War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

Nifty reworking of a classic viewed numerous. Edit incorporates plenty of ugly, deleted footage, making the experience greasier and dirtier. No disrespect intended. This is a snickering subversive retelling that takes its sweet time before slithering into broken territory.

Video - Decent 720p, MPEG 2. Outtakes were all crappy, with poor resolutions and bleached out colours. Editor TMBTM matched the look across the edit, so there was no jarring feature - bonus - feature - bonus recognition. The editor is too professional for his own nature, however, and transitions and edits were smooth and thought out.

Audio - 2 Channel, 448 Kb. Dialogue easy to understand. No subs - and yet - R2D2 is subbed throughout, and it proves to be one smart ass astrodroid. I also wondered about reinserted footage of storm troops on Tatooine. If redubbed, clever dialogue of poorly motivated workforce. The old saw about good help being hard to find applies.

Narrative - An altogether deceptive story that feints like an extended version, but midway begins to weave into a different direction. Having viewed the sequel first - lame, watching out of sequence - I can reassure uncertain readers that the modifications progress logically and bloom in the second installment.

Enjoyment - A lot of this is funny as hell. Storm troopers, who cannot shoot for shit in the original trilogy (Jango must have been rolling in his grave over nth generation clones) in this edit blast resistance left and right. Jawa haters, check this out. As noted, R2D2 is sees all, chatters away, but no one pays attention to him. Probably because he talks too much. A generous assortment of bonus goodies here, and you can’t beat Frances Gall (thank you for not going with the obvious ”Chick Habit”).

I suspect there may be purists who hate anyone tinkering with this installment, scratching at canon. Forget ‘em. This is a gaspipe kick. Go for it.

This edit was a blast! Every single change that TMBTM made to this movie was shocking and hilarious! Be prepared for some unexpected hilarious twists and turns in this grindhouse of the original Star Wars movie. Although I had low hopes going in, the grindhouse video quality and rescoring didn't bother me one bit. Be sure to check out the bonus features as well, they'll be worth your while.

I found this to be a really good use of the Tatooine outtakes as well as using the footage from the TROOPS Fan Film (one of my favorites). The Grindhouse editing made for a very good homogenous look through out the film.

I also very much enjoyed the additional James Earl Jones audio from other movies for Darth Vader. It was a very good fit to the action on the screen and not superfluous in the slightest.

The only two issues I had with the edit was that the subtitles for R2D2 were very inconsistent though out the movie. It was one of the best comedic elements of the film and was sorely missed when it didn't happen for much of the middle of the film. The other issue is there were many missing sound effects in the film. This made some scenes such as the falcon being tractor beamed into the death star fall flat.

The cuts that were made from the original movie were well selected and didn't harm the narrative in anyway. The addition of gore to the film was very entertaining over all. I printed this one to disc and it is on my shelf!

Wow, this brought me back to my 15 years of working with 35mm film as a projectionist. I love all those spots, cables, cigarette burns, audio skips, missing images, burning frames and all those things I miss in a digital cinema I am working at right now. Other than that have I seen a New Hope a dozen of times in all sort of versions but never as this before. It felt almost like a whole new film, one that was left on a shelf for many years. I never thought Star Wars could be that funny too, with things like crazy dialogue, R2D2 subs and blood splattering effects. You can't give this a low rating for audio and video quality because everything you hear and see was created intentionally. This is what I recommend every fan of Star Wars and the era of 35mm film to see!

What a fantastic edit. It's what brought me back to the site after a few years away, just knowing the quality that can be achieved in a fanedit.

Honestly, the original episode IV is not a movie I would ever watch again. I'm not a hardcore fan and more importantly, I find this edit much superior. It's funny, it's deeper, and more intense. Using dialog from other James Earl Jones films is genius (I particularly enjoyed the line from Conan). The bar scene turns from a circus to a really down-to-earth cyberpunk experience. The choice of Neil Young is excellent.

Because the tone can be so dense and serious at times, the humor works really well, like the use of the behind the scenes footage where Lea and Luke are drinking a coke (at least I think it was, I'm reviewing from memory).

All in all a most recommendable edit.