Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

Hey, Do You Remember...?

Christopher Schrader

Tv & Film, Comedy

4.8 • 676 Ratings

🗓️ 18 March 2016

⏱️ 184 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We knew we had to pick something big for our 75th episode and what could be more monumental than the original Star Wars? These days it's tough to separate the saga's mythology from the real world controversy surrounding the Special Editions, the prequels, and the revisionist history Lucas constantly seems to be rewriting, but we do our best to acknowledge all of that while simultaneously celebrating what a tremendous achievement this was back in 1977 and why it still means so much to so many of us today.

Topics include: Our varying degrees of Star Wars fandom and the different perspectives we're all coming at this with, the influence this franchise has had on the film industry and culture at large, the real problem with the concept of "Special Editions" and the particularly noteworthy missteps this one makes, the unsung heroes of the series who were unceremoniously erased from its history, the incredible realization of Lucas' "used future" concept for the look of the film, lightsaber battles in the OT vs the PT, Darth Vader's minimal screen time and why keeping him on the peripheral works so much better, how different the second act of the film almost was, why Chewbacca doesn't get a medal, and much much more!

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About The Show

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, do you remember Star Wars?
0:07.0	Hello and welcome to Hey Do You Remember, a show where we reminisce about a movie or TV series we grew up with, then take off the rose-tinted glasses to see how it holds up.
0:32.3	I'm Chris.
0:32.9	I'm Donna.
0:33.6	And I'm Carlos.
0:34.3	And today we're revisiting Star Wars.
0:53.1	Thank you. And I'm Carlos. And today we're revisiting Star Wars. A long time ago in a screening room far, far away, friends of George Lucas gathered to watch a rough cut of his latest movie, Star Wars.
1:01.5	The overwhelming consensus was that it was an unmitigated disaster. In fact, one of the only dissenting opinions came from Stephen Spielberg, who recognized the project's potential and encouraged
1:11.3	Lucas to push forward with it. Star Wars had always been an uphill battle for the Maverick filmmaker.
1:16.7	Every step of the way, Lucas would lay out his intentions, and someone would tell him why it couldn't
1:21.1	be done. Initially, he wanted to make a bigger, sleeker version of the old Flash Gordon serials,
1:26.3	but failed to secure the rights.
1:28.1	So he decided to make his own sci-fi adventure in the same vein, but the studios weren't
1:32.0	interested in the genre or his bizarre, esoteric story treatments. And even when the success of American
1:37.4	graffiti provided him with enough clout to get the film financed, the taxing production was
1:41.9	so stressful for him that he wound up in the hospital.
1:44.9	Even the title was a problem. Sci-fi wasn't in vogue, and in the immediate aftermath of
1:49.2	Vietnam, there was concern that the word wars would turn people off. A large portion of the cast,
1:54.3	the crew, and studio brass had already written the film off as a total failure. On May 25,
1:59.5	1977, a lot of people were proved wrong. There's absolutely
2:03.6	no way to oversell the impact and influence of Star Wars. It forever changed the way films were
2:09.0	made, marketed, and maybe most importantly for Lucas, merchandised. He had accepted a lower salary
	...

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