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Star Wars (1977)
Rate:
8
Viewed:
6/03, 5/17
5/17:
When I think of the most overrated movie of all time, Star Wars immediately comes to my mind.
Honestly, it's not that über special as the fans claim it to be. Most likely, they weren't intelligent enough to get
2001: A Space Odyssey which pretty much blows the doors off Star Wars
in all aspects and remains the game changer of the sci-fi genre that hasn't been equalled since then and won't ever be.
The work for 2001: A Space Odyssey began in 1963 and took five years to
complete. That's almost fifteen years before Star Wars came along. What I remember the most about the latter
is how clunky the graphics were compared to the former.
Since the advent of DVDs, George Lucas commissioned a clean-up job for Star Wars, and it looks a lot
better now, yet there are some awkward-looking images such as the white-halo light around several spacecrafts and the
Death Star as a miniature set. Even the gunplay looks poor.
Although the characters are iconic, they, with the exception of R2-D2, aren't interesting if I think about
them deeply. C-3PO and Han Solo are annoying. As simple as the characters are, the story is
even more basic. That's why Star Wars can be longer although the last thirty minutes is boring. One stupid
part is Ben Kenobi letting himself be killed so easily. The reason for the film's high replayability value is the
terminology to keep up with. It's hard to escape the trivia questions from time to time. Hence, you should make sure
to know the following stuff well:
Han Solo's spaceship is the Millennium Falcon. Luke Skywalker's guardians are Owen and Beru Lars. The planet
that was blown up is called Alderaan. The town where Luke and Ben Kenobi visited is Mos Eisley. The guys in the white
uniform are called Imperial Stormtroopers. Han shot Greedo first. Chewbacca is a Wookiee. Luke's spacecraft is an X-wing
fighter. The planet that Luke is from is Tatooine. Peter Cushing plays Tarkin. The crawl message at the beginning of the
film moves from south to north and begins with two sentences: "It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking
from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire."
All right, moving on. Now, this is maybe the biggest negative of Star Wars: the post-release changes. When a film
has been theatrically released and thus seen by everybody, they'll like to revisit the original as it was. I'm one of them.
Approximately 99% of films in cinema history have been left intact.
When a clean-up job is performed, it's usually to fix the image which is the reason why many films look
outstanding on DVD. That's the nice part about technology. But the bad news is the ability to go back
to add or delete stuff aka rewriting history. That's exactly what George Lucas did with
Star Wars and the following two sequels.
In all my history of watching films, I've never seen anything like this. It has to be the biggest crime ever committed. I
didn't pay any attention before or bother to learn why people hate George Lucas. After seeing the DVD version of
Star Wars with a bit of research afterwards, I can now understand why. Hence, he turned the franchise into a
huge cash cow.
When I began playing Star Wars, there were a few things that didn't look right: the new Lucasfilm logo, the
affixation of "Episode V A New Hope," and the fake-looking animals. I was suspicious but let them go, thinking
my memory was playing tricks on me. The moment I saw R2-D2 hidden behind the rocks, I was wondering: how did it fit
through them and who put the droid there? By the time Luke and Ben arrived at the cantina in Mos Eisley, that's when I
finally decided this wasn't the original movie I saw.
The first signal is the lame part between Han and Greedo which made it hard to make head or tails out of it. What did
happen? How could Greedo miss Han so blatantly? He was only three feet away. It turns out the whole thing was altered
not once but twice, hence the most infamous scene in the franchise's history: "Han Shot First." Originally, he was the
only one who shot and did it in cold blood.
The second signal, which was finally the moment that I just knew, is the included scene with Jabba the Hutt. I
yelled, "I KNOW THIS NEVER HAPPENED." Plus, he looks too 21st century which can't be possible. That's when I found
out the truth by stopping the film right there and getting on the internet. Well, I have to say that's incredible, and
shame on George Lucas for allowing this to happen.
All in all, revisions or not, Star Wars is among the most overrated films ever.