ALL SCI-FI

[Bud Brewster]

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Enjoy this fine Starlog article about Star Wars: A New Hope from the year the movie was mnade — and before it had actually be released!

Click on each page here to see a large, easy-to-read version you can zoom in on. Click on the large version again for the maximum size!




















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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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This is a terrific article about this legendary movie! At no point did I feel like I was just reading info I already knew. Author David Houston did a fine job.

The author's statements about how the robots were done in the movie seems to be inaccurate. He claims that the robots in Star Wars are NOT men in robot suits, other than “one which appears for about three minutes of screen time.” Some of the robots, he says, "are animated by “various trick photographic means, but a number of them are real robots with internal motors and radio controls.”

The source of David Houston’s information on this subject is his interviews with Charlie Lippincott, a classmate of Lucas at USC who eventually worked closely with Lucas on the film. I suspect Mr. Houston may have just misunderstood the explanation for how the robots were done, and Lippincott may have also exaggerated the number of radio controlled robots that made up the total “doid” population.

However, the article reveals that George Lucas originally planned to have the robots be (in many ways) real, and spent considerable time and money researching the possibilities. Sadly, he was informed that the technology in 1977 just wasn't able to do what he wanted.

Another interesting fact the article reveals is that Lucas initially wanted the film to have a “documentary look”. But cinematographer Gil Taylor persuaded Lucas at to abandon that idea.

The cantina scene was the source of considerable difficulties for the crew because famed makeup man Stuart Freeman was hospitalized for a serious illness after only finishing one alien for the film — Chewbacca. The crew did their best to create aliens and get the scene shot, but Lucas wasn’t happy with it, and after principal photography was completed he had new aliens created, photographed, and edited into the scene.

All in all, this is great article — which is surprising in view of the fact that it was written before the film’s release, and countless articles have been done since then about Star Wars. I was impressed by the fact that it contained so much I didn’t know after all these years!
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

My oldest son gave me the Darth Vader prop accurate mask for Fathers Day.



What an awesome mask! When you press the hidden button on the side the mask makes the breathing sounds from the movie and your voice is changed to a Vader timber.











The mask is absolutely accurate from the inside out!

Really great gift!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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What a wonderfully appropriate gift for Father's Day. Let me guess. You put on the mask, pressed the button, and spoke in the Vader voice as you said haltingly —

"Your mother never told you the truth about your father. Luke . . . I am NOT your father!" *



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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Gord Green]

Close Bud!

I said "Chris....I AM your father!"

And.....he knows he'll inherit all my goodies eventually!
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There comes a time, thief, when gold loses its lustre, and the gems cease to sparkle, and the throne room becomes a prison; and all that is left is a father's love for his child.

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's a sweet piece of nostalgia for Star Wars fans who saw it when it was first release, the original 1977 trailer. I wish the picture quality was better, but it sure brings back memories.
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__________ Star Wars A New Hope 1977 Trailer


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And if that puts you in a Star Wars mood, enjoy these three excellent one-hour documentaries with plenty of behind-the-scenes footage, most of which has surprisingly good picture quality.

I'm not sure that these are actually three separate documentaries. The first one might be the same as one of the other two (or portions of both). I've downloaded all three so I can watch them on my TV instead of my laptop.

After watching just twenty minutes of the first one below, I had learned more about the production of Star Wars than from any previous documentary during the last 40 years.
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Behind the Scenes of Star Wars: The Original Trilogy ILM Special Effects Makers


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__ Making of Star Wars Original Trilogy Part 1 Of 2


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__ Making of Star Wars Original Trilogy Part 2 Of 2


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bud Brewster]

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Folks, you’re are going to LOVE these documentaries!

First of all, the picture quality of the Youtube downloads rivals Blu-ray, and the audio is rich, beautiful stereo.





The framing backgrounds around the video image changes periodically, and they're absolutely gorgeous. Rather than detract by causing the video images to be somewhat smaller, I realized that it made the documentary even more visually appealing!





The abundant pieces of production art displayed during the videos (by Ralph McQuarry, Sid Mead, and the production designers themselves), is breathtaking! There were many pieces I had never seen before, and the even the ones I had seen were as sharp and colorful as any examples I've ever seen.

If I'd made screen shots of all the artwork I was most impressed by, it would have taken me hours!









The documentary consists of 90-second segments which present the various interviews with people like Stan Winston, Lorne Peterson, and even George Lucas himself (in new interviews, not old ones), cutting back and forth between these entertaining people and shots from the movies or preproduction artwork or behind-the-scenes footage in glorious HD.

There seems to be almost NO grainy "home videos" or old 16mm footage in these documentaries! The clarity of the footage surprised me. It looks much better than most of the BTS footage I've seen from other Star Wars documentaries.





The first documentary of the three I posted above (the one I'm watching right now), shows us the design evolution of the starships, from the Millennium Falcon to the Super Star Destroyer. We get to see the production design teams work diligently to figure out which of the proposed designs to use, and then to create the models needed for the finished film.





Seeing the ones they had to reject was a bittersweet experience, but watching the evolution of the designs we've come to know and love was pure joy!

At the halfway point in the first video above, the documentary examines the Ralph Bakshee cartoon which we first saw in the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special. And it presents the entire cartoon in HD!

Watching it on the documentary made me realize that it's part of the reason I have a certain guilty-pleasure fondness for this TV special.





I must confess that 2-D cell animation doesn't hold the same appeal for me now as it did before CGI showed me that cartoons could be presented with movements as smooth as reality. Back in the 1980s my kids and I were huge fans of the Saturday morning show Reboot, and the advancement of CGI as an animated art form has now made old style cartoons look much less appealing to me.

For the record, I'm still a fan of stop motion like the work of Ray Harryhausen. His work and that of others who have mastered that amazing technique still have a special place in my heart.

Guys, I strongly recommend you watch these documentaries. And if you're able to do so, watch a download on yout TV to get the full effect of the great picture.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[ralfy]

I think the absence of media saturation through tech like the Internet plus the waiting time between the first and subsequent movies made them more enjoyable. Too bad about the stilted dialogue, though. I'm reminded of what Guinness said about it.

[Bud Brewster]

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My goodness, Sir Alec's comments in the video indicates that he had a very low opinion of Star Wars, and apparent of fantasy adventure in general! I was saddened by his story of how he told a little boy who adored Star Wars (and had seen it many times) to never watch it again!

Sir Alec wasn't just criticizing the young boy for watching the movie so often, he was concerned that it would stunt his intellectual growth. To quote Sir Alec, "I just hope that the young man, now in this thirties, is not living in a fantasy world of second-hand childish banalities."

Wow . . .

His highly critical remarks demonstrate that he had no appreciation for the benefits of fiction which can stimulate young minds by encouraging them to use their imaginations and have big dreams for the own lives.

Movies like Star Wars don't hold young people back, they propel them forward.

I wonder what kind of childhood Sir Alec had.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Eadie]

TWO interesting thoughts on the STAR WARS universe.

1) Just what kind of a freighter is the YT-1300 Millennium Falcon (a modified YT-1300 Corellian light freighter)?

Designed by the Corellian Engineering Corporation, the highly modified YT-1300 is durable, modular concept. Just how modular:



So it would look like this:



2) The STAR WARS universe is very power consumptive. How much so? Study this chart from Atomic Rockets (Sorry about the length — Eadie.):



This makes sense to me. How about the All Sci-Fi[ members?
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Art Should Comfort the Disturbed and Disturb the Comfortable.

[Bud Brewster]

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Hey, pretty cool, Eadie-wan!

It took me a while to read it all, and the battery ran out on my laptop! I tried to recharge it with my light saber, but it went up in smoke!

Guess I'll just recharge it the regular way from now on.
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Krel]

Bud, back when "Star Wars" first came out, Alec Guinness talked about he thought the movie was complete drivel, and only did it for the money. Mark Hamill also reported that Alec Guinness slapped him in the face, for using the title "Sir Alec". He did not want to be addressed as "Sir Alec", just Alec.

It has been pointed out for years that the Star Wars universe has a ridiculously high energy generation capacity. They have bot energy and kinetic force fields that shield not only space vessels, but also planetary bases. They have levitating vehicles (probably either anti-grav, or electromagnetic) that just float there when not in use. That's a lot energy surplus. It is also very likely that they have very efficient energy management systems too.

But their power generation capability is just mind boggling.

David.

[Bud Brewster]

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Not to worry, folks! The Star Wars technology runs on the unlimited power of . . . imagination, the true Force of the universe!

Thank God there's an unlimited supply in each and every one of us! (Now, get off your butts and post something, you guys! This message board ain't gonna write it's own stuff, you know! )
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)

[Bogmeister]

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A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away . . .

After the opening scrawl which explains a few details of where the film will place us, the opening shot places the audience on notice — this was the new realm of cinema science fiction, a vast expanse filled which vast ships which filled the screen with spectacle never before seen in this genre of film.

Though now known as "Episode IV - A New Hope," this will always be for many fans, namely those who first saw this exhilarating entertainment in theaters back in '77, the first "Star Wars." Such viewers of the original version in 1977 will always think of it as just "Star Wars" — plain & simple, no pretensions, no aspirations to deep film-making or high art, no thought to the later sequels or prequels which changed the way we looked upon this first film in an enormous saga (only now gaining new films to the saga, yet again — chapter 7 is due in 2015).

This is where we first met them all: Luke, Han Solo, Princess Leia, Obi-Wan Kenobi (old 'Ben'), the tall hairy Chewbacca, the 2 robots C3PO & R2D2 and, of course, Darth Vader. They were instant pop culture icons; you got the sense you'd seen them before somewhere, but were sure this wasn't possible. But they'd been there before in our minds.

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We'd read about them constantly in science fiction novels and short stories — tales of outer space civilizations, of spaceships zooming through asteroid belts, of exotic-looking aliens hanging around space ports. We'd dream about them at night and try to imagine ourselves in their midst; up until then, we could only imagine such things — there were no projected images to realize such dreams.

Oh, there were the classic comic books, like Weird Science-Fantasy from EC, and in film, Forbidden Planet from 1956 came close, and then there were the Star Trek and Lost in Space shows on TV, both hampered by dime store budgets and cheesy sets (Star Trek was better, of course). We ate 'em up since there was nothing else.

Then Lucas made it real.

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I remember when I first got wind of the upcoming movie, to open in May of 1977, I think. I saw the first publicized poster and bought the novel adaptation. On the poster, a young man stood with some light sword raised, a princess at his feet, numerous spaceships flying all over the place.

I was in my mid-teens and felt the first pulse of building excitement as I realized all those fantastic tales I'd been reading the past few years were going to come alive on the big screen for me.

It didn't disappoint.

Luke Skywalker, who stood in for all the boys pretending to be on a galactic adventure, gets swept away from his mundane desert home smack dab into the middle of an honest-to-gosh galaxy-wide civil war!

The strength of the narrative was amazing. There are no slow spots and you can't wait for the next scene during the entire experience.

And "experience" is the better description for it, rather than just 'movie.' You can't wait, for example, for the moment when Luke actually meets the princess. (What will happen then? ) It's a textbook case of an exciting narrative and what I believe makes this superior to all the sequels (knowing that many feel The Empire Strikes Back Episode V is superior — I must disagree).

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The one character you really can't wait to see again is the ominous Vader, naturally. The instant he steps into view during the first few minutes of the story, you just know this is the ultimate villain.

This is the baddest of the bad, the coolest of the cool, the supreme uber-evildoer of the entire galaxy. You just know it by his stance, by his attitude, and by the electric chill that runs through your frail form as he steps down the corridor, moving into the annals of film history with one fell swoop.

You can't wait to see what he does next, what nefarious action will send someone or some planet to its doom. Sure, he seems under the control of Tarkin (Peter Cushing) here — and in later films, the Emperor — but you just know he's simply biding his time until he takes over the whole damn universe.

There is no precedent for Vader, and nothing close to him after. He's at his best here, where there's still much mystery attached to his dark frightful form, a minion of Satan and Nazi stormtroopers all rolled into one.

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This was also the movie-experience which catapulted Harrison Ford (Han Solo) into superstardom. He seems almost childish here, not really straining to create a character, and it's this flip charm that makes it work, against all odds. He really does appear to have stepped out of the pages of some juvenile space opera, laser guns blazing, all snide remarks and foolhardy bravado.

But he also becomes the older brother figure to Luke, who cannot carry the story by himself. They were all iconic characters, as mentioned, but Ford also brought an abundance of personality and flamboyance to his role — his is the most entertaining character as we wait to see what trouble or what more attitude he will bring to the table.

He also brings some humor to his scenes and this, along with a few other choice scenes — mostly with the amusing robots — sets this initial entry in the saga apart from the other Star Wars films; the remaining films were more grim and what humor they had did not work well. Ford had been trying to make a career of it for a decade already by this point, so he was not a newbie at this.

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Mark Hamill, whose movie career began & all but ended with Luke, epitomizes the center of destiny for a galaxy. Both humble and arrogant, he's perfect in the role — at once a cocky kid and someone wise beyond his years, who knows that he's involved in some very important stuff.

Carrie Fisher's main surprise as Leia is that she's not all sugar and sweet as one would expect of a princess. As an actress, she was young and inexperienced here, trying a faux Brit accent in her early scenes, but her caustic remarks later in the story, now directed at the heroes, sprinkled some diverting seasoning on the ensemble.

These three characters evolved in the next two films, but they were always at their best here, icons given life for a short period — but also forever in film. The same could be said for Alec Guinness as Ben Kenobi, a first class act all the way. You almost believe that this elderly warrior could topple an empire, given enough time. Unless he runs into Vader...






The plot moves the characters all over the place within the confines of this mythical galaxy and it never lags — new viewers are gifted with new astounding sights and scenarios in every reel.

It begins in an out-of-the-way place, a desert planet (Tatooine, but not named until the next film) where the news of a brewing rebellion barely registers; it's a place of simple farmers and, in what passes for towns, the dregs of society.

The audience is aware, though, that an Empire rules the galaxy — its rulers just never bother with such a useless planet — until now.

Luke soon has reason to despise the Empire and its enforcers, the armored imperial storm troopers and their leader, Vader. Old Ben Kenobi imparts some bits of history to Luke, including how the deposed Republic had been enforced by an order of Jedi Knights — all now gone — and that they used a lightsaber as their primary weapon.

Luke & Kenobi find a pilot, smuggler Han Solo, to take them off planet, and they eventually make their way to the Death Star, a moon-sized space station which is the Empire's latest weapon and which can destroy entire planets. It's there that the Princess is held.

For the final act, the rebels make an all-out attack on this Death Star, but they are outmatched and success seems to hinge on an ephemeral source of power called "The Force" — a power that Luke might be able to wield.

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In the chronology of the eventual 6-part movie saga, this 4th episode takes place about 20 years after Episode III, Revenge of the Sith (2005), in which the Emperor took over the running of the galaxy.

As already mentioned, the next chapter, 5, was in 1980 — The Empire Strikes Back. However, this one — chapter IV — was filmed first and remains the most successful entry in the franchise, arguably the biggest box office success in film history.

Before this film, the biggest summer blockbuster was Jaws (1975); Star Wars surpassed it to take the box office crown. The only film which is said to match this one in ticket sales is Gone With the Wind (1939). Others which come close are E.T. (1982) and Titanic (1997). What is also impressive is that the special re-release of Star Wars with updated special FX in 1997 was also a big hit, far more than what is usual for re-releases. It remains a popular classic.

BoG's Score: 9 out of 10





Star Trivia of Hope: this film had an enormous influence on sci-fi cinema and forever changed the landscape of science fiction in film - big budget sci-fi was suddenly the norm after this film, not the anomaly. Close Encounters, released near the end of 1977, was already planned by Spielberg before Star Wars came out, but immediate big films that probably wouldn't have been made if not for Star Wars include Star Trek the Motion Picture, Alien and Disney's The Black Hole (all 1979).

This effect of big budget sf films continued through the eighties and into the 21st century. Dave Prowse, a tall muscular Brit actor usually in small roles (A Clockwork Orange), put on the Darth Vader costume to enact the role, but the voice was provided by James Earl Jones.

Another famous Brit actor here is Peter Cushing, famous as a Hammer Films star; many years later, the 'other' famous Hammer Films star, Christopher Lee, would appear in the prequels. This was only the 3rd pro feature film that George Lucas directed, following American Graffiti (73) — which was a big success — and THX-1138 (71), which was not. He did not direct the two Star Wars sequels in 1980 & 1983, content to just produce. He would not return to the director's chair until The Phantom Menace prequel in 1999.

BoG's Score: 9 out of 10

__________Mos Eisley - These are not the droids


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______ Han Solo - Bounty Hunter (Harrison Ford)


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The above scenes give a good idea of how the film progresses — great stuff, but the Best Scene is with Vader on the Death Star. One of the Empire's generals brags about the power of the Death Star, and Vader counters with his opinion of the power of The Force. The general derides Vader and his view, but Vader responds that he finds the general's "lack of faith disturbing" and proceeds to demonstrate a small expression of such power.

Owned! — Vader-style.

Mention should also be made of Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin, a high-ranking bureaucrat in the Empire, also commander of the Death Star and someone ruthless enough to even control Vader. Cushing was best known for his heroes in Hammer films and his cold demeanor here was very well played.

__________ "I find your lack of faith disturbing"


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BoG
Galaxy Overlord Galactus

[Bud Brewster]

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Here's a stroll down Memory Lane that will take you back several light years to that magical time when you were captivated by Star Wars in 1977 . . . and then again when you took your kids to see the re-released trilogy in 1997.

The first video is a labor of love by a devoted fan who truly "trusts the Force".

Enjoy! (And smoke 'em if ya got 'em . . . )__

STAR WARS ORIGINAL TV SPOTS PLUS RECREATIONS 1977 - 1985


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__________ Star Wars 1997 Re Issue Trailer HD


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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)