Watching the Star Wars films………..

Something which is difficult unless you happen to own a VHS/Laserdisc version (and the means to play it!) or a copy derived from them.

I have the Laserdisc set…

I really like Empire strikes back.. great battles and camaraderie between the characters, plus its a bit dark too. The new films have grown on me and visually stunning. Currently going through the machete order and up to ep 2.

I have the Laserdisc set…

Sweet. Can you actually play it though?!

Also mini-PSA for anyone in Kent. The museum in Canterbury currently has an exhibition of toys & original posters from the proper trilogy. It is well worth popping in if you’re down that way (and like SW obviously).

Ok I’m going out on a geek limb here…
I liked 1 & 3, 2 less so but they all have Natalie Portman 😀

I saw 4 at the cinema when it first came out, I saw 1 with my eldest son when it first came out, he was 5. We both really enjoyed it – it was perfect for someone who had grown up with Star Wars and then had kids.

I suspect many of the haters of Jar Jar didn’t have kids and wanted a 15 film not a U.
As to 3 the buzz going into the cinema with all the kids bouncing round about General Grievous whilst the parents (and all the Jar Jar haters) gave them puzzled looks was fantastic and warmed the cockles of my nerdy heart.

no one mentioned some excellent Fan Edits out there that cut the “newer” 3 into basically one…and altered the ending of it so portman lives.
they did a cunning trick 🙂

The prequels had jar jar binks and a debate on taxing trade routes. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The prequels show a decadent republic swept to destruction by the rot from within. The first three featured a galaxy spanning empire brought to its knees by cute teddy bears living in a stone age village.

Jar Jar or Ewoks – take your pick

I guess only liking the earlier films is a bit of an age thing, and there’s a bit of the “hate the prequels” bandwagon-ing going on.

I thought all of them where ok to be honest and would watch them all in story order, but I didn’t grow up watching the early 3 films, so didn’t experience all the hype at the time.

Think I only really watched the early films after I played Knights of the Old Republic on my PC (great game and cheap these days!).

The prequels had jar jar binks and a debate on taxing trade routes. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

The prequels show a decadent republic swept to destruction by the rot from within. The first three featured a galaxy spanning empire brought to its knees by cute teddy bears living in a stone age village.

The prequels show a decadent republic swept to destruction by the rot from within.

You can characterize it however you wish: the result was extremely boring.

The first three featured a galaxy spanning empire brought to its knees by cute teddy bears living in a stone age village.

No, the Ewoks featured in part of one of the films, which was considered to be the weakest of the three.

1 and 2 make sense if you watch them with a 4/5 year old!

Thanks for the responses.

Will try the Machete order with the 7 year old nephew – makes sense not to reveal the big twist prematurely.

Meanwhile, I’ve just watched TPM and quite enjoyed it.
I really must be getting old.
🙂

I’ve seen some of the one with the Ewok squirrel/bear people in it. Need to improve my knowledge or I shall look bad in front of the boy!

Will be watching some/all with Mrs B as she’s never seen any of them 😯

Order advice useful thanks, I like 1 and without it amd its success there would never have been any others

I like 1 and without it amd its success there would never have been any others

Yes without the success of a film released in 1999 there wouldn’t have been a film released in 1977 🙄

The wife and I are in the midst of watching them all again, watching them in number order, watched 2 last night. Despite binks #1 and #2 are okay, the Darth Maul sabre fight is cool and the pod racing bit is okay. And as for #2 you finally get to see Yoda fighting, which everyone wanted to see, plus Christopher Lee has presence and was excellent in all his films ‘Your swords, please. We don’t want to make a mess of things in front of the Chancellor’ As for revenge of the sith, that is a fantastic movie, from the opening scene to the end it’s all ace. Space fights and sabre duels it’s all in there. Skywalkers transistion to Vader is a little cringey and why if you wanna be a big bad dark side master do you have to wear a big black helmet? bit nonsense.

Any of you guys ever stood next to a person in a stormtrooper or vader costume? They are properly creepy. Great fun.

The story is not about Luke and the fight agaist the Empire – it appears that way as the original films started at Episode 4, which was more to do with selling the film in the first place and Episode 4 being the only one that stands alone as a complete film to give the saga the best chance of success.

I’m not a Star Wars geek by any means but they came out when I was growing up, so I was the right age and loved them.

But, is that right ^^^. I remember Lucas saying stuff like that but don’t remember any of it being mentioned when Star Wars came out (Note: NOT Episode 4, or A New Hope or whatever, it was Star Wars! 🙂 ) I just remember it being promoted as a completely stand-alone film with no mentions of pre/sequels until a little later. (Basically what I’m asking is did Lucas realise how much cash he could make and whip up a whole series of films to make and then generate the time-line later?)

I watched episode 5 and 6 this weekend ,still love em , and I’m a right geek sorry ,really looking forward to the 20th and will be banning any type of media from the 17th till then , I only hope Seth does a parady as soon as hes seen it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90RduPNtK7g

I enjoy them all, they all have weak parts but I would say its difficult to keep the quality up and people interested for over 6 films to date.
Also, the prequeals were not that bad, Jar jar B aside, I thought the fight scenes in were great, the Darth Maul lightsabre dual, the Bobo Fett/Obi Wan battle and seeing Yoda actually fight all compensated for the other terrible, terrible bits.
Also, love this bit: https://youtu.be/05dT34hGRdg
No need for me to rewatch them prior to the 17th, I know the story already.

the despecialized editions.

720p theatrical versions.

it doesn’t even say episode IV on the crawl

Sweet. Can you actually play it though?!

Oddly, I can on my Laserdisc player. I’d need to hook it up though.

It’s a lovely thing, in the same way that vinyl was a tactile, tangible thing compared to CD. I’ll grab a photo if you like, it’s very pretty. (The box set I mean, not the player.)

I’ve just watched in the machete order with the Mrs to teach her the way of the force as she hadn’t seen any of them and it works well, I did have a strange nagging guilty feeling that we should have watched ep1 though.

Onto TFA I’ve been wondering if Luke is Kylo Ren, I really wouldn’t be surprised Jar Jar Abrahms filmed alternate scenes with Adam Driver purely for the trailers to keep people off the scent, either that or Han will drag him out of a cave towards the end of the film to save the day.

I also am in favour of numerical order, from a completeness point of view. Sure, 1 is a bit naff but for me it’s only the overlong pod racer sequence that spoils it. And the boy himself. The first three make into a proper epic saga, that’s the only reason they exist. They don’t stand alone as films very well, but you are then really watching one huge film rather than six.

The desire for the complete saga is what makes me put up with binks, ewoks, pod racing and Hayden Christiansen.

He’s a bad bad actor, but then so was Mark Hamill.

Numerical order is crap for anyone that hasn’t seen them before. (All our kids)

Ruins the big “I am your Father” moment.

I’m going to see the new one next weekend so fancy watching the previous films to get me in the mood.
I’m down with the idea of the machete order but does this include using the despecialized versions for the original trilogy??

Doesn’t have to no.

But would be more enjoyable? I hate the newer CGI’d cockups of the originals!

My niece’s husband was a lighting rigger on the new film. Contractually sworn to secrecy of course but apparently there’s a super big secret they’re trying very hard to protect. I doesn’t matter so much to him as he’s never seen any of the Star Wars films. Somehow I’m struggling to suppress judging him undeserving of his job.

I also saw the original in the cinema when I was 12 and I remember that it was just Star Wars.

I have been vaguely looking forward to The Force Awakens from a nostalgia point of view, and made a vague effort to get MrsDummy interested. She had never seen any of them before, doesn’t get Star Wars references, doesn’t show much appreciation that it’s different from Star Trek etc.

So, we sat down together to watch A New Hope.

She laughed when Darth Vader first appeared, and asked “is this the real film, or a spoof?”. I’d largely forgotten how much of the film consists of a camp robot snarking at a beeping robot.

I shall go and see The Force Awakens, but I’m going to leave my memories of the earlier films alone without re-watching. I strongly suspect that they’re about as good as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark really, and deserve a roughly equal share of the cultural oxygen.

🙂

my ticket is booked for 8am thu 17th – although i am geeky, i’m too old to stay up past midnight anymore for a film.

I think going to see a film about a war in space at 08:00am on a Thursday morning is pretty hardcore to be honest.

Nothing wrong with the first 3. If you can still sit and watch the 4/5/6 ones then there’s plenty to watch in the others too. It’s only the old fools on here who berate them because they’re not worthy.

Hell, try watching Luke, Han and Lea trapped in the garbage disposal unit and tell me again how it’s not just beyond awful for acting, ideas and monsters.

She laughed when Darth Vader first appeared, and asked “is this the real film, or a spoof?”. I’d largely forgotten how much of the film consists of a camp robot snarking at a beeping robot.

and

Hell, try watching Luke, Han and Lea trapped in the garbage disposal unit and tell me again how it’s not just beyond awful for acting, ideas and monsters.

Yep, they can only be called good films if you are currently a pre-teen boy, growing up in the 70s on a TV diet of ’30s Flash Gordon, Champion the Wonder Horse and Zorro. Based on what else was around they were fantastic – I’d never seen anything like Star Wars. (ESB was even better. Unfortunately by the time RotJ was released I was a cynical, jaded teenager (15?) and could see how crap and tired it was. )

It’s always easy to judge with hindsight but I think it telling that as much as I loved them I find them very difficult to watch these days. I’ll still go to the new one though. 🙂

Hell, try watching Luke, Han and Lea trapped in the garbage disposal unit and tell me again how it’s not just beyond awful for acting, ideas and monsters.

popular does not equal high culture.

Avatar is the highest grossing film ever and it was **** rubbish.

weeksy – Member

Hell, try watching Luke, Han and Lea trapped in the garbage disposal unit and tell me again how it’s not just beyond awful for acting, ideas and monsters.

Actually… voices/line delivery aside I reckon it works. I think mostly because the whole thing just looks really manky and unpleasant, you can imagine the actors going “**** off, I’m not going in there”. And the sounds are right, all the groans and pistons and that, no matter what else happened star wars always sounded right and that helps everything.

The acting is proper cheesy especially in the first film but it’s a panto basically so that’s OK.

Avatar is the highest grossing film ever and it was fuckinjg rubbish.

This is the absolute depressing contradiction of life itself.

Just finished ROTJ.
Manflu does have it’s benefits.
🙂

Only watched them all a couple of times since I bought the DVD’s in 2006 – amazed at how little of the prequels and how much of the originals I remembered.

Got the updated and original theatrical release versions on the DVD’s – I think I prefer the originals, because I don’t keep getting distracted by the added shiny stuff.
The quality of the transfer isn’t as good as the newer versions though.
Nice to have both.

Personal opinion bit.

I’m sorry, but even being as objective as possible, the prequels aren’t as good as the first 3.
The pacing is awful and all the actors appear to have been told to appear as if heavily sedated.
All the fun and sparkle, the wit and charm has been lost.
There’s more feeling in one glance between Leia and Han than there is in the whole Anakin/Padme saga.

The breathless, edge of the seat pacing has been lost too – I know the originals were supposed to feel like overdosing on Flash Gordon and they did.
The new ones can feel a bit like a tranquilizer recovery group acting out a poor spy thriller so they can earn a trip to the seaside.

The big set pieces are amazing of course but at least with the originals you didn’t notice the gaping plot holes and terrible dialogue because you were having fun.

What has surprised me is how good the original movies still are.
After not seeing them for a while, I was really surprised at how much I still enjoyed them.

“Machete order” is a new one on me and having read the blog I think I agree. The vader is lukes father bit passed me by as unfortunately I saw them 4 6 5 1 2 3, being a nipper at the time I never got to see ESB, saw it for the first time when it was re-released in the 90s.

While I kind of agree with your review rusty (original trilogy better films) rewatching the sabre fights in the originals they look piss poor.

I know what you mean.

Some of the fights look like a toddlers group hug and the huge eel/slug thing in the asteroid belt looks like a sock puppet.
🙂

That’s no bad thing though. Alot of modern film fight sequences are just boring – too fast, too much going on, too unrealistic – I just switch off sometimes. On the other hand the space craft sequences in all three of the original films still look great and are better than the CGI efforts of the later sequels. Amazing considering when they were made.