Resist The Dark Side

A 120-page stack of paper lies dormant on the shelves of Paul Ens' office. Strangely, he has yet to pick it up and read it, but that doesn't mean he hasn't been tempted. For this is no shabby script from a talentless hack, what lies on the shelf of Ens' workplace is the almost-final draft of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Ens is a web programmer and designer who contributes to dedicated Star Wars site, TheForce.net - which has been following the prequel developments religiously since the very beginning - reading the script, he says, would spoil his enjoyment of the film when it finally reaches US cinemas on May 19. "I've had it for about three weeks. It's sitting here on the shelf, and every day I think about opening it up, and every day I decide not to read it." Unlike the exploits of another fellow contributor of TheForce.net, Brian Linder, a network administrator who gave into the Dark Side and read the entire script when it landed on his desk in South Carolina. "I did read it. It was the Holy Grail, and I had been chasing it for a while," he said. "It reads like a sweeping epic, with high drama, intense action and a touch of sincere humour." There are of course thousands of sites dedicated to Star Wars, but TheForce.net is arguably the most comprehensive. The site was conceived in 1996 when founders Scott Chitwood and Darin Smith were room mates at Texas A&M University. The site is run by a total of 13 dedicated contributors in all.