

Empire Strikes 30: Ars looks back at an amazing film - wyclif
http://arstechnica.com/media/news/2010/05/empire-strikes-30-ars-looks-back-at-an-amazing-film.ars

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simonsarris
> Star Wars: The Empire Strikes back is one of the best science fiction films
> ever made.

I do think that Empire Strikes Back is an enormously enjoyable film, but I
take at them calling it science fiction.

I feel this might be a bit of an unpopular sentiment, but Star Wars was never
really science fiction at all. It had all the things Ars said it did: Good
story, good character development, good settings, good effects, but at the end
of the day it was literally a Fantasty/Romance with a large FX budget (for the
time). There was no science that was actually integral to the series itself,
or at least none that could not have been replaced with Knights-and-dragons
style elements just as easily.

Compare to the story elements to (just for instance) Ghost in the Shell, which
was a science fiction that asked a lot of questions: In the future, how will
people deal with cyborgs? How will they deal with longer lifespans? How will
they deal with 21st century governments breaking down? How will society deal
with a new and more pervasive "net?" The show tries to deal with many of the
pains of emerging technologies and an evolving world.

Compared to such sci-fi, Star Wars was just a romance novel _plus lasers_.
Empire Strikes Back was good, definitely, but not precisely because of sci-fi
elements.

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akkartik
I always thought it was the height of indulgence for star wars to be a
trilogy. Compress episode 4 down to 10 minutes, episode 6 down to 20, and slap
them on either side of _Empire Strikes Back_ , untouched. I suspect the result
would be startling.

I didn't realize Lucas contributed so little to this movie. That explains a
lot.

~~~
loganfrederick
I disagree. Having just watched Episode 4 when this story was posted, there is
no way on the stories of Luke's origin with Obi Wan, development of the Force,
meeting Han Solo, rescuing the princess, establishing the power of the Death
Star and Darth Vader, having Vader fight Obi Wan with meaning, and have the
Rebels fight the Empire all in 10 minutes and still have people understand and
care about what's happening.

tl;dr: You'd lose all the character development and be forcing plot into a
film where no one cared about any of the characters.

~~~
philwelch
This isn't Reddit or anything--the quality of discourse is (hopefully still)
high enough on HN that people can be arsed to read a three line paragraph
without needing a tl;dr.

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dkarl
So, is there anywhere in the world where a person can legally buy a copy of
the original trilogy? It's 2010, I'm all grown up, I make a good living, and I
still can't buy Star Wars. This sucks.

~~~
philwelch
They released the unaltered trilogy on DVD in 2006. Not sure if it's still
available.

[http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_DVD_releases#Star_W...](http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Wars_DVD_releases#Star_Wars_Trilogy_-
_Unaltered)

UPDATE: Yep, still available.

[http://shop.starwars.com/catalog/product.xml?topcatID=130026...](http://shop.starwars.com/catalog/product.xml?topcatID=1300264;product_id=1307374)

"Featuring the Special Edition _and original theatrical versions_ of all three
films in the original trilogy"

~~~
dkarl
That explains why I never found it: I'm kind of allergic to the Special
Edition. Is there any way I can buy the original without paying for the
Special Edition as well? I'd rather my money not be used as proof of fan
acceptance of that abomination.

~~~
philwelch
Sorry, that's the best I can find :(

There are, of course, ways to _get_ the original unaltered trilogy...but we'll
leave it at that.

~~~
dkarl
Yeah, I tried torrents. It didn't work out, possibly because I'm not really
savvy about that kind of thing. The few times I was actually able to finish
downloading a torrent, it turned out to be unusable files or porn. Getting
porn was scary because the only reason people would distribute porn under the
guise of Star Wars torrents would be because it was illegal in some way. Maybe
I just fail at torrents :-/

