A New Hope. Or as the really bad OT purists insist on calling it, The Original Star Wars™.
edited 18th Feb '16 10:41:04 AM by higherbrainpattern
I want to see one person in this thread say "American Graffiti", and mean it.
Don't Try It
I liked the OT, and the Indiana Jones trilogy (didn't see Crystal Skull long enough).
Need to give American Graffiti a go.
It's Over Anakin, I have the high ground!
Revenge of the Sith, probably.
"All you Fascists bound to lose."
I can't say American Graffiti because I've never seen it myself. Probably the one big New Hollywood movie of that decade I haven't managed to see. Dammit.
edited 18th Feb '16 1:22:25 PM by gallium
THX-1138, but then I like more avant-garde films than the average film-goer.
@higherbrainpattern, why call them "really bad OT purists"?
edited 18th Feb '16 3:23:06 PM by Boston
I happen to like the title "A New Hope". In the context of the entire Star Wars franchise, it's a really appropriate and good title, but then you have folks that insist on referring to it as just "Star Wars", as some sort of protest against George Lucas re-titling it.
Do you ever think it might be just because that's the way the film was titled when they first saw it?
Look, I'm all for criticizing George Lucas, but it's just a title. Like, the overall franchise is called Star Wars, so I don't really think it's a really big deal?
Cape Malleum Majorem
Does this include all films/TV shows that GL participated in making, no matter how small his contribution? If so, I'll have to add the following to my personal list of favorites:
Grand Prix (1966) - additional camera operator
Apocalypse Now (1979) - participated in making the film (don't ask me...)
Robot Chicken: Star Wars skits (2007-2010) - portraying/parodying himself
This Space Intentionally Left Blank.
Lucas directing Apocalypse Now would have been very, very interesting. I understand he was originally going for a much more American Graffiti / documentary approach, which would have given a very different feel to the film. Not necessarily the wrong one, but definitely not the film Coppola ended up making.
"but then you have folks that insist on referring to it as just "Star Wars", as some sort of protest against George Lucas re-titling it"
(waves hand)
It was called Star Wars in 1977, when I saw it as a child. It was called "Star Wars" for 20 years after that. It wasn't until that crappy Phantom Menace movie came out, with its awful title that started everyone calling it "Episode I", when people also started calling the first movie "Episode IV" or, ugh, "A New Hope."
BTW I am not an OT purist and I'm not a fanboy—I've never read a single Star Wars book or cartoon or anything at all in the "Expanded Universe", and I've seen the four most recent films exactly one time each. Still, the title "A New Hope" is just rock-stupid.
Neither the Other Wiki
nor the IMDB refer to the film simply as A New Hope as this wiki does. This wiki would do well to call the 1977 film simply Star Wars.
The ANH name predates the Prequels.
The subtitle "A New Hope" was added when Star Wars was re-released in theaters, and slightly later to home video (ie, VCR tapes — anyone remember those?) But if you weren't a fan, avidly watching and re-watching the material, you might not have been aware of it.
The original novelization of Star Wars was subtitled "from the Journal of the Whills," suggesting there were many other adventures to be told. That title alludes to one of the working drafts of the Star Wars script. A lot of the elements of that version of the script get name-checked in later media (lookin' at you, Starkiller Base) but oddly, I don't recall the Whills showing up anywhere else.
FWIW, I generally call the first Star Wars movie Star Wars, rather than A New Hope, but I find the second title useful for disambiguation.
edited 18th Feb '16 4:35:24 PM by Boston
- Points twelve posts up and raises hand* Yo.
Would that it were so simple.
The Empire Strikes Back. Or The Last Crusade, for something other than Star Wars.
"Lucas directing Apocalypse Now would have been very, very interesting. I understand he was originally going for a much more American Graffiti / documentary approach, which would have given a very different feel to the film. Not necessarily the wrong one, but definitely not the film Coppola ended up making."
I think how it went down was for the best. Coppola's hyper-intense Heart of Darkness adaptation was probably more appropriate and meaningful than a nostalgia-tinged retrospective. Lucas makes a war film, you get Red Tails.
edited 18th Feb '16 6:39:16 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."
In all professional film lists, the 1977 movie is listed as either "Star Wars" or "Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope." It isn't ever listed as solely "A New Hope," while Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi are often listed solely by those names. TV Tropes lists it as just "A New Hope" so that it has symmetry with all the other films and minimizes Colon Cancer. It's also a reflection of how the site developed. Before the medium namespaces the main/StarWars referred to ALL things associated with Star Wars, when trope lists grew and it started to be divided up by individual productions there were many that merely used the Star Wars label but not the actual title.
Lucas was a factor in the early Apocalypse Now development, but was not really a producer in any significant sense. He provided some financial support during its Troubled Production, which would qualify him for a producer credit by itself but he did not want to burden the production with the George Lucas expectations. He did the same thing with Body Heat.
Honestly it's kind of Apples and Oranges, but since Star Wars was it's original name, that's what I call it.
Return of the Jedi is my favorite of the trilogy.
I tend to call it "A New Hope," "the original," or "the first one that's actually the fourth one."
I still call Episode 4 (A New Hope) "Star Wars" because that's what it was called when it was released, and that's what everyone called it until the release of The Phantom Menace. It's more habit than anything, though. I've no problem with the title "A New Hope" and it was right there in the opening crawl, anyway. When discussing the films with other people, for the sake of clarity, I try to refer to them by their chapter titles.
As much bile as the man gets for the decisions he made regarding the quote/unquote changes he does to his films, as well as his behavior in regards to his fanbase, one has to concede to the fact that George Lucas has left an undeniable mark on Hollywood as we know it. After all, this a man, who, at a very young age, recovered from a very potentially fatal car crash, got up, dusted himself off, and went on to college, not only working with such legendary figures as Francis Ford Coppola, The Rolling Stones, and Akira Kurosawa, but also launching the acting career of Harrison Ford, developing the sound system THX as well as the visual effects juggernaut known as Industrial Light & Magic. No matter how you slice it, Lucas has definitely left a primo impact on filmmaking, and has made, as well as helped (either through production or other means) some truly amazing films in his lifetime. So, what are your favorite George Lucas films, ones that he either had a single credit, on screen or not, or one that he built from the ground up himself? I'll start. After one viewing, and knowing scant information about it, I have to say, in addition to Star Wars and Indiana Jones, I also love his second film, American Graffiti.
Love tearing bad movies to shreds? Join us every night at 8 PM