Editing Star Wars Movies (section)

==The rise of the original trilogy==

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away....etc etc you all know the lines.

A man called George Lucas had the idea to create a series of epic sci-fi space operas that would become so successful that Disney would take notice and give it the franchise fluttering eye lashes, trying to seduce it.

They would be called... ''Flash Gordon''.  

Unfortunately for Georgie boy, and fortunately for modern nerddom, Dino de Laurentiis already owned ''Flash Gordon'', and were busy making his doomed, hilariously eighties version, so he said, screw it, I'll make my own!

He decided to start with the fourth movie in the series he envisioned, for at the time he didn't have the special effects to create the first three to the standard he wanted, and/or he just kinda made up the first movie as he went along (drawing heavily on Akira Kurosawa's seminal samurai action film, ''Hidden Fortress'' in the process as well as the book [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hero_with_a_Thousand_Faces ''The Hero with a Thousand Faces''], a complex 1949 Joseph Campbell analysis of the various mythologies of human history all boiled down into the basic archetypes and elements required in heroic myth). Alternatively, he melded together all his great personal loves into one film: swashbuckling sword fights, heroic democratic resistance against fascist pigs, Eastern mysticism and sage samurai warriors, sassy princesses who sometimes need rescuing and sometimes do the rescuing themselves, World War II dogfights, gamblin', hard livin', outlaw gunslingers, and stories of friendship and love between comrades in war, then attached a buncha pretentious mythopoeia onto it when all his fellow New Hollywood directors started talkin' shit about how they wished he'd finish with these stupid space movies and get back to making films like ''American Graffiti''. So Episode Four ''A New Hope'' was created (simply titled ''Star Wars'' at the time) and it is not an exaggeration to say it changed the face of sci-fi and general moviemaking forever, bringing a new era of special effects and imagination to cinema and changing the lives of many who would go onto to become dedicated fan boys.

Originally, the studio had forced Lucas to take ever-increasing paycuts for what they were sure was going to be a flop, and only let him keep merchandising rights.  However, whatever his flaws, George Lucas was a man of vision.  Having helped pioneer the summer blockbuster, he went on to do the same to ginormous piles of movie-tie-in memorabilia.  His production company, Lucasfilm ended up rolling in dosh, and with Episode Five ''The Empire Strikes Back'' and Episode Six ''The Return of the Jedi'', the legend of Star Wars and its place in cultural history was assured.

tl;dr: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ij4w7ChpuaM Pretty much this.]