This fall, we’re journeying to a galaxy far, far away to study one of the most important pop culture phenomena in history — Star Wars!
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- Machete Order
- Star Wars Ring Theory
- Star Wars: The Complete Saga
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Umm… i can’t find this podcast in the iTunes Store. I’d like to find it there so I can subscribe to this seminar and get all the updates as they come out. Can you look into that if it’s not too much trouble? Thanks
Hi Helena! The podcast has been submitted to iTunes and will be available there within the next day or two — Apple works on its own schedule about such things, I’m afraid!
Hi Alastair. So so so excited. I read the post about machete order and it was so interesting. There was one shocking part for me. His first argument was that machete order makes the end of Jedi make sense because Luke sees Yoda, Ben and Hayden Christensen (!?!) at the very end. I had seen the re mastered versions of A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, but Jedi is firmly in my mind in its original (resisting the urge to say correct) version – in which Luke looks away from the celebration to see Yoda, Ben and an adult version of his father – which for me is a very different feeling than him seeing his father as a teenager.
Will original versus remastered be part of the discussion? I am not sure the originals are easy to get a hold of for those who don’t have them from before the remastered versions were made. Some of us (sadly not me) will probably be watching the original. I am trying so hard not to be a snob about the changes and prequels, and at the same time I do think there is a real stumbling block with the remasters if they actually changed story in addition to throwing in a lot of random special effects.
Doing seminars for Outlander, P&P and Star Wars all in the span of a year is like going to my dream university. V happy.
I’m with you, Daphne — the change to the end of Jedi is one of the most striking, and intrusive, in the entire series. But I think we have to look past the change to the intent behind it, if we’re to understand its place in the story.
Adding young-Anakin to the Force-Ghost shots at the end of Jedi forces us to confront the possibility that Anakin died when he became Vader, and was “freed” when Vader died. That serves to disassociate young Anakin from the man he became, and might even give us a sense of what happens when you fall to the Dark Side.
The more depressing explanation, I guess, is that we were shown young Anakin so that no-one could be confused about who that other old guy standing with Obi Wan was.
I’m not a fan of this specific change, but it, like most of the revisions Lucas has made to the text, speaks to his purpose. If nothing else, it makes for an interesting discussion!
Alastair,
If we do any live watching make sure you let us know which version we are watching.
Hi Andrea! I’m working off the 2011 Blu-Ray editions of all six movies, but if you’re using the 2004 or 2006 DVD versions, or the 2015 digital versions, then you should be good. If you’re using the 1997 Special Edition versions, there are some deviations that will throw off your experience just a little, but you should be able to keep up even if you’re watching the original, pre-SE versions!