STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE (SPECIAL EDITION)
A film review by James W. Otis
Copyright 1997 James W. Otis
Statesman Features Writer ****1/2 (out of *****)
It's been 20 years since Star Wars premiered. What started as a low- budget Sci-Fi movie turned into a cultural icon for two generations. Now the movie back where it was intended to be, on the big screen.
What makes the re-release of Star Wars impressive isn't the fact that only a handful of movies have ever seen a big screen more than once. Instead, it's the major and minor changes that have been made to the film.
When Star Wars opened on May 25, 1977, it had been made with a budget of only $10 million, of which only $2 million had been set aside for the film's special effects. Even when the film opened 20 years ago, writer/ director George Lucas spoke of how he felt the film wasn't where he had hoped it would be in regards to the special effects. Twenty years later, Lucas finally has the technology to accomplish that wish.
With a budget of $10 million, Lucas has given his team at Industrial Lights & Magic (ILM) the charge to go back and create Star Wars: Special Edition. A long list of improvements was made.
The first improvement was the original. After 20 years, the original was in surprisingly bad shape, and a crew of technicians reportedly spent months cleaning each cell painstakingly by hand with a small sponge. The end result are colors that are more vivid and true to the original.
Next came the improvement to the sound of the film. When Star Wars first came out, there were just two options for sound, stereo and mono. Now there are such techniques as THX, Dolby Surround Sound and DTS. The digital enhancements made to the sound are reported to have made the film the best sounding that it has ever been.
Most of the attention for the film's changes have been in the special effects area. Only four and one-half minutes of footage has been changed, small things such as two more aliens being introduced at the cantina in Mos Eisley Spaceport and a new exterior shot of Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi's home. But what has drawn most of the attention(and controversy) are three major sequences in the film.
The first is Mos Eisley spaceport. As the character Ben Kenobi says in the movie, "You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." In the original version, Mos Eisley looked like nothing more than a small town filmed in the desert (Arizona to be exact), not the "wretched hive of scum and villainy" that we were warned of. The Special Edition takes care of that. Computer-generated images (CGI) of various animals, robots and space craft have been added. These were made in addition to completely new scenes of Luke Skywalker flying around on his hover car that were created entirely within the computer.
Next is Jabba the Hutt. In the original script, the character Han Solo was supposed to have a meeting with Jabba to discuss the money that Solo owed Jabba. The original film never had this scene because the technology wasn't available. Creating a smaller Jabba (roughly half the size of Jabba seen in Return of the Jedi) through CGI, Solo is now seen interacting with the huge gangster-like slug. This scene has caused quite a bit of controversy among fans of the original film. Most claim that in the scene, Jabba appears as nothing more than a half-sized gangster wannabe. Despite these claims, Lucas maintains that the scene adds to, instead of detracts from the Trilogy's presence.
The last major change made to the film comes in the dogfight finale. The fighters, which swoop and dodge around, create more of a theme-ride feel to the movie. The picture has also been cleaned up, removing matte lines and motion blurs. The end result is a dog fight that feels more like combat in space than ever before.
When Star Wars first came out there were many doubts as to how well the picture would perform. This is evident in the mere 32 screens that first premiered the film. Now, 20 years later, those concerns are brought up again. Many Hollywood executives question whether or not the new Special Edition will be successful. They feel that since most audience members have already seen the film and own the videos, that no one will be interested in seeing it again.
However, the $36.2 million that the film made opening weekend is proof enough that Star Wars' popularity has reached a status of cultural icon.
It has been almost 15 years since the last film in the Trilogy (Star Wars, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi) was made. With the last two movies being released later this year, Empire Strikes Back on February 21 and Return of the Jedi on March 7, many have asked the question, "What's next?"
The answer will come at the close of the century when Lucas debuts the first of three "prequels" in 1999. The movies will follow the fall of Darth Vader to the "dark side of the force." The audience will be given new pieces to the puzzle that Lucas has created. The third "prequel" will finish at about the beginning of the film that started it all, Star Wars.
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