After playing second fiddle to certain pretentious coastal cities for far too long, a little town called Chicago, Illinois, is finally getting a reason to be put on the map. Well, other than its famous style of thick pizza, its countless terrible sports teams, its one awesome sports team, Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, its wacky history of rampant corruption, a certain beloved pop-culture news and reviews website, and Jim Belushi, of course.
Anyway, after beating out other famous places that already have cool stuff, Chicago is getting a George Lucas museum. As reported by Yahoo News, Chicago offered Lucas a patch of land along Lake Michigan that is near The Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium. This will put it right in the middle of what we’re calling Chicago’s Famous Nerd District, which is also home to The Art Institute and Soldier Field. We don’t actually know much about what the Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art will contain—and yes, that’s the real name—but we know it involves Lucas’ extensive art collection as well as various movie-related souvenirs he has picked up over the years. It doesn’t matter, though, because George Lucas created Star Wars, and that means the museum is pretty much guaranteed to include some sweet, sweet Star Wars crap. Darth Vader’s mask? Luke’s lightsaber? Jar Jar’s ears? We can’t wait to ooh and aah over Jar Jar’s ears.
Some Chicagoans aren’t too happy about the news, though. The Chicago Reader quickly put together a list of five reasons why the city shouldn’t necessarily want Lucas’ museum, and some of its points are pretty solid. For one, Chicago wasn’t Lucas’ first choice. He supposedly only picked it because San Francisco wouldn’t give him the location he wanted. Also, it says that putting Lucas’ name on the thing is the “museum equivalent of Trump Tower,” and that it might not be “a worthy peer to the world-class institutions that would be its siblings.”
Those are solid arguments, but they all seem to stem from a traditional Chicagoan blue-collar tough-guy attitude. “We don’t need yer fancy-pants Hollywood museum,” they say. “We just want mustard and relish on our hot dogs!” But Chicago loves winners—most of the time—so if the city starts looking at it as a victory over San Francisco and not another dumb museum, we think people will get on board.