![]() The obvious comparison is with Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" made almost 10 years earlier, in 1968, which also holds up perfectly well today. The improvements are well done, but they point up how well the effects were done to begin with: If the changes are not obvious, that's because “Star Wars'' got the look of the film so right in the first place. And the climactic battle scene against the Death Star has been rehabbed. (We learn that Jabba is not immobile, but sloshes along in a kind of spongy undulation.) There's also an improved look to the city of Mos Eisley (“a wretched hive of scum and villainy,'' says Obi-Wan Kenobi). ![]() There are about five minutes of new material, including a meeting between Han Solo and Jabba the Hut that was shot for the first version but not used. Most of the changes are subtle you'd need a side-by-side comparison to see that a new shot is a little better. Now Lucas has put ILM to work touching up the effects, including some that his limited 1977 budget left him unsatisfied with. His special effects were so advanced in 1977 that they spun off an industry, including his own Industrial Light & Magic Co., the computer wizards who do many of today's best special effects. With this “special edition'' of the “Star Wars'' trilogy (which includes new versions of " Return of the Jedi" and " The Empire Strikes Back"), Lucas has gone one step beyond. It was not by accident that George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell, an expert on the world's basic myths, in fashioning a screenplay that owes much to man's oldest stories.īy now the ritual of classic film revival is well established: An older classic is brought out from the studio vaults, restored frame by frame, re-released in the best theaters, and then re-launched on home video. How else to explain how much fun “Star Wars'' is, even for those who think they don't care for science fiction? It's a good-hearted film in every single frame, and shining through is the gift of a man who knew how to link state of the art technology with a deceptively simple, really very powerful, story. It's possible, however, that as we grow older we retain within the tastes of our earlier selves. It located Hollywood's center of gravity at the intellectual and emotional level of a bright teenager. In one way or another all the big studios have been trying to make another “Star Wars'' ever since (pictures like " Raiders of the Lost Ark," " Jurassic Park" and " Independence Day" are its heirs). But you can't blame it for what it did, you can only observe how well it did it. “Star Wars'' effectively brought to an end the golden era of early-1970s personal filmmaking and focused the industry on big-budget special-effects blockbusters, blasting off a trend we are still living through. “Star Wars'' melded a new generation of special effects with the high-energy action picture it linked space opera and soap opera, fairy tales and legend, and packaged them as a wild visual ride. “Citizen Kane'' married special effects, advanced sound, a new photographic style and a freedom from linear storytelling. “Birth of a Nation'' brought together the developing language of shots and editing. ![]() These films have little in common, except for the way they came along at a crucial moment in cinema history, when new methods were ripe for synthesis. Like "Birth of a Nation" and " Citizen Kane," “Star Wars'' was a technical watershed that influenced many of the movies that came after. Those who analyze its philosophy do so, I imagine, with a smile in their minds. It's as goofy as a children's tale, as shallow as an old Saturday afternoon serial, as corny as Kansas in August-and a masterpiece. George Lucas' space epic has colonized our imaginations, and it is hard to stand back and see it simply as a motion picture, because it has so completely become part of our memories. To see "Star Wars" again after 20 years is to revisit a place in the mind.
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