From Star Wars to Jedi: A 1983 overview of the Star Wars saga
Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
On Wednesday, May 25, 1977, 20th Century Fox - somewhat skeptically - released Star Wars, writer-director George Lucas's third feature film, hoping that enough movie-going science-fiction "geeks" would go see it on Memorial Day Weekend for the studio to recoup its $9 million investment.
Considering that science fiction movies rarely earned enough box office "take" for studios to earn much more than the seed money that they reluctantly doled out to even visionary directors like Stanley Kubrick, neither the board of directors at Fox nor Lucas himself had any hopes that Star Wars would set the movie world on fire. Indeed, the studio "suits" - and some of the film's British crew - figured that Lucas's space-fantasy adventure set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" was nothing but a children's tale and, with the exception of senior vice president Alan Ladd, Jr., gave "that science movie" very little corporate support.
Six years later, the movie, which is now known as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, was one of the top 10 box office hits of all time, just behind Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, and Lucas's Return of the Jedi, the trilogy-ending installment, was premiering on wide release in hundreds of theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
The history of the Classic Star Wars Trilogy has, of course, been chronicled several times in "making of" documentaries ever since ABC TV aired The Making of Star Wars in October of 1977, but From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga was the very first to cover the entire trilogy's creative process.
Written by Time magazine's film critic and documentarian Richard Schickel (The Making of Star Wars, SP-FX: The Empire Strikes Back) is a 65-minute look at how some of the special effects for Return of the Jedi were created, as well as an overview of the making of the other two Episodes in the trilogy.
Narrated by actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga includes a look into the workings of Jabba the Hutt (13 puppeteers were needed, while a "little person" manipulated the vile gangster's tail), footage of how the Endor forest speeder bike chase was planned and filmed, plus interviews with Lucas and some of the other major behind-the-scenes talents, including directors Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand, effects supervisor Dennis Muren, sound designer Ben Burtt and composer John Williams.
It's in From Star Wars to Jedi where Lucas first revealed some of the history behind the Star Wars saga, where he drew inspiration from and the evolution of the story as he struggled to get studios to back his updated version of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s and 1940s.
It's also in this documentary where Lucas said a statement which detractors of the effects-heavy Prequel Trilogy like to use when they say the Star Wars creator has lost his way (if not his mind) as a filmmaker:
Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end to themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.
Lucas, of course, might have been referring to Paramount Pictures' overreliance on special effects in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but over the past several years this quote has been the source of many a derisive comment from Star Wars fans who believe the Prequels are mostly about Lucas's fascination with digital effects and not about the characters, the acting, good dialogue or the story.
The documentary also reveals the now-famous deleted scene with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Jabba the Hutt from A New Hope; Lucas had shot it in the Elstree sound stage with actor Declan Mulholland as a live action scene. The young director had hoped to superimpose an animated version of Jabba onto the physical space occupied by Mulholland, but the technology of the mid-1970s was too limited and the effect was awful, so Lucas had the sequence edited out of the original cut of Star Wars. 20 years later, using the same CGI techniques used to create the dinosaurs in 1993's Jurassic Park, Industrial Light and Magic restored the scene with a digital version of Jabba.
There's also some silly humor involving Salacious Crumb, the "Kowakian monkey lizard" who serves as Jabba's court jester and bane to C-3PO. For instance, when narrator Hamill informs the viewer that most of the film was shot in London after some location shots in Arizona and California's redwood country, puppeteer Tim Rose has the odd little alien say this:
We're going to England! Hey, Edgar, get your suitcase!
My Take: Although From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga is more of a Return of the Jedi-centric "featurette" and not a comprehensive look at the entire Trilogy, it is a good making-of documentary which mixes glimpses ofStar Wars' behind-the-scenes wizardry with television-friendly humor and insights into the creative impulses in Lucas's career up to that point.
Because it was originally aired on PBS in late 1983, viewers should not expect any references to the Prequel Trilogy or the Sequel Trilogy. There are also no revelations of how little support Lucas received from Fox's board of directors; these are to be had in 2004's Star Wars: Empire of Dreams,which is available in the original four-disc DVD box set of The Star Wars Trilogy.
Interestingly, though Schickel's other two Star Wars-related documentaries are included in the nine-disc Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) Blu-ray box set, Lucasfilm has excluded From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga as one of the extra features offered. In its stead, the studio is including 1983's Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi, which is more focused on the "final" film of the Star Wars saga.
Sadly, this documentary has not been released as a DVD; it's been available since 1995 as a VHS tape and, for some reason, never been included in any of the various VHS box sets offered by 20th Century Fox Home Video or its successors.
Recommended: Yes
On Wednesday, May 25, 1977, 20th Century Fox - somewhat skeptically - released Star Wars, writer-director George Lucas's third feature film, hoping that enough movie-going science-fiction "geeks" would go see it on Memorial Day Weekend for the studio to recoup its $9 million investment.
Considering that science fiction movies rarely earned enough box office "take" for studios to earn much more than the seed money that they reluctantly doled out to even visionary directors like Stanley Kubrick, neither the board of directors at Fox nor Lucas himself had any hopes that Star Wars would set the movie world on fire. Indeed, the studio "suits" - and some of the film's British crew - figured that Lucas's space-fantasy adventure set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" was nothing but a children's tale and, with the exception of senior vice president Alan Ladd, Jr., gave "that science movie" very little corporate support.
Six years later, the movie, which is now known as Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope, was one of the top 10 box office hits of all time, just behind Steven Spielberg's E.T.: The Extraterrestrial, and Lucas's Return of the Jedi, the trilogy-ending installment, was premiering on wide release in hundreds of theaters in the U.S. and Canada.
The history of the Classic Star Wars Trilogy has, of course, been chronicled several times in "making of" documentaries ever since ABC TV aired The Making of Star Wars in October of 1977, but From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga was the very first to cover the entire trilogy's creative process.
Written by Time magazine's film critic and documentarian Richard Schickel (The Making of Star Wars, SP-FX: The Empire Strikes Back) is a 65-minute look at how some of the special effects for Return of the Jedi were created, as well as an overview of the making of the other two Episodes in the trilogy.
Narrated by actor Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga includes a look into the workings of Jabba the Hutt (13 puppeteers were needed, while a "little person" manipulated the vile gangster's tail), footage of how the Endor forest speeder bike chase was planned and filmed, plus interviews with Lucas and some of the other major behind-the-scenes talents, including directors Irvin Kershner and Richard Marquand, effects supervisor Dennis Muren, sound designer Ben Burtt and composer John Williams.
It's in From Star Wars to Jedi where Lucas first revealed some of the history behind the Star Wars saga, where he drew inspiration from and the evolution of the story as he struggled to get studios to back his updated version of the Flash Gordon/Buck Rogers serials of the 1930s and 1940s.
It's also in this documentary where Lucas said a statement which detractors of the effects-heavy Prequel Trilogy like to use when they say the Star Wars creator has lost his way (if not his mind) as a filmmaker:
Special effects are just a tool, a means of telling a story. People have a tendency to confuse them as an end to themselves. A special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing.
Lucas, of course, might have been referring to Paramount Pictures' overreliance on special effects in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but over the past several years this quote has been the source of many a derisive comment from Star Wars fans who believe the Prequels are mostly about Lucas's fascination with digital effects and not about the characters, the acting, good dialogue or the story.
The documentary also reveals the now-famous deleted scene with Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Jabba the Hutt from A New Hope; Lucas had shot it in the Elstree sound stage with actor Declan Mulholland as a live action scene. The young director had hoped to superimpose an animated version of Jabba onto the physical space occupied by Mulholland, but the technology of the mid-1970s was too limited and the effect was awful, so Lucas had the sequence edited out of the original cut of Star Wars. 20 years later, using the same CGI techniques used to create the dinosaurs in 1993's Jurassic Park, Industrial Light and Magic restored the scene with a digital version of Jabba.
There's also some silly humor involving Salacious Crumb, the "Kowakian monkey lizard" who serves as Jabba's court jester and bane to C-3PO. For instance, when narrator Hamill informs the viewer that most of the film was shot in London after some location shots in Arizona and California's redwood country, puppeteer Tim Rose has the odd little alien say this:
We're going to England! Hey, Edgar, get your suitcase!
My Take: Although From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga is more of a Return of the Jedi-centric "featurette" and not a comprehensive look at the entire Trilogy, it is a good making-of documentary which mixes glimpses ofStar Wars' behind-the-scenes wizardry with television-friendly humor and insights into the creative impulses in Lucas's career up to that point.
Because it was originally aired on PBS in late 1983, viewers should not expect any references to the Prequel Trilogy or the Sequel Trilogy. There are also no revelations of how little support Lucas received from Fox's board of directors; these are to be had in 2004's Star Wars: Empire of Dreams,which is available in the original four-disc DVD box set of The Star Wars Trilogy.
Interestingly, though Schickel's other two Star Wars-related documentaries are included in the nine-disc Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) Blu-ray box set, Lucasfilm has excluded From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga as one of the extra features offered. In its stead, the studio is including 1983's Classic Creatures: Return of the Jedi, which is more focused on the "final" film of the Star Wars saga.
Sadly, this documentary has not been released as a DVD; it's been available since 1995 as a VHS tape and, for some reason, never been included in any of the various VHS box sets offered by 20th Century Fox Home Video or its successors.
Recommended: Yes
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