Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends
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evil-doer replete with a voice which echoes within his helmet. However, Lord
Uniscorn’s helmet is in the shape of a unicorn’s head, and he wears a small, pink
heart around his neck. The image of the angry, diminutive Lord Uniscom forces
the viewer to contemplate why an angry, adult man breathing heavily through a
helmet transcends to mythic status.
When Bloo as Lord Uniscom faces down Mac, he quotes verbatim
from the climatic scene from The Empire Strikes Back when Darth Vader
reveals himself as Luke Skywalker’s (Mark Hamill) father. When this scene
played out for the first time, it shocked the audience with Vader’s “shattering,
cmel claim of paternity” (Dmmmond 181). This brilliant plot twist forced the
audience to reexamine the movie’s events in light of this revelation, and even
sparked debates as to the veracity of Vader’s claims. Above all else, it
guaranteed that audiences would return for the final installment of the original
trilogy to see how it all played out. When Bloo utters the lines “I am your
father” and “Join me and together we shall rule the galaxy as father and son” the
words lack any emotional impact. Where Luke, broken and bleeding, cries out
“No!” in horror, Mac’s response consists of “What are you talking about?” and
“I don’t even know you!” Once again, Bloo fails to realize that context is
everything. He tries to re-connect with Mac by aping the lines verbatim from
The Empire Strikes Back, but the words prove understandably meaningless and
comedic stripped from the rest of the story. The scene concludes with Bloo
unmasked, revealing his gel-encmsted head as he laments how “hideous” he
appears. This contrasts with its sister scene in The Return of the Jedi when Luke
Skywalker and the audience fully view Vader without his mask. Vader’s
shriveled, unnaturally pale skin elicits shock and sympathy, for he has redeemed
himself Yet Bloo’s appearance reminds the viewer that the reveal of Darth
Vader holds a hint of unintentional humor. The incongruity between Vader’s
booming, masculine voice and the shriveled, bald man speaking in a completely
different timber and accent beneath his helmet stand in sharp contrast to one
another. Only the emotional weight of the moment, and the history of Vader and
Luke, prevents Vader’s appearance from eliciting a humorous response.
The episode’s mockery of Star Wars addresses deeper issues pertaining
to the film franchise. George Lucas’s relationship with American popular
culture proves more tenuous than the hold his movies have over the public at
large. Bloo decontextualizes one of the most memorable moments of the entire
Star Wars series in an attempt to win back Mac as a friend, in effect rewriting
the terms in which the dialogue appears. Yet Lucas himself continually
“rewrites” the original Star Wars trilogy perhaps to “bring the franchise more in
line with his original, authorial intenf’ (Johnson 36). Advances in special effects
and financial resources allow Lucas to enliven many scenes with added effects,
but he has taken his editing one step further. As an example, the ending of The
Return of the Jedi contains another iconic scene in its concluding moment where
Luke sees his father’s Force presence. He sees Vader, once again Anakin
Skywalker, as he was at the point when he died: an older man. The recent 2004