Film Review Lens - Star Wars A New Hope (1977)

Figure 1. Star Wars (1977)

The original Star Wars trilogy brought a whole new meaning to Si-Fi and special effects, it opened a new path in motion picture. Using miniatures, matte paintings and stop motion it brought the audiences imagination of colonising space to the screens. However, in 1997 alterations were made on the original trilogies in hopes to modernise them for the upcoming prequel to the series, small alterations such as enhancing colour and extending scenes. Around 2011, they became bigger alterations by adding CGI Characters, digitising matte paintings, replacing dialogue and even re-editing scenes. There had been so many minor and major alterations that the special effects from the original had been painted over.

Figure 2. Han Solo and Greedo

The changes didn't just affect how modern the movies were, it also affected it's tonality and narrative which upset a lot of the fans, Star Wars A New Hope received a lot of change and one notable change to fans was the scene between Han Solo and Greedo, the debate of which 'Who shot first' . In the 1977 Non-remastered it was made out to be that Han shot first, but in the 1997 alteration, Greedo shoots first and then Han Solo. It upset fans of the movie and in response Lucas explains why he made the change - "It’s a movie, just a movie. The controversy over who shot first, Greedo or Han Solo, in Episode IV, what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. - but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down" - (Lucas 2012)  Lucas made this change because he didn't want Han Solo to be made out to be a murderer, but fans had already adjusted to this part of his character, the fact that fans were fine with the original but Lucas was not goes to show that it was more of a personal choice.

Figure 3.

In terms of the benefits, the remastered refined the original Star Wars to modernise it in order for it to blend it with the prequel series and welcome newer audiences of the 2000's, but were the huge amount of changes necessary? CGI was revolutionary and it changed special effects forever but Star Wars managed to be massive with traditional special effects, did CGI need to improve anything? "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." (Ebert, 1999) As Ebert suggests, the Non-remastered did just fine without the improvements. The only benefit from re-mastering the original was making it modern for new audiences, sure the old practice was outdated but it didn't need to be covered up with CGI.

Bibliography:

Ebert, Roger - 1999 STAR WARS (SPECIAL EDITION) At: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-special-edition-1999 [Accessed: 23/09/2018]

Lucas, George - 2012  5 Questions With George Lucas: Controversial 'Star Wars' Changes, SOPA and 'Indiana Jones 5' At: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-lucas-star-wars-interview-288523 [Accessed: 23/09/2018]

Illustration:

Figure 1. Star Wars (1977) [Movie Poster]

Figure 2. Star Wars (1977) [Movie Still]

Figure 3. Star Wars (1977) & Star Wars A New Hope (2011) [Scree Stills]