Okay, so it seems that the hot new fad sweeping the InterWebs is “sweded” movies, i.e., ultra-cheap homemade re-creations of well-known films using cardboard, tin foil, and household items as props and costumes. The inspiration behind this phenomenon is apparently a Jack Black comedy called Be Kind, Rewind (which hasn’t even been released yet) in which a couple of dim-bulb video-store owners accidentally erase their entire inventory of VHS cassettes and then start replacing those movies with their own half-assed reproductions. Which of course their customers love more than the originals, causing the two to be elevated into folk heroes or something.

Yeah, I know, it doesn’t sound very funny to me either, but I guess this is the sort of thing the kids are going for these days. And to think our parents didn’t get Yahoo Serious! Oh, wait… neither did I.

Anyhow, the aesthetic at work in these “sweded” flicks — the term comes from one Be Kind, Rewind character’s BS explanation that the replacement movies are the Swedish versions — seems to be “the cheesier, the better.” And oh, god, is this stuff cheesy. Not just cheesy, but cheez-ee. I’ve seen a lot of amateur movies in my time, and even been in a few, but these things strike a new low in sheer painfulness. There is, for example, a sweded version of Star Wars that consists of people wearing cardboard X-wings and TIE-fighter panels chasing each other around a lawn while somebody hums the theme music. I couldn’t even finish that one, it was so embarrassing. Click that link at your own peril.

I’ll be honest, I think the whole sweding thing is just plain dumb. But for every rule, of course, there are exceptions. The following video, sent to me by my buddy Chenopup, is so audacious, so ambitious, so well-done, that I simply couldn’t help but sit in awe as it played for the first time. It’s the lightcycle scene from Tron, completely redone in cardboard, Saran Wrap, and stop-motion animation… and it is frakkin’ awesome:

Just for reference, here’s the original scene:

I’m amazed at how close the sweders got their version to the original… of course, now I want to go watch the real Tron again. Look, it’s The Dude in a funny hat!