War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused

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.

This is what a fan edit should be. It's the polar opposite of Adywan's A New Hope. For everyone who has seen Star Wars WAY too much and want to see something very new with the film this is the edit for you. There was some stuff I thought was too cheesy but that was easily overpowered by the new stuff and great ideas. All of John Williams music has been taken out and replaced with lame 70's tunes which is surprisingly very awesome. Also the new effects that are added every time Vader uses the force is nothing short of brilliant. I can't wait to watch the next one.

the edit has some laugh out loud moments especially when luke discovers his auntie and unkle are dead, steering out into sunset their faces appear and with the accompanying music added makes it a great comedy moment. what i loved about that scene was that it played it straight and works better than the forced humour. r-2 is the star of the edit with his added subtitles it was a shame he didn't have more lines as there are alot of times he talks but with no titles. the bar scene alone is worth the download i thought it was a shame the scene turned black and white before we entered the bar. vaders new force powers also add to the edit along with the new music added, seeing han and chewey running to a 70′s music back drop brought another laugh out loud moment.

overall it’s a relief to see someone do a star wars fanedit different to the many that have been made before.

February 14, 2010 @ 4:59 pm

Finally got to see this and thoroughly enjoyed it. Thank you so much for all the work that was put into this! But I have to wonder, why wasn’t Tomita’s Star Wars theme used anywhere on this? Tomita was used elsewhere on the soundtrack, and his version of the Star Wars theme is hilarious and would have been perfectly suited to this. On the other hand, maybe Tomita’s Star Wars is a little too hilarious. Anyway it’s definitely worth a view, I’ll give it a 9/10 but it easily could have been a 10/10 with a few more tweaks.