Star Wars fans are a fickle lot. I say this, of course, as one. We are quick to judge, loud to complain, and slow to forgive. But if there’s one thing that can be said for us, it’s that we love Star Wars.
For every fan, it’s something different: It’s Harrison Ford. It’s Carrie Fisher. It’s Mark Hamill. It’s James Earl Jones’ voice. It’s that raspy breathing. It’s the Millennium Falcon. It’s John Williams’ score. It’s lightsabers and blasters and speederbikes. It’s worlds to explore and philosophy to consider. It’s cheesy dialog and awesome, laugh-out loud banter. It’s the hope of belonging to something bigger than ourselves. It’s the dream that even a scruffy farm boy could be the most important person in the entire universe. It’s the chance for redemption. It’s the thrill of adventure.
If you don’t believe me (or even if you do), you have to see this. Fans from all over the world (the galaxy?) banded together to recreate Star Wars: A New Hope fifteen seconds at a time. For the full story, swing on over to Star Wars Uncut, where you can read all about how they chopped the movie into 15 second intervals, parsed them out, let people interpret them and recreate them however they wanted, and then edited them back together. It’s truly something to behold.
Some people play it straight. Some people play it for laughs. Almost nobody has any kind of budget — that being said, some shots and some “shorts” are really, really impressive. The entire movie’s there. Any fan of the series really owes it his/her/itself to sit back and enjoy all two hours of this. Because I have a sneaky suspicion that it will do for you what it did for me — remind me all over again how much and why I love these movies.
