake if only because of one factoid alone- DJ Hodor!
Remember that heroic cat Tara who earned a place on the pitcher’s meownd at a Bakersfield Blaze game by saving a young boy from a dog attack? That cat is truly a hero, but imagine how much more good Tara could do if she housed the power of a Super Saiyan from Dragonball Z inside her little feline frame.
YouTube user MinhAndHisVideos created this video game inspired vision of that fateful day when superpowered cat met sneaky dog on the field of battle known as the driveway, and now I can’t stop thinking of daily encounters with neighborhood pets and residents as scenes from an old school console RPG!
-Via Cheezburger
Can you see it? I never thought of it until I saw this painting by Scott Modrzynski, an artist and former mascot for the New Jersey Devils, a hockey team. We’ve previously featured his pizza that looks like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles title card.
He is especially well-known for his food versions of NHL team logos. But recently, Modrzynski has mostly been painting. He gave this unique portrait of Wonder Woman to a patron.
What other states are shaped like superheroes? He could probably make something out of Vermont or Florida. I’m not sure what he could do with Wyoming or Colorado.
-via Nerd Bastards
On a recent episode of John Oliver's new weekly news show Last Week Tonight he celebrated a decade of legal same sex marriage, and revealed the controversy surrounding a new Nintendo game called Tomodachi Life, a game world where characters are able to get married but same sex marriage isn’t allowed.
Fans weren't happy with this lack of virtual reality marriage equality, so Nintendo issued an unprecedented apology stating they would rectify the marriage equality issue in upcoming editions of the game.
John responded by showing us how the citizens of Nintendo's world feel about this corporate change of heart, and many video game LOLs were had by all!
-Via Geekosystem
In the latest of the Honest Trailer series, Screen Junkies gives us a run-down of what we all need to know about the X-Men movies. This look back at the first three films comes just in time for the premiere of X-Men: Days of Future Past, which hit theaters this coming Friday. -via Tastefully Offensive
In 1981, George Lucas approached David Lynch about directing the third film of the Star Wars trilogy. It was not to be, but Lynch went on to direct Dune in 1984, so there is some source material for an imagined Lynch-directed Return of the Jedi. At Dangerous Minds, you can see an animated version of Lynch’s recollections of the initial conversation about it. -via Metafilter
Andy Warhol was a fascinating man, with extremely diverse interests, skills and collaborations. Take one look at the crowd hanging around the Factory, and the crowd that surrounded him when he made appearances at events, and you know Warhol loved variety in his life.
Variety is great and all, but Warhol really never struck me as the type who would enjoy watching wrestling, especially 80s era WWF matches starring colorful characters like Hulk Hogan and Rowdy Roddy Piper.
However, this video shows that Warhol did at one time enjoy watching men pretend to beat each other wrestling, and he spoke with intrepid reporter Mean Gene Okerlund after a match when he "accidentally" entered the wrong door and found himself in the thick of some pretend beef ala Hulk Hogan and Lou Albano.
Man, those were the good ol' days!
-Via Dangerous Minds
Game of Thrones is a hit show despite the fact that many viewers find it difficult to follow, due to the large number of characters and houses to keep track of, and the fact that characters are constantly dying or having their storyline shoved aside for an episode or two.
Playing a lead role on the show therefore seems like it would be a difficult job, but fan favorite Peter Dinklage (who plays Tyrion Lannister) appears to have a handle on the whole situation, and he's able to explain the whole GoT bag of tricks in under a minute.
The best thing about Peter's recap of the show is it's 99.5% spoiler free, so if you haven't seen the show yet you can hear his explanation and still watch without losing that new show smell!
-Via Nerd Approved
Peter Mayhew is 70 years old today. In case you didn’t already know, the 7’ 3” actor plays Chewbacca in the Star Wars series. He's been in four movies so far, and is slated to appear in Star Wars VII. In honor of the occasion, how about some trivia about both the actor and the character?
10. Chewbacca’s character design was based on concept art drawn by Ralph McQuarrie. Lucas had originally given McQuarrie a photo of a lemur for inspiration, and McQuarrie proceeded to draw the character as a female—but Chewbacca was soon changed to a male. McQuarrie based his furry design on an illustration by artist John Schoenherr that was commissioned for Game of Thrones scribe George R.R. Martin’s short story “And Seven Times Never Kill a Man.” Sharp-eyed Chewbacca fans will recognize that Schoenherr’s drawing even includes what resembles the Wookiee’s signature weapon, the Bowcaster.
13. Mayhew’s path to playing Chewbacca began with a string of lucky breaks and his big feet. A local London reporter was doing a story on people with big feet and happened to profile Mayhew. A movie producer saw the article and cast him—in an uncredited role—as Minoton the minotaur in the film Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger. One of the makeup men on Sinbad was also working on the Wookiee costume with Stuart Freeborn for Star Wars and suggested to the producers that they screen-test Mayhew. The rest is Wookiee history.
Read the rest in an article at mental_floss.
Pixar's in the business of making family friendly animated films, so it's unlikely they'll ever put out a true horror movie, but if you recut their original films just so the mood changes dramatically.
Add some generic slasher flick soundtrack music, title cards full of ominous statements and a bunch of scenes taken completely out of context and you get what looks like a trailer for a decent animated horror version of Toy Story.
In this horror trailer for Toy Story, as edited by Bobby Burns, you'd expect the misfit toys from Sunnyside Daycare to be the bad guys, but it looks like having his string pulled one too many times has made Woody snap!
-Via Kotaku
As you know, Disney is planning to release a new Star Wars film every year. In between the big numbered saga films will be spinoff movies that will each focus on a character and explain their backstory. And you know they will continue the lucrative tradition of Star Wars toys that accompany each story.
Hasbro recently held an event where they revealed their lines of upcoming Star Wars toys through the year 2020. Of course, Disney is releasing a new Star Wars movie every year, so I’m sure Hasbro wouldn’t spoil anything that J.J. Abrams doesn’t want us to know. It turns out that the German website StarWars-Union.de was there, and they called shenanigans. Shenanigans is German for “spoiler alert”, in case you were wondering. The popular fansites Jedi News and Making Star Wars picked up the story from there, but have since been asked to remove the information. Dun-dun-DUNNNNNNNNNN!
Far be it for me to reveal the schedule for the toys, but you can see it at Uproxx.
(Image credit: Flickr user Kristina Alexanderson)
Pop culture characters have a ton of visual appeal on purpose- they have been meticulously designed from their basic shapes to the exact number of hairs on a character’s head, and this formula for visual appeal makes the character recognizable no matter how they’re interpreted.
Illustrator Dan Luvisi loves to mess with iconic character designs in a most disturbing way, turning them from the fun and friendly toons we know and love into dark, twisted versions straight out of our nightmares.
Luvisi's kooky cartoon vision ranges from realistic to squashy-stretchy, and his designs are all oh-so shiny, with their glistening high shine look somehow adding to the overall creepiness of the designs.
-Via OneSmallSeed
