As most of you probably know, Star Wars: Episode III was released on DVD today. With this release, we know have all six Star Wars films on DVD, so my son is planning a Star Wars marathon with some of his friends -- they are going to watch all six movies back-to-back, and maybe watch the Clone Wars animated series as well, although the jury is still out on that one. I'm probably going to join them. :)
Star Wars, the original movie, now called Star Wars: A New Hope, was a very important film for both science fiction fans and the general public as well. Think about what special effects were like before this film came out. In most cases they were cheesy plastic models hanging from strings that you could sometimes see in the shot. When we walked into Star Wars, however, for the first time everything seemed real. Yeah, we can do even better with today's CGI effects, but watch the original film again. Even today it's pretty darn good, and when it came out it changed the way we see and make movies. The story is good and there is a lot a budding science fiction writer can learn from the elements of the saga (even though what we thought was Luke Skywalker's story has turned out to be Anakin Skywalker's story). But it is the wonder of being transported to "a galaxy far, far away" that made the original movie special for us. In the case of Star Wats it was really the special effects, cleverly integrated into the story, that brought about that feeling. Nevertheless, this feeling is exactly what we should be trying to evoke as writers. And we've got the best special effects company ever created: our readers' imaginations!
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