Talk:Star Wars (film)

message: Could the home media section be updated to say which (if any) of the video releases include the original scene where Han shot first?  I had somehow thought from the Han shot first article that these didn't exist and somehow basically every copy of the film with that scene had been suppressed.  Thanks.  2601:648:8200:990:0:0:0:B68B (talk) 22:48, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: It was in the original theatrical releases 208.38.236.117 (talk) 00:04, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Home media request 

message: i have trouble believing gone with the wind outdistanced a new hope at the box office, adjusted for inflation. there have been wiki articles mentioning the hollywood practice of funny math. and, when looking up indications that audiences kept the former in theaters longer than the latter, i cannot find any. i was there to witness the three years that audiences kept a new hope in theaters, in 1977. i think the admitted rerelease campaign of the former movie's makers, is manipulative, and the initial pure theater run(tail), should be the measuring stick. sometimes feeling is truth, and no movie, before or since a new hope, feels it stayed in theaters, initially, the longest. 74.109.247.243 (talk) 06:55, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: You need to cite a reliable source that discusses any of that. DonQuixote (talk) 12:36, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  box office success 

message: Does it really make sense to have photos of the cast from thirty to forty years after this film was released? If we could figure out how to find and license images from the time period, I think those would work much better to support the article. This reasoning should apply to not only the other films in this trilogy, but film articles in general. TNstingray (talk) 17:10, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: In many cases we have to use what's available. There unfortunately aren't free photos of the Star Wars cast from this time period and it would not be appropriate to upload non-free images for an article that's not their own. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 17:25, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: There's a still from the film featuring Hamill, Ford, and Fisher already present in the article. Surely there are workarounds such as this, rather than unintentionally misleading the audience regarding the perceived age of the actors in this film. It's no different than having an article about the French and Indian War having an image of George Washington as President of the United States. The images used in the article should reflect the content of the article, not other articles. Given the choice between having an inaccurate image or no image at all, I would suggest the latter. TNstingray (talk) 18:05, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I get what you're saying. We could surely change Hamill's photo to this one from 1978 for starters. There's also this one of Fisher from 1978 although that one isn't exactly appealing. The rest of the cast doesn't have anything else that's free unfortunately. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 19:16, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cast photos 

message: Hi everyone, I'm doing a copyedit of this entire article. I've removed a large segment, and I'll explain why. It was under the Development sub-heading in the Production section, and I'll include a bit of the preceding paragraph so you can see where it was placed in the article:
"...and both directors declined to finance it.
Lucas said, "I've always been an outsider to the Hollywood types. They think I do weirdo films." According to Kurtz, Lew Wasserman, the head of Universal, "just didn't think much of science fiction at that time, didn't think it had much of a future then, with that particular audience." He said that "science fiction wasn't popular in the mid-'70s... what seems to be the case generally is that the studio executives are looking for what was popular last year, rather than trying to look forward to what might be popular next year." Kurtz said, "Although Star Wars wasn't like [then-current science fiction] at all, it was just sort of lumped into that same kind of category."
The preceding paragraph (that ends with "...and both directors declined to finance it.) tells us that Universal had concerns about Star Wars and declined to fund it. Do we need more information about that? If so, we could keep the segment, but it's mostly quotes so it will need to be rewritten in encyclopedic prose. 
The segment is based on this source.
Wafflewombat (talk) 03:23, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: This could probably be condensed down to a sentence but is worthy of inclusion. Currently, the discussion of studios turning down the film makes it sound like they thought it was a good idea, and only reluctantly declined to provide funding. The way Lucas et al. tell the story, that's definitely not the case. UpdateNerd (talk) 06:18, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I noticed those two conflicting narratives. I'm doing a lot of rearranging to try to make the section coherent, so I'll try to get a version of this back in, and then I'll post an update. Thanks for the feedback. Wafflewombat (talk) 08:32, 1 March 2024 (UTC)

text: The sentence begins "According to Kurtz...". This should be enough, although we could add the word "ostensibly" or some such about the apocalyptic themes. It should be possible to find another Star Wars-related source backing this up as a cliche of the many banal sci-fi titles of the time. (Although besides the polarizing 2001, Planet of the Apes had been an exceptional success.) At any rate there's more literature than this one IGN interview with Kurtz that should help to paint the picture in due time. UpdateNerd (talk) 04:01, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Actually I'm a little perturbed by this edit. It's clearly sourced and a URL being unsecure is not a reason to remove a source. It may not be a reliable source, and may be undue, but the edit summary is not appropriate. Canterbury Tail talk 14:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your input. I've started a new thread so we can talk about this topic. Wafflewombat (talk) 15:09, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

text: Having said that, I've just RVed one recent edit. Slow down please and discuss, or use cleanup templates like  in preference to mass removals, or nobody else has a chance to respond. Thanks. Cnbrb (talk) 14:25, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the message. I'm happy to slow down. Wafflewombat (talk) 14:42, 7 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removal of segment? 

message: The first paragraph in the Home Media section deals with Super 8 versions of the film. Most of the paragraph is devoted to listing 8 Italian-language scenes. Is this a violation of the "due weight" guideline? It takes up a large amount of article space for a topic that probably very, very few people will find interesting or useful. But that's just my guess. Thoughts? Wafflewombat (talk) 08:13, 13 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't appear that notable to me. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 00:48, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Would you suggest removing it completely or just making a very brief mention? Wafflewombat (talk) 02:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Italian Super 8 

message: Hey I see you've been removing some original reviews from the reception section. Although they might not be useful now, you should still make note of them for the future if the section is ever fully rewritten so it's in line with WP:RECEPTION (like Empire). It's not often original reviews from a '70s movie are available online and we don't want to lose those to the edit history. It's why I added the original Sight & Sound review to the top of this page (removed by you last week). Just something to keep in mind. – zmbro (talk) (cont) 00:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the note. I only removed one source, and I saved it in a spreadsheet I have going. I will probably re-write the Reception section at some point, and I'll be able to consult that source. If I don't rewrite the section, I'll put the removed source in the Further Reading section, which is where I put the Sight & Sound review. Wafflewombat (talk) 00:45, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

text: My mistake—I removed two sources. Both have been saved for later. :) Wafflewombat (talk) 01:03, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reception 

message: Is Paul Blake (Greedo) credited in the cast list in the actual film? I just noticed his only mention in the article is in the filming section in a paragraph devoted to Jabba the Hutt. I imagine he deserves to be in the cast section, but if he is not credited at all in the film credits I'm not sure. Sidebar, the paragraph discussing Jabba fails to mention he was played by Declan Mulholland in the deleted scene that Lucas reinserted into the film with the 1997 special edition. It'd be nice to find a source for that (I'd imagine Rinzler's book states it). – zmbro (talk) (cont) 20:19, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Blake was one of two Greedos, the mask sucked so bad Greedo was a re-shot in CA, played by Maria de Aragon. Would think they go in the Uncredited actors paragraph. Declan Mulholland's Jabba is covered at Changes in Star Wars re-releases. Fountains of Bryn Mawr (talk) 21:43, 11 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Paul Blake (actor)|Paul Blake]] 

message: I notice my addition regarding computer animation was reverted (re-reading it, the sentence itself should probably have been rewritten). Since there already is a segment about the computer animation, the new information feels relevant, as it explains why the animation was made in the first place. Lucas could have used a miniature or traditional animation to make the short instruction video in the briefing room, but he wanted the audience to know they were looking at CGI, and for that purpose he decided to use wire-frame models, which is not a representation of what computers were capable of in the 70s (but it did take a lot of effort, about two minutes for each frame). Which explain his choice. 
Quotes from the article: 
"With Star Wars already in production, George Lucas issued a call for bids from companies and individuals to produce various bits of instrumentation animation — in particular the briefing room sequence. A number of computer artists and some cel animators responded. (The article later says: "The briefing room sequence is the only scene in Star Wars in which digital computer animation was used — other than for occasional background displays as part of the Deathstar set")
Some of the computer people had very sophisticated equipment capable of producing colored and shaded planes and forms. One computer artist even wanted to do most of the model sequences entirely on computers. George spoke with each of the artists and viewed their work, but Larry seemed to understand the kind of look that George wanted for the film.
On the screen the Star Wars audience sees the computer realization of the trench sequence in the form of a “wire cage’’ model rather than as a series of solid forms and planes. One of the early problems in computer graphics was the wire cage versus solid form display. At first computer programs could only call up figures in wire cage format. It was only a few years ago that programs were devised to remove the “hidden lines;’’ the program had to determine which lines would be “hidden’’ by a front surface or plane and remove those lines.
“When George Lucas specified the kind of animation he wanted for the scene, he knew enough about computer animation to ask for a true perspective without the ‘hidden lines’ removed. He wanted the trench and the Deathstar to appear as wire cage figures with all lines and vertices visible. George thought that this sort of image would suggest ‘computer animation’ by having a very mechanical look.”
Larry Cuba suggests that in the future computers will be able to generate pictures of such quality that they will look as though they had been photographed by a camera. In the case of Star Wars, it was thought that such photographic realism might be confusing to the audience, so a wire cage model was specified so that the audience would readily understand that the images were to have been created by a machine.
“I set up a Mitchell 35mm camera with an animation motor in front of the screen and connected it to the computer so that a signal from the program could trigger the animation motor when the image was complete.”
“I suggested that they wait and shoot the sequence in England blue screen; they could print the computer effects in later and have the thing perfect. But no, they wanted to rear project it so that the guys in the briefing room would play to the images while they were talking. Well, my first take worked. There were a couple of problems, but they edited around them.”
Also sounds like there was a little more CGI than just the briefing room, even if it's just some minor stuff. Silbad (talk) 10:55, 27 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for the detailed post. However, I still don't see how this is notable enough for the article. It seems like something that only people very interested in animation would care about. Many readers who have seen the film are not going to remember the scene or the animation in question, so a discussion of the animation without supporting images is not going to be interesting or informative. Wafflewombat (talk) 10:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Like Special effects of The Empire Strikes Back, I do think the special effects of Star Wars are notable enough in their own right for a separate article. In fact, you could make an article that covers both the original film's special effects (models, matte paintings, etc.) and all the extra CGI from the Special edition onwards... – zmbro (talk) (cont) 11:09, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: CGI

message: Should we mention the fact that the Death Star is a space station? As it reads, "the Empire's newest weapon, the Death Star" seems to leave it very vague, as a "weapon" can mean anything. I'm thinking expand it to "the Empire's newest weapon, a space station known as the Death Star." – zmbro (talk) (cont) 21:33, 2 June 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's okay either way. A little clarification is nice, but the Death Star is described as a space station at the beginning of the Plot section, and the lead doesn't need to have more than the most basic plot summary. Wafflewombat (talk) 22:11, 2 June 2024 (UTC)

text: Per Wafflewombat, plus there is a link to the Death Star article in any case. I don't oppose the proposed clarification, though. Betty Logan (talk) 03:02, 3 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Question about lead