![](\"https:\/\/www.hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/images\/han.jpg\" "\\"Han")
Watched Star Wars IV<\/i> with Katherine last week. Since all she knows about SW is (a) somebody brought Phantom Menace <\/i>to her day care and she thought it was boring, and (b) endless Star Wars – Clone Wars<\/i> ads on Cartoon Network, I thought it would be fun, some “Daddy\/Kitten” time.<\/p>\n
A mixed success.<\/p>\n
She watched along with me for most of it, but her attention began to wander, paradoxically, as the Millennium Falcon<\/i> is escaping from the Death Star, and her body followed suit as the Rebel ships headed for their mission toward same. <\/p>\n
She seemed to be generally entertained prior to that. She liked the trash compacter scene. She liked the idea of Princess Leia, though she wondered why she didn’t wear a crown. She didn’t quite distinguish between the Death Star and the Imperial Star Destroyers. She liked the robots, though she wanted to know more about the silver Threepio at the very beginning. She thought the Jawas were creepy, thought the Sand People were scary, and was entertained by the Cantina. <\/p>\n
My own impressions were more mixed. The DVD, of course, has all the latest-greatest digital tweaking that Lucas has done. My thoughts:<\/p>\n
The movie varies between cheesy, exciting, and pretty. The lighting is, in many places, very 70s (shadows are a lot more common these days). The ships fly around improbably close to each other (we see much better space dogfights these days, too). The physical acting (the Darth\/Obi-wan light saber fight, the shooting being done by Luke and Han) is often clumsy. There’s an awful plastic nature to so much you can see.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, the dialog and acting are actually not too bad. The various talking heads scenes, Alec Guiness, and the Han\/Luke\/Leia bits are all enjoyable (even if Luke still comes off as a whiny, overemotional brat). The story is a classic. And some of the 70s clumsiness in fx has been masked by the digital updates. Though, while the Jabba scene has been improved from the original inclusion, it still <\/i>doesn’t quite work (Han’s eyes and body don’t focus on him correctly). And, while some of the control panels have been digitally changed to show imperial typography and characters, there are still shots with numeric displays (the macrobinoculars, the “The Death Star Is Coming!” display) that have arabic numerals. <\/p>\n
Speaking of fx, it’s not clear to me whether the various 70s computer graphics have been minimized to avoid the embarrassment to modern eyes, but it sure felt like it. It seemed <\/i>like there were fewer shots of the various computerized targeting systems. I’m honestly surprised that, while they were tweaking other bits, they weren’t improving those. Not sexy enough, perhaps. <\/p>\n
Oh, and I’ll chime in to echo that, no, Han shoots first.<\/i> He doesn’t do it unprovoked, mind you, but he’s not going to wait for Greedo to pull his gun and fire first (or even simultaneously). But I digress.<\/p>\n
That all said, Star Wars IV<\/i> still works. It’s still a fun movie. It has a fundamental joy, drama, tragedy, and comedy that the more technically complex first trilogy has, so far, lacked. And I’ll have to try watching it again with Katherine in a few years …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Watched Star Wars IV with Katherine last week. Since all she knows about SW is (a) somebody brought Phantom Menace to her day care and she thought it was boring,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,372],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-star-wars-media-movies"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":129125,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/12\/14\/movie-review-star-wars-iv-a-new-hope-1977.html","url_meta":{"origin":7300,"position":0},"title":"Movie Review: "Star Wars IV: A New Hope" (1977)","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 14-Dec-15 10:28pm","format":false,"excerpt":"As part of the pre-\"The Force Awakens\" prep, +Kay Hill and I rewatched the first of the original trilogy. 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Episode IV: A New Bleat","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 21-Oct-14 3:57pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Okay, I may have hurt myself laughing.(via http:\/\/qoftu.com\/2014\/10\/21\/star-wars-goats-awesome\/) #starwars View on Google+","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":130354,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/03\/working-our-way-bass-ackwardly-through-the-star-wars-animated-universe.html","url_meta":{"origin":7300,"position":2},"title":"Working our way bass-ackwardly through the Star Wars Animated Universe","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 3-Apr-16 10:58pm","format":false,"excerpt":"For reasons best explained by midichlorians (i.e., inexplicable, improbable, and really kind of annoying), we never got into any of the Star Wars: Clone Wars stuff in this household -- but we[1] did recently start binging through the quite fun Star Wars: Rebels. Having gotten caught up through the S.2\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Clone-Troopers-Star-Wars-Clone-Wars-Cody5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Clone-Troopers-Star-Wars-Clone-Wars-Cody5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/Clone-Troopers-Star-Wars-Clone-Wars-Cody5B15D.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":136076,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/04\/08\/the-star-wars-rebels-finale.html","url_meta":{"origin":7300,"position":3},"title":"The “Star Wars Rebels” Finale","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 8-Apr-18 6:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"[No spoilers, I hope, but I can't speak for the comments.] The kid and I watched the final six episodes of Star Wars Rebels last night, which were tremendously fine, lots of fun, wrapped up a ton of plot points, set up some new ones for a future David Filoni\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/star%2Bwars%2Brebels%2Bsabine%2Bmural.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/star%2Bwars%2Brebels%2Bsabine%2Bmural.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/04\/star%2Bwars%2Brebels%2Bsabine%2Bmural.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5843,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/07\/10\/force_art.html","url_meta":{"origin":7300,"position":4},"title":"Force Art","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 10-Jul-04 10:11pm","format":false,"excerpt":"The covers and disc art for the Star Wars DVD set (IV-VI) have been announced. 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