matril: (Default)
matril ([personal profile] matril) wrote2025-04-24 11:46 am

A Thousand Stars: Episode IV, Part 33

The Death Star run is a technical marvel in movie-making. Space battle sequences would never be the same. The modeling after fighter pilot footage, the quick cuts between cockpits and exterior shots, the impending doom of the destruction of the Rebel Base -- it all comes together. And if you've heard any of those nonsense claims that Lucas's version of the sequence was a boring mess than needed to be saved by actual competent editors, let's put all of those to rest. Editing has always been where Lucas does the real work of cinema. He's routinely expressed how he loves taking the various pieces and stitching them together into a narrative. The first rough cut of the film was, duh, rough, and he had fully expected that. He then collaborated with a competent team to refine it into a polished finished product (and nothing wrong with wanting to keep polishing it either; as a writer I empathize with this impulse quite fervently).

Anyway, let's look at some specific striking shots. The initial approach. X-foils in attack formation. Entering the trench.

Notice the little tricks of perspective, how we get different angles of cockpits to help us envision which direction the ships are moving.

And the occasional cut to the Rebel base or the Death Star, to remind us of the stakes, the ticking clock. No shot lasts for very long, because we need a sense of movement and urgency.

It's incredible. I've seen a lot (a lot) of old cheap space movies, lots of chintzy effects. By the 70s the technology had improved enough to produce impressive visuals like in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but that was mostly slow, ponderous stuff. Nothing like this. Star Wars changed everything.

Next time, victory!