StarWars Weekend Marathon

We planned back-to-back original StarWars trilogy marathon over the weekend. I got to watch them in sequence for the first time and it made lot of sense and gave me a new perspective about this whole “religion”. Some observations…

• First StarWars wasn’t really advertised as Episode IV. That tag came later.
• After watching first StarWars anyone could see that Princes Liea and Luke were going to be a couple. All indications are that, Lucas changed his intentions for V and VI for God knows why.
• From the story point of view, IV remains the coolest. The V is a head twisting story and VI looks like a patch work to justify what V did. This is, of course, not to mean that these movies aren’t still some of the coolest.
• Lucas didn’t asked for more compensation for making first StarWars but instead rights to make sequel. He took the loan from the bank and made the sequels from his own money. This is strikingly unusual and highlight of the confidence on what he believed in (especially when sequels are such a huge gamble that no one in the industry invests their own money to make them). Before I watched the marathon, my impression for Lucas was a person who knew how to maximize cash from popularity. While this hasn’t changed much, I’ve gained new appreciation for him.
• “I’m your father” was a last minute story edit. Even the director who was hired by Lucas to make V wasn’t aware of it. It seems that Lucas who had been buried under big lone from the bank, severe over budgeting and schedule slippage decided to use typical tactics of putting a huge “surprise” that would make people wanna come for the sequel.
• The biggest asset of StarWars is probably the background musical score. Initial edits of first StarWars without this musical score looks like a B grade sci-fi.
• Times has published a long article about StarWars apparently with tons of praise for Lucas and without a single critic for Episode I and II which universally believed to be “sucked”. You can tell Lucas has hired some really deep reach PR firm :).
• The Gold pack is the re-released (digitally retouched) version of the movies which means it looks really cool and young. My wife pointed out that at the end of the Episode VI when Luke sees his father along with Yoda and Obi-Van, the original actor has been digitally replaced with the one who appears in I & II! Obviously, Lucas hadn’t planned it all along 🙂