War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

Grindhouse/drive-in is such a great category of fanedit! The flaws become charming!

This is the best fanedit I have seen! It's fantastic.

I thought the previous movie, JAWS, was too long and became boring, but not so with this one!
This is just perfection in it's lack of perfection!

I wrote a review earlier tonight of Robots vs Kung Fu, which is my 2nd favorite after this one.
This movie, War of the Stars still totally hangs together as a film and still manages to be awesome. Whereas I think the MST3K guys would have a field day with Robots vs Kung Fu.

I wish I had more to say, but its all just compliments. I've been recommending it to everyone I know. Perfect running time too. I think these need to be under 100mins to be effective.

Anyway, this is just genius! I have found myself watching it 3 times now and it just gets better.

I can't say anything new here about this masterpiece.
As this is a grindhouse version, I have to give high quality ratings, as the cheap style was perfectly achieved. Amazing that it is possible to re-cut and re-edit something like Star Wars in such a way that the result looks and feels like a cheap Italian rip-off made in the seventies!
So much fun, when a well-known story twists in ways you never see coming.

Okay, some audio mixing could be better, imho, but, hey ...

Many edits attempt to make a movie better. Reinstating deleted scenes, cutting stuff that didn't quite work, completely obliterating the existence of Jar Jar - good stuff. But this is something truly special. It actively tries to make a great movie worse - and does so in the best possible way. I was amazed as to how well A New Hope works as an exploitation flick. The use of an actual 16mm print of the movie works wonders for the visually aged aspect of the film. The other sources are also convincingly damaged. Visual quality in the presentation of that decay is perfect. The special effects are amusingly cheezy and in no way distract from the viewing experience. There is one brief instance where effects are visible on the letterboxing, which can be distracting - but I suspect that most won't notice. If I'm not mistaken, this has been cropped out and corrected in the AVI version, regardless. The new music is completely appropriate and blends in seamlessly. Hearing disco alongside John Williams is a unique experience, to say the least. But the real brilliance of this edit is how the characters were changed. Grindhouse is more than low budget. Grindhouse is sleaze. It's cheap monetarily - and - ethically. All the iconic characters are now worse people than they were in Lucas's vision. Darth Vader is completely insane (and even cooler thanks to a clever editing tactic). Luke is an idiotic weak-willed farm boy with no great destiny. Leia is a psychotic animal murderer. Obi-Wan is every bit the senile fool that he only pretended to be in the real movie. Artoo's a foul mouthed wise-cracking sidekick. And Han? Han shoots first. Every. Single. Time.

I can't recommend this edit enough. It's a masterpiece,.

This is an exceptional diversion that stands well alone and also enhances my love for the original trilogy. I've watched this and the sequel repeatedly and neither fails to entertain.

It certainly won't hurt your appreciation of the effort if you have a long history of watching B-movies, which I do.

Being relatively new to Fanedits it's difficult to put a finger on every facet that makes them so enjoyable but I do tend to pick up on alterations that actually improve from the source material. Impressively, despite (and sometimes due to) the intentional stylistic degradation, War of the Stars has many moments of genius that arguably outshine or improve on source material.

Fantastic stuff

War of the Stars in an inspiration for all potential fan editors and general fans of Star Wars. His reimaging of Episode 4 as if it were a 70's grindhouse feature gives the classic guts and charm not existent in the original. It will not replace A New Hope, but it's not designed to do so. This is done for fun and for love, and likely watchers are going to experience both when watching it.

Mask's approach to this project allows himself a certian lenience that other editors will not necessarily be able to employ in a more serious venture. For example, heavy use of poor quality extra footage fits easily into his version because the overall quality itself has been lowered to reflect a less refined attempt at filmmaking.

This is evident not only in extra footage, but in the audio track as well. The dialog track is flat and purposely so, which allows Mask to insert his own dialog changes that, even when they come of inelagently, it only adds to the charm of the film.

However, where this movie really shines is Mask's descisions to resequence certain scenes in the film. In particular, his retooling of the scene in which Death Star is destroyed. It is unique, unexpected and, with the greatest decision he makes in the whole film, hilarious.

It's hard to find fault with such an edit particularly because every bad splicing job, every poor audio cue and every bad bit of pacing can really be attributed to the overall style of the film. It's a clever way of hiding mistakes.

This really is a must see.