There is a certain arrogance to the concept of Film Forensics, sometimes – the idea that I might improve what is already an excellent film, and not ruin it with my pedantic meddling. For Star Wars, this is definitely a concern, although I am somewhat heartened that George Lucas has also already done so, with frankly middling results. I’m sure my seven-year-old self (the age at which I first saw the film) would have enjoyed the changes Lucas made, much more than he would enjoy the changes I will propose. What I wish to correct, mostly, are the moments that pull me out of the film now, at age 34.

The first moment that I was pulled out of the film was when Leia’s ship was captured by the destroyer. R2-D2 and C-3PO escape in the life pod, and the commander of the destroyer decides not to shoot it because it doesn’t contain any life forms. Why not shoot it anyway, just to be sure? If the destroyer’s guns were too big and slow to lock onto on such a small, maneuvering target, we would understand why the rebellion sends X-Wing fighters to combat the Death Star. Foreshadowing. The commander could, instead, be told that the guns were unable to lock onto such a small target, and would he like to send out a TIE fighter to shoot it down? At that point, he could be excused for asking whether there were life forms, and not going to the additional effort. In addition, since this is the point at which we discover that it is possible to scan for life forms, we could set some rules for it, so that later when they scan the Millennium Falcon we know they can get it wrong. An exchange as simple as “No life forms, sir.” “Shielding?” “No sir. Shall I send out TIE-fighters?” “No, don’t bother.” would have done the job, indicating both that life-forms can be hidden, that the commander was thinking along the wrong lines, and that destroying the capsule would be a hassle.

There is a long period in the film that, as far as I’m concerned, works fine. Oh, sure, C-3P0 and R2-D2 are quite irritating to me now, and at first, Luke is a little more petulant and whiny than I’d like, but I’m so used to it I have trouble coming up with alternatives. Luke matures as he goes along (the whole heroes journey thing, vastly over-stated as an influence, as far as I’m concerned) and the droids, at least, suffer a lot. Which is nice. There are a few other minor niggles: Obi-Wan’s conversation with Luke in his cave requires a few mental gymnastics to make it gel with the events of the subsequent films (set both before and after), and Lucas’ change to Solo’s fight with Greedo is odd, but both these topics have been covered at length by others, and we have bigger fish to dynamite.

The next point at which the problems arise is when the Millennium Falcon arrives at Aldaran to find it destroyed, and is sucked in by the tractor beam. It is a niggling point, but the imperial forces should have been a great deal more suspicious. The Falcon, after all, pursues the TIE fighter until it gets too close and then the tractor beam sucks it in. The TIE fighter pilot would have known the Falcon was being piloted, and when the tractor beam sucks it in, it is hard to see how an escape pod might evade it, so even barring the life form scanner, they should have known there were still people on board. This requires only a small, simple change – the Falcon could release a life pod, which could either be shown evading the tractor beam, or be blown up by the TIE fighter or of its own accord (perhaps it was able to give false positive readings on the life form scanner). This would also serve to underscore some of Solo’s smuggler cunning, and could even be used to make the audience temporarily think our heroes had been destroyed, if we saw the remainder of this sequence from the point of view of the imperials. As it stands, we are not convincingly shown how the heroes evade the long-range life form scanner – presumably there is a thick-walled capsule under the floor, but all we see is the (rather thin) floor plate being lifted up, as they climb out.

Their subsequent escapade through the Death Star starts well. They overpower the close-up scanning team, overpower the guards outside, wear their uniforms (which, when I first saw the film, was very confusing: I thought the stormtroopers were robots, and that Luke and Han had somehow ripped out their guts to fit inside), pretend to have malfunctioning communication units, and overpower the guards in the rest of the docking bay. All good. Put the droids in the docking bay control centre, pretend Chewbacca is a prisoner, take him to the prison block. Fine, fine, fine.

When the big shootout starts, it gets a bit iffy. This is the first instance in which we see the stormtroopers not being nearly as good shots as we were lead to believe. There are about a dozen guards, who get off quite a few shots, but don’t even hit Chewbacca, and he’s the obvious enemy. And, by the way, if Lucas was so concerned about Greedo shooting first, what about when the heroes start blasting bad guys in this scene? It’s far more sneaky and unmanly – they’re even disguised as stormtroopers themselves! I suppose they do, at least, warn the stormtroopers that there is trouble by having Chewbacca break his bonds (thus giving them enough moral leeway – if they hadn’t shoot all of those stormtroopers, the stormtroopers would have shot Chewie). But this is only a little iffy. I think it could have been fixed just by lengthening the time before the shooting starts. Stretch the tension, allow Luke and Han to get good looks at all the stormtroopers, and when they start their killing spree, they know where everyone is, they can make sure nobody rings the alarm, and they can get some cover.

It’s when Leia gets out and the extra stormtroopers are in the prison block that we really start having problems. The corridor is not well protected. The stormtroopers are really terrible shots. Our heroes really ought to be dead many, many times over.

There are a couple of things they could have done here. One is to put a bit more cover in the corridor, or have them shooting back from inside Leia’s cell. Another possibility is for them to release some more of the prisoners and arm them with the weapons taken from the first lot of stormtroopers. This, however, is messy and rather mercenary: the audience would want to know what happened to the other prisoners, and we’d have a bunch of explaining to do, whether they were political prisoners or just criminals. On the other hand, we could then show the stormtroopers being accurate (shooting prisoners) and there could be more confusion in the Death Star, with a bunch of prisoners running around.

The second possibility is for Luke to use his Light Saber.

I’m not sure whether he has the light saber with him when he’s in the Death Star. They may have had the excuse that it wouldn’t fit in the stormtrooper outfit, and the reason that Darth Vader would detect him using it which was inconvenient at this time, and that they wanted him still being rather untried in the Jedi ways.

But it would have definitely made their escape more plausible. Instead of Leia using the blaster, she (or Luke) could use the light saber to smash a hole into the garbage chute, and possibly even to seal it after them. Once they’re in the garbage compactor, his light saber could fall somewhere in the murky water (either as he falls, or due to the garbage monster) meaning that he’s trying to find the light saber while the walls are closing in, and in the end has to rely on R2-D2 and C3P0 as before – in other words, it could really show that he’s not ready.

My other problem with the garbage scene is that, for some reason, the stormtroopers don’t follow them down there, or even let off a couple of shots (and that Han shoots a couple of times even after Leia has warned him about ricochets). To keep the stormtroopers at bay, other armed prisoners would admirably suit the purpose, or a much better concealed exit – for example, if Luke had sealed their exit after them.

One other interesting thing they could have done here, had they used the light saber, is for both Darth Vader and Obi Wan detect that Luke is doing something, and start moving towards him (putting extra urgency into those scenes – Vader is coming!). Obi Wan, then, is not merely returning to the Falcon when he runs into Darth Vader, but is actively stopping Vader from getting to Luke.

The characters separate, and manage to avoid being shot some more. Really, it would have quite been in keeping for Han to put the stormtrooper helmet back on at this point, giving him that extra bit of indecision time, but I can understand why they didn’t. If they had somehow started a fire – a big electrical fire, say – in the cell block (thus stopping the stormtroopers coming after them in the garbage chute!), the smoke could be a good excuse for people missing each other.

The moment when Luke and Leia are trapped on the unextended bridge above the great big abyss could have been handled a little better. It would have been nice to get some forewarning of the grappling hook/cable in the stormtrooper belt (perhaps if a stormtrooper had used it to get down into the garbage… alright, I’ll stop now). When the stormtroopers manage to open the door a little bit, I’m a little puzzled as to why the don’t try to shoot Luke or Leia’s feet. This could easily have been acknowledged, and stopped, by having them step on something, and having Luke sweep the light saber under the door (cut to: Darth Vader changing course in his march towards the cell block…) or just by Leia shooting at the hands/blasters that come under the door to shoot up at them. And again, the stormtroopers on the other side prove to be really bad shots. I’m sorry to harp on about this, but if we could keep the stormtroopers as good shots throughout, but with more limited opportunities, we can keep the threat to the main characters alive. The more they shoot and miss, the more like a cakewalk this appears. The stormtroopers don’t shoot at Luke and Leia as they’re swinging across the abyss – this should be because they’re not there (yet), not because they’re feeble.

And so our heroes make it back to the Falcon and take off, and fight off perhaps four or five TIE fighters. The Death Star doesn’t try to shoot them down. This is fine and good, because, as we find out, Tarkan has placed tracking devices on the Falcon. Leia acknowledges this, saying that their escape was too easy.

So why does she go straight back to the rebel base?

This might have been a good opportunity to show how seriously they take their secrecy. Leia might have taken them to a neutral point, and changed ships, and been unwilling to take Han or Luke back to the base – after all, they could be agents for the empire, in a fake escape! They could convince her otherwise, or she could allow them to come (but blindfolded, for example).

So how does the Death Star track down the rebel base, in this case? They might have caught R2-D2 and placed the tracking device on him, paralleling Leia’s placement of the plans in the first place, or they could have a droid or bounty hunter stuck on the outside of the Falcon, changing ships when the heroes change ships. Either way, this could have been shown in very short order – I realize that some of these scenes would make the film a little longer (and Star Wars is quite tightly paced, so this is a major constraint) but these scenes could have been done quickly. Perhaps a short scene of them changing ships, and Han demanding to come along to get his reward, leaving the Falcon behind (thus making his return to the Death Star even more heroic at the end, as he leaves the rebel base for perfect safety, before returning in the Falcon). The droid changes with them. Less than a minute extra.

The Death Star arrives, and we have that countdown to destruction as it waits for the rebel moon to appear from behind the planet.

Why don’t they just blow up the planet then the moon?

We could still have the countdown to destruction; it would just be the amount of time it takes to recharge the main gun after it has destroyed the planet. The threat to the rebels is more immediate – this time, the Death Star and the moon would be facing each other, nothing between them except the X-Wing fighters. And the imperial forces would definitely want to destroy the rebel base as quickly as possible – every moment they put it off, more rebels escape.

Finally, we have the fight above the Death Star between the X-Wing fighter and the TIE fighters. I was a little puzzled as to why they didn’t update the model of the Death Star when they fixed many of the other special effects shots. To me, the close ups of the Death Star were the most obvious model shots in the original film, and the ability to add extra TIE fighters in this scene would be much more effective than the various creature additions to the early scenes in Tattooeine. However, it does work quite well as it is, even nowadays (though, admittedly, through fan-coloured glasses). One change I might have made here would be for Luke to have the opportunity to shoot Vader before his final trench run, but to pass up his chance at revenge in order to complete the mission. Say, for example, if he was following the previous fighters, protecting them as they went for their run, and Vader appeared. It would, then, be a more direct victory over Vader.

It has been interesting (and difficult!) going over Star Wars with the Forensic scalpel. I am a fan of the first three films, and watching them with a more critical eye has been very rewarding: Star Wars holds up extremely well, and my comments have been, for the most part, trivial. The many additions and changes to the Star Wars universe have not served to dull the first film in the slightest. If anything, they have highlighted its strengths.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 19th, 2004 at 7:18 pm and is filed under S, Science Fiction, shellshear. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.