War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

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.

I watched "War of the stars 2" just recently, so I was somewhat prepared for this.

---Spoiler-warning---
The intention was to downgrade the videoquality, ie. to grindhouse it, so that the deleted scenes could be integrated without sticking out. That goal was achieved perfectly! It looks really awful through and through and everything looked natural in its awfulness!

But I can't say I'm a fan of grindhousing, the videoquality is already flat due to being SD-sourced, and the grindhousing further knocked the quality down obviously.

"War of the stars 2" did without the grindhousing-effect and in retrospect I'm thankful for that:).

That said, the grindhousing helped in a moment where TMBTM made a jump in the narrative, which I thought to be a great idea, by making it look like the film was burned out. Loved that.

Like in the second part I love the new special effects, like the blood and Vader's red eyes, or the new shooting of the sandpeople's wagon.

I also love the new music introduced, especially in the new Mos-eisley-bar-scene.

Narratively I like that it was made like it were a single movie, it all ends with the death star being blown up and Vader killed by Han. It made perfect sense as the emperor was not mentioned, so it could stand alone.

Of course it poses the question, why "War of the stars 2" exists? But I'm glad it exists, cause I think it's superior in most ways.

But back to this edit: I loved two subtitle-lines by R2D2: "Oh, God is he old", when Obi Wan said he wouldn't remember a droid, lol! And "Maybe they need gold" when C3PO asked what the jabbas wanted with them.

---Spoiler-warning-end---

Great edit, achieved what it wanted and tells the story of Star Wars in a single movie and is therefore highly recommended!
Still, I very much prefer "War of the stars 2", that gets along, without the grindhousing and offers many more awesome creative special-effect-use and offers more creative narration-choices.

I only wish the film had been edited more. There were moments that were sheer genius, like the binary sunset, Obiwan and the trash compacter, and Biggs's death. I wish there'd have been more fake blood. I also wish the Darth Vader dialogue had been better integrated. And the premise behind Biggs's death should have been taken further, because it was genius. And I literally spat coffee on my computer screen from laughing too hard when the song from the Christmas Special began. Overall, it was really fun. Can't wait to watch the next one (which is downloading right now).

Thank you TMBTM! This is fucking epic! :]X