Film review - Lens: Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back

Figure 1. Original Movie Poster: Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back

Originally released in 1980 and directed by Irvin Kershner, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is a Science fiction/ fantasy film following a young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) on his adventures through space. The Empire Strikes Back is one of three films in the original Star Wars trilogy. 

Figure 2. Stop Motion

Star Wars is renown for its stunning visual effects and puppetry as well as its use of matte paintings and stop motion footage. Each technique used in the trilogies enabled the films to look realistic and believable, mesmerizing its 1980's audience and wowing audiences to this day. George Lucas and Irvin Kershner used a lot of Stop Motion effects in the films, especially in scenes involving the ships and AT-AT's. Their head of special effects, John Dykstra, found that "By adding motion blur to every frame, the animation sequence was smoothened and devoid of the rigidity inherent in stop-motion effects. This created a dimension of supposed realism in the tauntauns and AT-ATs..." (Romano, 2015), effects that Lucas liked throughout his films.

Figure 3. Shooting scene - A New Hope (1977)

In 1997, due to the advances in CGI, Lucas believed that different scenes throughout the films needed to be changed in order to keep up with the audience's interests. This resulted in the addition of lines and scenes in the films as well as changes to backgrounds in certain shots. Certain characters were also changed in the films, for example, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) in A New Hope (1977). In the original release A New Hope in 1977, audiences were confused over who originally shot first between Han Solo and Greedo. In order to try and help resolve the situation, Lucas portrayed Solo differently to how the audience had originally perceived him. The audience understood that Star Wars was a Western movie set in space and, due to how he was portrayed in the films previously, Solo was a cold character. This caused the audience to believe that Solo would find killing easy and that he would shoot first but in Lucas' eyes, they were wrong. After editing the film Lucas admitted "what I did was try to clean up the confusion, but obviously it upset people because they wanted Solo [who seemed to be the one who shot first in the original] to be a cold-blooded killer, but he actually isn’t. It had been done in all close-ups and it was confusing about who did what to whom. I put a little wider shot in there that made it clear that Greedo is the one who shot first, but everyone wanted to think that Han shot first, because they wanted to think that he actually just gunned him down" (Block, 2012)

Figure 4.  Original vs. Re-released - The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

A lot of the edits in the re-release of the films enabled Lucas to go further into depth with how the universe that he had created would have looked if he had access to modern day CGI at the time each film was produced. The use of modern CGI enabled more futuristic content to be created and visual effects, that would have been impossible to do originally, possible. Although, smaller edits in scenes throughout the film are only noticed by dedicated fans or people interested in film production, this is as the audience is more interested in what is happening in the scene at the time the edit is shown. "The improvements are well done, but they point up how well the effects were done to begin with: If the changes are not obvious, that's because "Star Wars'' got the look of the film so right in the first place." (Ebert, 1999) This shows that although the CGI effects at the time the films were produced are outdated now, it does not mean that it needs to be edited to appeal more to the modern viewer as they are still amazed by Lucas' original creations.



Bibliography:

Block, A. (2012). 5 Questions With George Lucas: Controversial 'Star Wars' Changes, SOPA and 'Indiana Jones 5'. [online] The Hollywood Reporter. Available at: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/george-lucas-star-wars-interview-288523 [Accessed 24 Sep. 2018].

Ebert, R. (1999). Star Wars (Special Edition) Movie Review (1999) | Roger Ebert. [online] Rogerebert.com. Available at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-special-edition-1999 [Accessed 24 Sep. 2018].

Romano, S. (2015). The 5 Most Grueling Star Wars Visual Effects | StarWars.com. [online] StarWars.com. Available at: https://www.starwars.com/news/the-5-most-grueling-star-wars-visual-effects [Accessed 24 Sep. 2018].



Illustrations:

Figure 1. (1980) Original Movie Poster: Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Home-Wall-Print-Vintage-Movie-Poster-STAR-WARS-EMPIRE-STRIKES-BACK-A4-A3-A2-A1-/142040243502 [Accessed on: 24 Sep 2018]


Figure 2. (1980) Stop Motion. http://geektasticdad.blogspot.com/2015/05/this-is-how-much-it-cost-to-make-star.html [Accessed on: 24 Sep 2018]



Figure 3. (1980) Shooting Scene - A New Hope (1977). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6PDcBhODqo [Accessed on: 24 Sep 2018)


Figure 4. (1980) Original vs. Re-released - The Empire Strikes Back (1980). https://angsoka.com/watch/yZlSwBag61o/ [Accessed on: 24 Sep 2018]