Subject: REVIEW: STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE (SPECIAL EDITION) (1997)

From: [email-masked] (James W. Otis)
Date: 7 Feb 1997 21:45:28 GMT

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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