About a million people sent me this trailer for a ’50s-style Empire Strikes Back, because it is that awesome. Youtube user Whoiseyevan used dozens of sci-fi movies from the ’40s and ’50s — and even a few lines from the ESB radio drama — to make this astounding video. The level of detail is what kills me; I mean, finding clips of two dudes in a Snowspeeder-like spaceship must have been difficult, but this guy found clips where the dudes are wearing helmets that look eerily like the Rebel pilot helmets of Star Wars, and that’s only one of many things that are uncannily accurate.
Robert Bricken is one of the original co-founders of the site formerly known as Topless Robot, and its first editor-in-chief, serving from 2008-12. He brought the site to prominence with “nerd news, humor and self-loathing” as its motto, raising it from total internet obscurity to a readership in the millions, with help from his savage “FAQ” movie reviews and Fan Fiction Fridays. Under his tenure Topless Robot was covered by Gawker, Wired, Defamer, New York magazine, ABC News, and others, and his articles have been praised by Roger Ebert, Avengers actor Clark Gregg, comedian and The Daily Show correspondent John Hodgman, the stars of Mystery Science Theater 3000 and Rifftrax, and others. He is currently the managing editor of io9.com. Despite decades as both an amateur and professional nerd, he continues to be completely unprepared for either the zombie apocalypse or the robot uprising.