Star Wars (1977)

Cafe Society
41

In actually don’t have much of a problem with Jabba, since that scene was originally planned to be included in the movie but was cut when they trimmed it down to two hours (more or less).

It was filmed with a tubby Irish actor standing in for Jabba (at least his accent was Irish), and I guess they had planned to superimpose a leaner, more mobile Hut over him. I’ve seen the preliminary sketches for this, but I don’t know if they ever progressed to full-scale animation.

I do think dropping the scene moved the story along quite a bit, though. And it’s a lot funnier when Han says “If you don’t mind hurrying, we’re a little pressed for time,” since it now sounds as though he’s running both because he owes Jabba money and because he’s just wasted Greedo.

If he’d just come from a “friendly li’l chat wit’ Jabba,” the effect would be completely different.

42

It wasn’t just that.

Off the top of my head, for the 1980 rerelease for the Empire tie-in, the Movie Once Known As Star Wars had these other changes:

Removal of the stormtrooper, who is chasing Solo, radioing “Close the blast doors! Close the blast doors!”. This is a set up for the punchline when, 30 seconds later as Solo escapes through the now-closed blast doors, the trooper repeats in the same tone “Open the blast doors! open the blast doors!” They took out the setup for the humor. I think it is back now, but it should never have been removed in the first place. I caught this without being told the first time I watched SW EIV:ANH

I can’t prove this one, but it seems a lot of the transitions between scenes were changed from cuts to wipes. I figured this was to create directorial continuity between the two movies. Most notably, I remember a hard cut at the end of the throne room scene to “Directed by George Lucas”. Having that become a wipe changes the dramatic impact of it being “the end”. It’s a subtle difference, but I feel an important one.

I think there were more, but it has been so long the memories are fading, and the new order is erasing the truth. Soon any memories of the original, unmolested version, will be lost in time, like tears in the rain.

43

I don’t actually hate the “Episode IV” change that much, in truth, except the reminder of Lucas’s infernal, misguided tinkering, and that the “prequals” are moist, slightly warm poo.

I hated the inserted Jabba scene into Star Wars. One, for the most part, it pointlessly retreads the conversation with Greedo. The new conversation adds nothing of interest. Two, the insertion was one of the most fake-looking in the entire, vandalized version; it’s horrible, especially since it looks like Han walks literally through Jabba’s tail. Three, it spoils Jabba’s big reveal in Return of the Jedi. I always thought his off-screen menace until that point was great. Four, it upsets the urgency for Han and Chewie in getting the heck off of Tatooine themselves, before more of Jabba’s thugs show up. The whole pacing of leaving the cantina through to the Millennium Falcon blasting out of Mos Eisley space port is disturbed. The tighter pacing of the original is better, dramatically speaking. Five, Jabba outside of his lavish throne room, swollen with riches and surrounded by minions, just isn’t that compelling. Again, the off-screen menace is better drama, until the big reveal. A thinner, smaller slug out and about? Meh.

44

Which is what I ended up saying, except that what you call “the original” was in fact the trimmed-down version. The cut was made to shorten the film, and actually made it better.

45

Right before I went to see The Force Awakens.

Hayden Christensen was [del]better[/del] less bad than I’d remembered.

46

It was the original theatrical release. That’s all I have been talking about.

47

It was the original theatrical release. That’s all I have been talking about. The only version released with footage involving Jabba was in Lucas’s 1997 CGI-smeared wankfest.

48

The original version had the scene, but it was cut before it was released. I know because I’ve seen the omitted footage that was filmed with a live actor.

49

Yup. I have, too. It was cut from the movie before release, but I saw it subsequently on some “Making of…” TV special or other.

50

No, the original version did not have that scene in it. The scene was filmed, but was never completed* or included in any final edit sent to the studio. It was not included in any print sent to any theater when the film premiered. It was not part of the original version, it was a scene that was filmed but cut before the final edit was made. Virtually every movie ever made has similar scenes that never made it off the editing table. Describing those films as not the “original version” because not every inch of film that was shot ended up in screen makes the concept of an “original version” incoherent. By that definition, none of us have ever seen the “original version” of any film, ever.

*Lucas claims he wanted to matte in a creature over the portly Irish guy, but Lucas’s claims aren’t super reliable in that department. But certainly the scene was never scored, and I suspect the audio would have gotten a final clean up and re-record to cover the rough spots. It’s very clearly not a finished scene.

51

Because it’s STAR WARS. not “Star Wars I think I left the water running in the tub and I really should call the landlord”.

Can you imagine adding something to the titles of:

Gone with the Wind
The Wizard of OZ
To Kill a Mockingbird
Alien

Those of us lucky enough to have seen the original in 1977 in a full size theater were treated to something special. Every follow-on was a disappointment for a variety of reasons.

There hasn’t been anything like it since that can compare to it when you factor in the time frame.

The closest thing I can think of was Forbidden Planet but that was before I was born. I suspect that was quite a movie in 1956. The Wizard of Oz was probably pretty spectacular when it came out.

52

As I indicated, I don’t know how far they progressed with it before it ended up on the cutting room floor. But it was filmed and planned to be included originally. To my mind (if not yours) this makes it a part of the original film, albeit one that was never shown theatrically.

Scenes that showed Luke tending the moisture condensers and meeting with his friends were also filmed and ultimately cut. This was a real pity because it would have made sense out of “Biggs was right. I’m never getting out of here!”

53

Again, I’ve seen the rough animation they intended to matte in, so it got as far as the experimental stage.

54

In terms of pop culture phenomena, the only thing I can compare it to was when Batman debuted on ABC in January 1966. For the next six months or so, America went Bat-mad!

Sadly, it all went downhill after that. :frowning:

55

My problem with the Machete order is personally I think Episode III glides perfectly into Star Wars so for me I either watch it last (to symbolically go full circle) or I watch it right before Star Wars, if I’m binge watching (which more often than not these days is watching one a day in a row, so not technically a binge).

56

Personally, I don’t actually mind the “Episode IV: A New Hope” so much per se… For me, it’s more of a brown M&M. If someone’s showing the “original version”, then they might mean the original, or they might mean “the Special Edition as it appeared on DVD, before the changes made for Blu-Ray”, or some trash like that. If there’s no “A New Hope”, though, then I know they really mean the real original.

57

Yeah, Lucas didn’t know that Vader was Luke’s father until the second draft of Empire. We have the actual first draft, where he was not his father. And we have talk about how Anakin and Darth were separate people

What he means about having a story already worked out is that he had a kind of rough outline from then on, with the idea that there had to be prequels that would cover how Anakin became Vader. It was not a finished story. And there were still changes made along the way.

For example, the “other” did not mean Leia at first, but was a set up for the sequel series that was supposed to follow.

It’s all in The Secret History of Star Wars, as I’ve posted many times before. I have the earlier released free version, but I don’t know the legalities of linking it. It’s not hard to find if you Google for it. But, honestly, he deserves to be paid. Get the Kindle version.

Here’s an archive of the old website, which has some extras. Makes me sad that the website is down.

58

Not in the DVD sets, but yes on DVD. When they rereleased the movies on DVD as single movie releases (after previously being only available as a three movie set) they included with each movie the special edition DVD, same as in the set, and also each movie had a 2nd disc which included the original editions using the sources from the laserdisc release of the THX remastered (but not special) editions. The Star Wars DVD did have the episode and subtitle removed, for greater authenticity.

Problem is, these releases weren’t anamorphic, so if you play them on a 16:9 tv, as most people would today, you get black borders around the entire picture. Your tv or player has a zoom function? Great, but the subtitles when aliens speak go below the picture into the bottom black border. If your tv lets you move the image when zoomed, you might be able to move it up high enough to eliminate that problem (my Samsung seems to do this okay) but it’s still not a great option.

59

All the stories about the people who made and are still making the Star Wars “thing” have become more fascinating to me than the movies and stories themselves.

I’m another who saw the original 1977 film in the theater, several times, right when it came out. It was tremendously exciting on a number of different levels, for me. It was the first really positive movie in a very long time (the early 1970’s were all about depressing the audience), it was a throwback to the movies I grew up enthralled by on TV (Robin Hood, Zorro, etc), and at the same time, it was the greatest advance in science fiction special effects ever. 2001: a Space Odyssey, looked pedestrian by comparison.

I thought Empire was tremendous. Better than the first film, because it DID go into the backstories much more, and was better thought out as well (there were scenes in the first film that I winced at, even during the very first watch). Return was an overall disappointment.

I actually chanced to read about Star Wars even before it had the name, when I stumbled across a pictorial article in the now defunct Life Magazine, which showed that “this very interesting new director in California” was making a movie about Space and the Future, where everything was gritty and well-lived in, instead of being all flashing lights, shiny chrome, and silly pointy-shoulder, reflective costumes. I even read the novelization before I saw the film the first time.

In a way, I think Star Wars was the Beatles phenomenon of the late 1970’s. People went nuts over it, running off in every different imaginative direction, establishing a wide variety of loyalties, some to the characters, some to the stories, and some to the Director and Writer (Lucas). It represented a lot more than just a fun movie experience/carnival ride to a lot of people. And we can still see all that today, with the various vehement people here, taking different sides. Even the ones who have sullenly declared that they are disappointed and permanently DONE with it, show the signs of one-time intense fandom.

I was only just able to afford to get the Blu Ray, six-film release of the latest Lucas rework of everything, and over the weekend, I watched the original trilogy with the director/sound person/Carrie Fisher commentary turned ON. It was very interesting. I had developed a pretty strong negative opinion of Lucas over the last few years, having read dribs and drops of rumors about how and why he had done all the little things he’d done to the films.

The commentary included with this release, revealed a side of the story of the MAKING of the films, that I hadn’t properly appreciated before. It presented a story of a man with a fairly vague vision (Lucas) who wanted to do several things at once with Star Wars, including recreating some of his own childhood thrills (1940’s style Saturday Matinee Serials) , while telling a big story based on classic philosophical and mythical themes. With Japanese hairstyles tossed in.

What was really made clear to me, was how the structure of the movie industry itself, as well as the existing limits of movie-making technology, and Lucas’ own movie making experiences to date, all came together to produce both the parts everyone loves, AND the parts that many of us regret. Particularly the plot rewrites, many of them which occurred because Lucas wasn’t as tied to the DETAILS of the drama, as much as he was to the Big Picture of it all, and because it was far more important to Lucas to GET THE MOVIE MADE AND RELEASED, than it was to hold tight to whatever his “vision” of the time actually was.

Hence his going back and redoing things later, when he DID have the money and resources to be able to do it.

Imagine that the Beatles, or whoever your own favorite music group was, lasted for decades, and were able later to remaster their own original material, and present it the way they wanted to at the time. John Lennon wanted one of his songs to be backed by a huge chorus of Buddhist monks, chanting, but that wasn’t possible at the time, so it was released instead with an unusual and very creative pastiche of tape-loops of various kinds, all mixed together and played in reverse. Fans hearing a “corrected” version of the song decades later, would end up splitting between the ones who insisted that only the original was artistically “pure,” those who thought “the artists original intent should override what I am familiar and comfortable with,” and so on, just as we see here with Star Wars.

60

It’s a technicality, but distinguishing between “original version” and stuff that never actually made it into the movie is kind of an important one. When you say “version” that is taken to mean a version of the movie that was actually presented to viewers at some point. It usually means the initial release of the film, though more rarely it could mean a pre-screening of the fllm to test audiences that goes poorly. The first genuine version of “Star Wars” is the one released in May of 1977 that drove people bananas.

As has been pointed out, basically every major motion picture has a huge amount of footage, including entire scenes, that never make any “version” of the film. In most cases the scenes aren’t ever even physically part of a playable version of the movie.

As to whether the deleted scenes in Star Wars would have added to the movie, here’s a good rule of thumb:

If a scene was deleted, it should have been.

The editing process is immensely important. Even if you think the scene is kind of cool, movies become slow. “Star Wars” was already a long enough movie; the original is two hours and one minute, which is plenty long enough for a family oriented film, and the movie is slowly paced in the first half hour. Adding more expository stuff in that first act would make it unbearably slow When you start pushing past that, the audience will feel it.

If you get a bunch of director’s cuts with deleted scenes and honestly examine them I think you’ll find that 96% of the time, the parts that were cut were wisely cut. There are very few exceptions, and in fact I can think of maybe one; cutting the scene in “The Fellowship of the Ring” where Galadriel gives the Fellowship the various gifts was a poor decision, because it would have explained where Frodo and Sam get the magical camouflaging cloak. And that’s basically it.

To see a professional talk about it, get a DVD version of "Pulp Fiction with the deleted scenes; Quentin Tarantino explains the scenes, and he explains why he cut them. In every case he explains, in his funny and manic way, basically the same thing; “I love this scene and the actors did a great job, but we had to cut it to keep the story moving.” n one case he entirely cut a scene with Dick Miller, thereby eliminating Miller fro the movie entirely (Miller plays Monster Joe, the guy who accepts the car and the body in it from Winston Wolf.) Tarantino obviously feels bad about leaving Miller out of the movie… but he was right to do so. The scene serves no purpose and delays the story of Jules and Vincent getting from there to the breakfast joint.