DVD: Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope

In preparation for the new one coming out later this week, thought it would be good to watch all the old ones again. I had intended to start earlier, but only just got to the first (well, fourth) one last night. Unfortunately the bulb on the projector died a bit ago and we haven’t gotten around to replacing it yet. I had really wanted to watch these projected up to wall size, but that is OK I guess. Instead, we finally hooked up a five disk DVD player / receiver / home theater kit thingy that I had won in a raffle over a year ago. My other DVD player is in the family room for the projector (and temporarily for a regular TV there). We set this one up in the master bedroom. I got really frustrated by the lack of a backlight on the remote, but we watched the movie. The first half Brandy and Amy and I were all on the bed, then Amy fell asleep between us. All very nice. At one point though we needed to stop cause the dog needed to go out and Amy was crushing Brandy’s arm. Which inturrupted the flow a little, but would have been OK. But then when we were ready to start I hit the wrong button ont he stupid remote, then accidentially started the movie over from the beginning. Then I had to find the right chapter we were on and start it from there, which backed it up to repeat about 5 minutes. This confusticated me greatly, and I started to have a little fit, and almost stopped for the night with the intention of starting over from the beginning again the next day, because I was now completely out of the movie groove, and was too upset to really enjoy it all. But, after about 10 minutes I calmed down, and we watched the rest of the movie. Well, I did. Brandy fell asleep. (And of course Amy was already asleep.)

I’m not going to spend too much time actually talking about this movie, because well, everybody in the universe pretty much has seen it multiple times. Now, this was the first time I’d watched the DVD release, which had even more changed on top of what had been changed for the Special Edition releases a few years back. So it was cool looking for some of the differences. Also, I relized that I actually had NOT seen this THAT many times. I’d seen the end like a billion times, cause I would flip channels and see it on TV and watcht he end. And the closer to the end we got, the more was clearly remembered. The stuff at the beginning, much fuzzier. Not that there was anything I didn’t remember at all mind you (other than some of the new things) but it was just interesting to see how my memories of the end were much stronger than of the beginning.

I’m intending to post little snippets on each new DVD I watch (I won’t redo ones I’ve done before if I watch them again). I didn’t actually intend to start this with five star wars movies in a row, but it just happened to be the first ones after I decided I would do this. The last movie before these was Rebel Without a Cause if that helps. And there will probably be more variety later. We shall see.

Also, this will be like five in five days if I actually do all of them in time to watch the new one Saturday (not even thinking of trying for opening night), whereas I normally only get around to watching a DVD (either one of my own choice or one Brandy or Amy picked) once every few weeks.

Anyway, so that is Star Wars.

Oh yeah, and obligitory stuff…

I agree with the folks that say the change to when Han shot Greedo sucked. Still does.

I actually like most of the added affects, but there are a few that didn’t seem to fit quite right.

Even with redone CGI yet again, the Han / Jabba scene doesn’t work well. Should have just left it out still.

Uh, that’s enough I guess.