they don’t want you to watch star wars this way, but it's better
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Published 2024-05-04
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Happy Star Wars day! The original Star Wars trilogy was groundbreaking for its special effects, its world building, its action, and so, so much more. But if you ask George Lucas, it isn't the action, nor the performances, or even the dialogue itself that ultimately carries the story of Star Wars. It is, fundamentally, John Williams' iconic score that carries Star Wars, even without dialogue. By that notion, Lucas compares Star Wars to silent movies, which didn't depend on dialogue to move and entertain. Today we'll look at some of the ways one can experience the Star Wars films... a little differently.
I make reference to two other video essays in this video. The first is called "How Does An Editor Think and Feel?" by Every Frame a Painting, specifically starting at around the three and a half minute mark. I cannot recommend this video enough: • How Does an Editor Think and Feel?
The other is called "How Star Wars was saved in the edit" by RocketJump: • How Star Wars was saved in the edit
Credit where credit's due:
-Ken Films Star Wars 8mm reel footage (color): • Star wars on super8
-Ken Films Star Wars 8mm reel footage (b&w): • Star Wars The 8mm Ken Films #F48 Sile...
#starwars #videoessay
All Comments (21)
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You can support me directly and get access to my members-only Discord by going to www.patreon.com/CinemaStix On there I’ll also be posting bonus material, supplementary clips, extended interviews, and other stuff to lead discussions. Plus more perks to come. Should be good. Happy Star Wars Day! Danny Boyd
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"Star Wars isn't about the dialogue." Yeah, we noticed George.
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"you say you're a Star Wars fan but you don't even watch it in the original Japanese dub."
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That's what makes the old Lego games so great...following the slimmed down story beats without any dialogue and a touch of slapstick humor make for an iconic and timeless game!
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Imagine a black and white edit of Star Wars, but the light sabers are in colour
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Star Wars fans can argue about the dialogue, about characters about CGI and the screenplays. But all Star Wars fans universally love John Williams‘ music.
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There is this interview with Harrison Ford where he admits that, in the beginning, he and the others weren't taking Lucas and the movie very seriously... Then there was this music recording, or test screening, the first 20 minutes of the movie with the orchestra "And we understood we were actually part of something great, and we never made fun of George again"
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On silent films: I remember once reading about the international popularity of Mr Bean, as language just isn't relevant to the gags.
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This is why Genndy Tartakovsky was perfectly chosen to make the original animated Clone Wars. From Samurai Jack (or even from some Dexter episodes) you could already tell he understood Kurosawa-style storytelling.
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This helps explain why the prequels are so endlessly meme-able. The prequels have a straightforward visual clarity that, even devoid of context - perhaps from the point of view from someone who has never even seen them, is still crystal clear. Then by adding humorous text (not unlike a subtitle or silent movie text card), these memes are able to convey so much information with just one or a few simple images.
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I was born 1980 - I have an auditory processing disorder so it was years before I saw it with captions and understood even half the dialog. I didn’t realize I loved original Star Wars so much because it was essentially a silent film.
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Rewatching "The Phantom Menace" in theaters yesterday just made me appreciate William's genius even more. The ending victorious music being a remix of Palatines theme (hinting at who really won), subtly putting in some of Vader's theme in Annie's theme ("The ending credits theme" is a good way to hear annie's theme in full), and of course "Duel of the Fates".
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The Kurosawa re-edit of Star Wars is a genius idea...
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When they started adding actual voice lines to Lego Games, the magic was lost. For the original Police game, that's fair because it's an original story, but for movie games like Star Wars...I haven't gotten any recently
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When I was less than 10 years old, we had this DVD with Attack of the Clones at home. We used to watch it over and over with my younger brother and it was one of our favourite movies. We're Polish and the DVD was in English, which we barely spoke or understood at the time.
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Opera is actually an interesting analogy. Similar ideas of minimal dialog, and mostly emotions are expressed through music, often with words in another language.
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Fascinating video, but I would suggest that Ben Burtt's sound design is almost as much a part of the audible legend of Star Wars as John Williams' music. Maybe you could experience the movie without DIALOGUE, but definitely not without SOUND.
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Man the OG Lego Star Wars games were so good, in fact they were such exceptional games that when they added spoken dialogue to the newer releases I was really sad. I get that they wanted to innovate and stick with the times, and there are lots of great moments in the newer ones too, but the originals were so clever and funny and some of the gags to get around zero dialogue were amazing
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I noticed about eight years ago that you can tell A LOT about a movie (which cast members in a movie are getting along, Whether the leads have any chemistry, how good the Cinematography is good or not.) by simply WATCHING THE FILM WITHOUT THE SOUND ON. It has been an educating experience.
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"i don't speak Japanese, i took 3 years of it in High School and remember nothing" that is me but with Spanish lmao
