Relentlessly inventive, SuperShadow told his readers precisely what they wanted to hear from his place next to Emperor George's throne. Not everyone would believe him, but enough people bought into the ruse to make SuperShadow the phantom menace of movie news webmasters, and Lucasfilm itself, for a solid decade.
His name was SuperShadow, and years later, it would be painfully apparent that he knew nothing, save for how to hoodwink Star Wars fans drunk on the promise of Episode I. He claims to own a copy of the Episode I treatment he swears he has a direct line to George Lucas and apparently, he has clearance from Lucasfilms to post just anything he pleased on his Tripod-hosted website, "Dark Side Prequel Rumors." This guy knows everything.
That's when you discover a lone, confident voice cutting through the clueless din of fanboy speculation. So you get that dial-up modem crooning in the key of 28.8 kbit/s, and within minutes, are scouring the net for every existing scrap of Star Wars: Episode I news. Hyperspace to 4 in the morning: you've been hunting down details for hours, and what you've gleaned from the prominent rumor aggregators, the web 1.0 successors to Starlog, Fantastic Films, Cinefantastique, and other 1980s fan mags, has only left you starved for more. It is the greatest time in history to be a Star Wars fan.Įven better, this is the future, and you are one of 70 million people on the planet privileged with access to the World Wide Web. And this euphoric moment is but the prelude to the not-so-far-far-away glory of a brand-new chapter set to arrive in 1999. The unadulterated joy coursing through your veins of seeing this classic blockbuster back on the big screen has completely compromised all capacity for critical thought. It's January 31, 1997, and you just walked out of Star Wars: Special Edition.