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Awesome collection! And you're exactly right: the original "Star Wars" film did not anywhere--including...
...in the text scroll at the beginning of the film--mention the episode or subtitle. All of that was added after "Empire Strikes Back" was released.
...in the text scroll at the beginning of the film--mention the episode or subtitle. All of that was added after "Empire Strikes Back" was released.
Exactly. And I think it was still playing in some theaters over a year later (into 1978 - I remember some Jersey theater was still showing it
). I even stayed up to watch the Oscars the next year because it was nominated for something like 11 or 12 Academy Awards but only won for technical categories.
That has always bothered me too. When it was released I think I saw it 14 times. We really didn't have that much else to do as kids at the time on Friday and Saturday nights, so we might see it three times in a day just to hang out with friends and find little details in the film to make fun of or appreciate. It was a good time, and it only cost like $2 to get in. Going to the arcade was way more expensive and you had to stand up the whole time. But it was NEVER EVER called anything other than "Star Wars".
My theater had the $1 "matinee" so... heh.
I never actually understood why they felt the need to add the "Episode IV" BS to begin with--or include the idiotic edits that George Lucas added in later.
I can understand some of the edits like cleaning up many of the land speeder and ship scenes - especially since Battlestar Galactica (the original) came out the following year on ABC - "television" of all mediums, and actually had effects that exceeded Star Wars (but on the little screen), but that cost them $1 million per episode.
However all the other "additions" were unnecessary and I guess since a decision was made to eventually do a "prequel" and "sequel", then it had to be ordered somehow.
And it took almost 40 years to get to the last one of the nine (manly due to that big gap between "Return of the Jedi" and "Phantom Menace", the latter that I really looked forward to).
Also, I think there is one other huge tell that is still in the movie that--to your point--the whole series was made up after the fact of the original "Star Wars" script that always bothered me: when we are first introduced to Ben Kenobi and he is told by Luke that R2-D2, "claims to be the property of an Obi-Wan Kenobi," which clearly--through both the musical score and facial expression--is a shock to Ben Kenobi. He then goes on the say, "I don't seem to ever remember owning a droid. Very interesting."
This made perfect sense in the original movie since R2-D2 was sent by Princess Leia and there was no reason for him to be familiar with R2. But with the prequels as context that whole line of reasoning is left mute. And yes, people have bent themselves into all sorts of logical pretzels to explain this blatant lack of continuity, but it is very hard to support those claims based on the original film. The claim that all of this was already thought out beforehand just falls flat IMO. Lucas caught lightning in a bottle and ran with it--albeit in a bit of a sloppy way from the story standpoint IMO.
This made perfect sense in the original movie since R2-D2 was sent by Princess Leia and there was no reason for him to be familiar with R2. But with the prequels as context that whole line of reasoning is left mute. And yes, people have bent themselves into all sorts of logical pretzels to explain this blatant lack of continuity, but it is very hard to support those claims based on the original film. The claim that all of this was already thought out beforehand just falls flat IMO. Lucas caught lightning in a bottle and ran with it--albeit in a bit of a sloppy way from the story standpoint IMO.
Agree and will add this still head-scratching thing - to have ONE character, who had maybe 5 minutes total of screen time between 2 movies - "Boba Fett", and create a whole universe dedicated to him (including back-filling him into the "Clone Wars", based on a brief utterance by Obi Wan), cracks me up. I know a whole pile of the fandom love that character but come on!
There are plenty of other plot holes in the entire series, but that one is the one that tells me just how much of this story was made up on-the-fly.
I think the idea was to create opportunities for "spin-offs" and they have certainly done a pile of them (I did like "Rogue One" and the almost-scary "resurrection" of Peter Cushing's Tarkin - I guess AI would have no problem doing that now)!
I know a lot of people hate "Phantom Menace" (mostly because of Jar Jar Binks). But there were elements of it that captured my interest like that "elegant" double-light saber battle of Darth Maul. I remember having a measly 2400 baud modem and wanting to download what was a 25 Mb trailer of that movie (and it was a tiny version to boot). It took a week of trying and continually getting disconnected until one day, I had a clear 4 hour window and got it.
"Dual of the Fates" was my favorite scene (and score) of "Phantom Menace" -
The actor who played Darth Maul was trained in the martial arts and he helped to take that whole scene up a pile of notches from the standard light saber battles of the first 3 films.
Now I'm off to find my copy of that original score and throw it on the turntable. For all the money they spent on special effects, "Star Wars" would not be the film it was without the brilliant score by John Williams. It is worth listening to all by itself.
I was glad that Williams was still around to score all 9 of the films. As many films that he has scored, the Star Wars franchise has to be burned into him.
Enjoy! I know I wore my record(s) out.
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