Harrison Ford: "Star Wars is shit!"

Star Wars is just a little bit overrated, isn't it? Admittedly Yoda, Lando Calrissian and Jabba the Hutt are all pretty kewl. And I think you would be hard pressed to find a better screen villain than Darth Vader. And sure, those movies starred the greatest fictional character of all time, R2D2. And when I was a kid I had a major hard-on for Ewoks. But apart from all that, they're kinda rubbish aren't they?

Okay, so Star Wars is actually pretty good. But not according to Harrison "I played Han Solo in Star Wars" Ford who recently shit all over the films that launched his career by turning down an offer to star in a Han Solo spin-off film and by slagging off Chewbacca a little bit. According to The Daily Star this week, Ford was all "I would rather fellate Barbara Walters" when offered twenty million dollars to reprise his star-making role: “George sounded him out about playing Han Solo again. Harrison was horrified...He told George he just couldn't face being stuck in a spaceship with Chewbacca again.”

What the bollocking hell happened to Harrison Ford anyway? Twenty years ago you couldn't take a dump in the middle of a deserted forest without mistakenly crapping on a Harrison Ford movie such was their quantity. However, the only thing Ford has starred in lately is lots of VH1 'Where are the now?' retrospectives. My theory is that he's been sulking for the last ten years because he didn't got any awards for Regarding Henry his token early nineties oscar-baiting 'act like a retard' movie but that could just be baseless speculation.

Fortunately, thanks to my newfound dedication to proper journalistic standards I decided to actually do a bit of research into the matter. Okay, turns out he made a movie last year called Firewall, probably about anti-virus software gaining sentience and trying to enslave humanity or something. I'm guessing it went straight to DVD. Also, Ford is apparently dating Skeletor from The Masters of the Universe although he calls himself 'Calista Flockhart' these days. So there we are.

Regardless of how tragically unfamous Harrison Ford is these days, turning down a role in a Star Wars spin-off was probably a pretty smart move. I think we can all agree that the new Star Wars movies stank up the joint worst than the last time an ex-Spice Girl released an album.

And it doesn't help that George Lucas is now richer than Jesus Christ. To use The Rolling Stones as an example, it wasn't all the booze, drugs and sexually transmitted diseases that turned Mick Jagger and Keith Richards into untalented nightmarish self parodies, it was all the money. I mean, who needs to make a half-decent album when you can just stay at home and swim in pools filled with hundred pound notes, especially when you have an army of mindless sycophants who will automatically buy any old piece of rubbish you decide to release. Well, the same thing applies to George Lucas. Plus, I think we all remember that embarrasing bit at the end of Revenge of the Sith where Darth Vader goes "noooooo!" in a stupid voice.

This whole story really highlights how bloated and ridiculous the Star Wars franchise has become. I'm sure in twenty years George Lucas will start running out of Star Wars characters to spin-off into increasingly stupid movies and TV shows and we'll have to put up with this sort of news story: “George sounded Toby Keith out about playing that blue elephant muppet thing that played the piano in Jabba the Hutt's palace again. Keith was horrified...He told George he just couldn't face being stuck in Jabba the Hutt's Throne Room with Cli'tor the Himd'orian dancer again."

Seriously though, I don't know why George Lucas bothered offering Harrison Ford twenty million dollars to reprise his role when I'm pretty sure Mark Hamill would have done it for 20p.