Winner: Mr. Star Wars 2011
This past weekend at Dragon*con in Atlanta, Georgia, Star Wars fans from all over competed for the coveted title of Mr. Star Wars. I wrote about the contest last year as a guest writer for Big Shiny Robot! and the 2010 winner returned as a judge this year. He gave a small speech as the returning champion:
The blue spandex-wearing character remains a crowd favorite, but now that he’s won and passed on his title to Mr. Star Wars 2011, it is doubtful he will return. Sad though that is, this year’s contest did not disappoint, and though the format remained largely the same, the challenges to the contestants varied a bit from previous years.
First, they were asked to perform their best Wookiee mating growl. Their impressions varied, but they were all pretty bad. One even threw in “Boom Boom Pow” from the Black-Eyed Peas amongst the Wookiee sounds. The audience laughed uproariously at each contestant, so even though the growls were mostly pathetic, they were at least entertaining.
Next they were asked to pretend to be the Star Wars characters voicing GPS systems. The first person said, “Please turn right.” Then, he became very excited and continued with, “It’s a trap! Go back! Pull out!” I love Admiral Ackbar, so I began to root for him, but the next guy was even better:
The next few impressions included a pretty decent Yoda, a very scared Threepio, and a really bad Jar Jar Binks. This was my favorite portion of the contest, but that may be because I do my own bad imitation of my Yoda GPS: “Left turn you will take here. Reached your destination, you have.” Yoda keeps me company anytime I take a long trip.
The Pants Game came next, and the examples provided were: “Strong in the pants you are” and “Look at the size of those pants!” for those unfamiliar with the game. The goal is to replace a word in a Star Wars quote with the word pants. The responses included:
“Wow, you came in those pants? You’re braver than I am!” (Interpret that as you will).
“Governor Tarkin, I thought I recognized your foul pants when I stepped on board.”
“Our pants can’t repel firepower of that magnitude!” (Again, Ackbar, so I would have given him lots of points).
“You have a job to do! What would Padme do if she were in your pants?” (This was the crowd favorite).
“Down the pants chute, flyboy!”
The game Freeze Frame wasn’t nearly as entertaining as it has been in the past, but it involved the participants acting out scenes from the movies. Sort of. And then they were asked to freeze, and two contestants switched places and picked the scene up from there.
While the judges tallied the scores, the Ladies Strike Back portion of the contest took place, and five female fans went up on stage to entertain the audience. The crowd favorite was a woman dressed as Han Solo, and she played her role as a smuggler for all it was worth.
For the Star Wars version of Where do babies come from? she responded with: “Normally, Mommy and Daddy play smuggler . . . but with you, it’s like a million voices cried out at once.” (They were asked to be Shmi and explain to Anakin how he was conceived). The crowd’s response easily decided that she was the winner, and she ran down the aisle and high-fived the audience as her prize.
And then . . . the moment of truth. Time to decide the winner of Mr. Star Wars 2011. The lucky guy was Collin Turner, an eighteen year old college student from Kansas. Upon hearing that he won, he said, “I’d like to thank the Academy, but not the Jedi Academy.” The audience groaned at that.
I had the opportunity to speak with Collin briefly at the conclusion of the contest. When asked how it felt to win Mr. Star Wars, he replied with, “It’s like a beauty pageant but it doesn’t matter nearly as much.”
It remains to be seen if the title of Mr. Star Wars will benefit him any in the next year, but hopefully I’ll have the opportunity to follow up with him in 2012.
And so one of the more popular events in the Star Wars track ended . . . with thunderous applause.