How Star Wars was saved in the edit 

For a little more background on the edit. Marcia Lucas was told by George that she was an okay editor and she says after working with him for so long that was his only compliment he ever gave her. They got divorced after Jedi and she ended her career there. She was an amazing editor and Lucasfilms tries their best to remove her from the history of star wars despite her monumental work as seen in this video. I believe her absence is obvious in the prequels.

When I first found out about how terrible the initial versions of the movie were, it made a lot more sense how George Lucas could be the same person who made the prequels and this movie. The editors should get a ton of credit for making this series as big as it is.

Up next, how John Williams saved Star Wars by adding music.

Again people trying to make up the narrative that Star wars is good in spite of Lucas and not because of him. “How star wars was saved in the edit was saved in the edit” clears up all these points.

I kind of feel sorry for Luke's buddies who were cut. Sitting in a bar years later.."I was in the very original Star Wars, but then something happened...."

In the original script Obi Wan, during his fight against Vaders would originally say this: "If you strike me down, my ground will become higher than ever"

At 13:35, C3P0 talks about the tractor beam. In his autobiography, "I Am C3PO," Anthony Daniels recalls that in 1977, after he finished recording his lines, he thought he was done with the role. But they called him back to the studio three weeks before the film was released, to record one more line: "He says he's found the main computer to power the tractor beam that's holding the ship here." The reason the filmmakers gave him for recording the new line: "We forgot to tell the audience what a tractor beam is for."

How Star Wars went through the normal editing process that all films go through.

It seems that George Lucas is more of a world builder than a storyteller.

"But I was going into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters with my friends." "Your friends are such a drag on this story, we're just cutting them out."

Ah yes... the line, "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph?" really highlights that the Death Star was "just sitting there waiting to be blown up."

Cutting the Luke/Obi-Wan hut scene right next to the Vader/Tarkin scene where he chokes the guy out was brilliant. Because you have back to back explanations about what the Force is, once from the good guy and then from the bad guy. I always thought that was a masterstroke because you have this same powerful force juxtaposed and explained from two wildly different perspectives one after another.

Thank you Marcia Lucas

"Help us Marcia Lucas , you're our only hope!"

The film was in danger because of unfinished sound, unfinished special effects, stock footage? That’s literally every film ever dude.

the fact that a video with bullshit charged language and blatant misinformation has 3 million views and more appraisal than pushback is an affront to the art of creation and fills me with despair for the human race.

Like 5 seconds in I forgot I was watching rocket jump. This was actually refreshing lol .

So Lucas had a great idea, but couldn't execute it without his team. Makes sense. Prequels, "I'm a big boy. I don't need your help." Makes sense too.

Nerdonymous > Rocket "Dump."

this video is full of false information literally please just google the title of the video and you will see the second video in the search proves this.

Two things really jump out at me: 1. The way the scenes are placed in the rough cut are the exact sort of things the prequels suffer from 2. This also seems to be why Lucas likes changing things in post so much.

Im fairly sure the death star was about to blow up the rebel base in the script.

I can't believe most of the things said and shown on this video were all lies... In such a crafted manner.

Everyone needs to watch Nerdonymous review of this analysis; this "analysis" is very poorly researched and completely fabricated at many points. I like RocketJump, but man you guys missed the mark on this one.

Marcia Lucas; The TRUE unsung hero of Star Wars

My jaw dropped when you said "The Death Star wasn't about to blow up the rebel base." It's mind blowing how they were able to edit that entire sequence practically out of thin air.

I saw it as a teen in 77, in my opinion the sound sold the movie. Loaded with cool unique sounds for the special effects, The voices, and the Music was so well loved it sold as a double album.

Nerdonymous video is better.

C3PO could have been the Jar Jar Binks of the Original Trilogy

they won an oscar for best edition, yet he went back and tampered with their work, jesus!

How "How Star Wars was saved in the edit" was saved in the edit (sort of, but not really) - ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-olqVGz6mOVE.html

this video is very "trust me bro" material.

I never knew how much editing changed the film.

Epic showdown. Who wins? "It's stylistically designed to be that way." -George Lucas vs. "It was all editorially manufactured" -Marcia Lucas

In the end, this "essay" is in fact just very bad fan fiction, and should not be taken seriously by anyone, really. AT BEST, this video is misleading and offensive. Whether or not it was the result of purposeful duplicitous-ness or just woefully incomplete or faulty research, this essay is riddled with inaccuracies, thereby rendering every conclusion suspect (and I'm being nice there, as I personally think the conclusions are just plain *wrong*.) The entire concept of Star Wars being "saved" in the edit is a complete fallacy: Real filmmakers know there are three versions of any movie... The version that was written, the version that was shot, and the version that was edited. OH WAIT. You KNOW that. There is plenty of evidence from interviews with the three editors that George was absolutely involved with the editing process, oversaw the entire thing, and it's a known fact that he did half of the assemble cut himself on weekends because he had to fire the original editor due to him not understanding George's vision., so the suggestion that Richard Chew, Marcia Lucas, and Paul Hirsch had to bail George out of a hole is just a joke! (which is further proved by the fact that Marcia fought to save those early, "pointless" scenes introducing Luke." *It was George's idea* to get rid of those scenes!)

if yall had any credibility yall would take this vid down. clearly yall dont

As a kid I used to look down on editing, I just thought it cut things and I believed the more stuff the better. Later I realized it is essential. You convinced me it is an art form of its own.

To be fair, most great movies go through a lot of re-writes, scene deletions and recuts. Even reshoots. As a professional film editor I can tell you it is standard practice to call the editing process the 3rd writing process. For all movies. That said, seeing this process you put together is fascinating! Thanks for doing it.

While I believe this video wasn't meant to bash George Lucas, it omits a lot of key elements about the making of the film, and makes Lucas pass for a clumsy guy who really didn't had much idea of where his film was going... which is far from being the truth

You know what I find ironic? Many of the deleted scenes from the original trilogy would have made the originals worse, but a lot of the deleted scenes in the prequels would have made the prequels better. You can really make or break a movie depending on how you edit it.

wow, I consider myself a pretty diehard Star Wars fan and I didn't know about 90% of this. Excellent video. I have even more respect for the editors now

Use the edits, Luke

Jesus, this video is not only malicious, it's incredibly idiotic. Obviously, George Lucas would never give a fuck, not in a million years, but I start to think the general public should mount up some mass lawsuit. It did hurt my brain.

Nothing but ignorant Lucas haters on this thread Literally every film is saved in the edit

Nice shoutout to the Despecializied Editions!

Everyone's saying Lucas was a crap director/writer, but he was actually opposed to the Luke scenes at the beginning. A colleague (Barwood, I think) told Lucas he needed those scenes to make the movie "more human." Also, the Twin Suns scene? It originally had WAY different music. It was switched AT LUCAS'S REQUEST. Lucas hated the first cut himself ("It's not the movie I wanted to make"). The main reason the first cut was bad? It wasn't Lucas. It was just REALLY POORLY EDITED. That's the whole point of this essay.

"Everybody has their ace in the hole...mine's ̶e̶d̶i̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ my under appreciated ex wife."

You just got debunked..

If Lucas didn't have Marcia, Geoff Unsworth's photography (Lucas intended a gritty, hand-held style, not old school Hollywood), Ralph McQuarrie's incredible artwork that basically defined the visuals of Star Wars, the ILM guys that made the Universe real, the woman that designed Stormtroopers (I forget her name), the writers that were brought in to inject some humour and warmth to the rather cold script and, of course, John Williams' legendary score...Star Wars could well have been a cult 70's sci-fi B movie. Lucas owes an awful lot to a lot of people. I hope he paid them all their relevant dues.

This is fascinating! It brings to mind the numerous fan edits that exist of the Star Wars prequels. Last night, I watched Red Maple's 45 minute edit of Rogue One featuring John Williams' score and a few alterations, and found it immensely better than the actual film.

John Jympson was the original editor, and it would be impossible to overstate his contribution to the art of film editing on A Hard Day's Night (which, when you think about it, was essentially the very first music video, almost 20 years before anyone had ever heard of such a thing). But it was clear that Star Wars was too new and unique for Jympson, and he didn't quite grasp what it was going for.

EVERY MOVIE IS SAVED IN EDITING. We just don't know enough about most movies to understand the extend to which their rough cuts did NOT work. The first cut of almost every movie is a mess.

Without the edit Chewbacca would've unleashed his true power and one shot the death star just by staring at it

Moral of the story to production: fix it in post Moral of the story to post: fuck production

I think this youtube video about editing has been brilliantly edited. The rough cut of this video about editing did not convey well enough how important editing is.

This video is complete and utter fiction. You can literally read the shooting scripts to see what George originally intended. Also he fired the first editor and started editing himself. He then hired the three final editors and they all worked together towards George's vision. Nothing ever gets put into a Lucas film unless he wants it there. Just look what he's done with these movies over the years. As technology improves he adds things back. Special editions anyone?

This is such a great example of how such a great step in cinematic history was not taken by just one man. It would have failed without his colleagues and friends. If it was just up to Mr. Lucas, he would have dropped the ball and never changed the future of Sci-fi.

Holy crap I never knew! This makes all those hours planning and editing my short films worth it!!! I always felt like the whole story was changed no matter what during editing but this proves it1

It sounds like The Professor just don't like star wars.

Every movie is saved in the edit. Empires rough cut was also a disaster

Could be the most important and Valuable Star Wars video on RU-vid. Bravo, good job guys.

Something tells me the *prequels* could have been saved in the edit. Unfortunately by the time George Lucas got to make them he was already surrounded by yes-men and his vision and storytelling wasn't openly questioned or challenged. The Phantom Menace is just a nightmare. Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon in a serious fight with Darth Maul is interlaced with Jar Jar Binks clumsiness in battle against battledroids. WHO in their right mind thinks that works?? Tons of scenes in The Phantom Menace should have been cut altogether.

Lot of those cut bits were used in the radio drama. Being made up of short episodes makes the flow work better with less hard cutting so they add a lot of good interactions between bits.

Here's someone's long video response you might wanna check out: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-olqVGz6mOVE.html

Hey everyone. In this current form our pro-collaboration message has been interpreted by many as anti-Lucas. That was never the goal, nor the intent of this video. It should go without saying that George Lucas supervised, approved, and even contributed to all of these editorial changes. However, having seen the response, this is a point of fact that clearly should’ve been stated and it was an oversight on my part that that simple acknowledgment wasn’t included. George Lucas made Star Wars with the help of incredible team of people and that is an achievement worth celebrating. -Joey

Lol, treadwell was wall-e

Why did this video all of a sudden appear on my recommendation? The title looks nonsensical because I believe all movies was saved from the edit 💀

What a load of bull 😂

1:35 “Star Wars snatched victory from the jawas of defeat”

YOU ACTUALLY STATED YOUR SOURCES!!! IS THIS EVEN RU-vid !?!

Some hopeless inaccuracies in this video: 1. It fails to convey that the 'rough cut' was made by Jympson, and Lucas fired him in the summer of 76, because he hated the cut. 2. The cut that De Palma and Spielberg saw was the movie we got, with WWII dogfights in place of finished effects. We know that because Katz and Huyck have said as much on camera in the Omnibus documentary on Lucas. They didn't see the Jympson rough cut as implied. 3. The revised fourth draft of Jan 15 1976 (before filming) has the dialogue between Luke and Obi-Wan (and R2's beep) as it appears in the movie. It was not "edited" to fix the script. The message from Leia was moved, but the conversation is the exact same, while the video implies that unnecessary back and forth took place. 4. The revised fourth draft has the Death Star attacking Yavin 4, and Tarkin saying you may fire when ready. It's also apparent at the *start of the movie* that the intention is to destroy the rebel base - that's why they put the tracker on the Falcon. Leia taking the Falcon to Yavin amounts to using Yavin as bait in a high stakes endgame. 5. The video exaggerates how much the scenes were swapped around. 6. Earlier versions of the script, Luke and earlier versions of Luke, on Utapau [that became Tatooine] are brought into the story through the droids. The reason the revised fourth draft has early scenes with Luke is because Lucas' friends suggested audiences would not tolerate droids for so long. And so it was shot just in case. This is an example of Lucas listening to others, and that advice being *wrong* 7. A minor point, but the video shows the length of the opening crawl with an earlier draft of it, where it is longer. By the time they began shooting it was much shorter, so there's no reason why the opening crawl would have been from the 2nd or 3rd draft. This was merely done to exaggerate. 8. Most of the movie was cut by Paul Hirsch, under supervision of Lucas, with assistance of Chew. Hirsch said this on camera in a recent interview with Star Wars Theory. 9. On a side note, Roger Christian [who made the first lightsaber prop] the 2nd unit director on TPM says Rick McCallum was anything but a 'yes man' if that is the implication of the difference between prequels and originals, based on the presumption that Lucas needed other people disagreeing with him. 10. Hirsch said the main thing Marcia worked on was the trench run scene. It's true that they emphasised the Death Star's proximity, and she cut out the first trench run by Luke. It's also true that she suggested Obi-Wan die and become a ghost. She made lots of useful inputs. And it's commonly known she helped make emotional scenes work better. It is however, a total misrepresentation to claim that Marcia "saved" the whole movie in the edit. It's fair to say they were in a total mess because of the complexity of the effects, and the pressure from the studio to finish the movie. It's also fair to speculate that Kurtz was one of the reasons the movie went over budget, and that executives tried to interfere. It's also fair to say that cast and crew didn't really understand what Lucas was making until they saw the finished product, which made them less agreeable during the production.

This video is such an inaccurate hit piece, trying to shift credit away from Lucas, literally contradicts the sources it gives. Like it’s so well documented that George wanted to have Luke introduced when he buys the droids, but he was convinced to add and shoot the extra scenes by his friends, but ultimately went back to what he wanted originally. Next, the idea of the Death Star blowing up the base is mentioned tones by Vader and Tarkin, the cutaways just empathised it more. The editing in Star Wars was great, but to say it was saved by it more than any film is so misleading.

"If my blade should find its mark, you will cease to exist. But if you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine." That sounds pretty damn badass, actually.

wow this video made me appreciate the original movie even more.

Yeah, there's another video out there that completely shreds apart RocketJump's video here, and it is INCREDIBLY in-depth: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-olqVGz6mOVE.html

“Dinner was saved by cooking it”

I love this video! I've heard many times that Star Wars was saved in editing by Marcia Lucas but now I know how exactly she did it. This must have taken an insane amount of research and it's really well written and edited. Thank you!

Excellent video essay! George was the visionary behind the entire concept, but film is a collaborative effort. When George himself got TOO MUCH credit and too much control, we got...well, you know what we got. Thank heavens for good editors and a director with the good sense (or wife) to listen.

I actually understand what they were trying to do with those opening scenes. They were trying to show that Luke was this small town boy, who was always looking up at the stars and dreaming of leaving. They also go to show how he was always trying to keep up with the war against the empire. Also, if I remember correctly, there was a scene originally with his friend Biggs on Tatooine when the film was released, but it was cut latter. A lot of people actually thought this was a mistake, as it doesn't really make as much sense or hit as hard when Biggs is shot down later and dies during the attack on the death star. Also, his extreme reaction to C3PO talking about the war makes less sense with that intro. The solution should not have been to cut it out, but to reshoot it, and have it occur after we saw the un-interrupted battle on the ship. Lot's of movies do this, where they show another perspective of what had just happened a few moments before.

If you look at the original opening crawl, you can tell that George from the very beginning knows exactly how this vast world should bet set up. Pretty much every piece of information that was left out from the original opening crawl were all later fulfilled during the making of the prequel trilogy. George may not be a person who is good at making good tempo for his stories, but he knows exactly how to structure his world in a way that is more fascinating than anything we've ever seen.

17:30 - ...and then promptly got rid of most of them by Return of the Jedi, and ALL of them when working on the prequels. The success of the original Star Wars trilogy, by all accounts, was due to his then wife (Marcia Lucas - a very smart and talented woman, whom Star Wars fans have mostly ignored; if you love the original trilogy, THANK Marcia Lucas) saving George from himself (he remains his own worst enemy), and in collaborating with very talented people, with far better ideas than Lucas had. Unfortunately, George received all the credit, and the clout / power he received from it allowed him to do whatever he wanted going forward.

Wow, everyone involved in making Star Wars won an Oscar except Lucas. Now I understand the Salt.

Just a reminder that this video gets utterly destroyed here: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-olqVGz6mOVE.htmlsi=MWZRd2ownMBRSnUf 🤣. PS: And yes, "Professor", I'm gonna keep posting this if you keep deleting it. 😉

To quote Luke "What a piece of junk". Ive never seen a more ill informed and whole heartedly made up collection of fanboy supposition and opinion trying to be passed off as fact in my life. You couldn't even get the info from the book and other fanboy video you "based" this on correct.

My uncle has worked directly with George Lucas on a number of projects and knows Lucas personally. He told me a lot about how the editing of Star Wars was so important, noting, "You can understand the dramatic flow of Star Wars by not watching the movie itself, but turn around in your seat and just watch the audience reactions." Getting a nice, detailed analysis on the editing was great to see, thank you!

9:15 "You see, his blood... it drained into the boards and I had to change 'em..."

by your logic, every cake was saved in the owen i'd recommend to anyone watching this: How was "how was star wars saved in the editing" saved in the editing.

Wow Marcia was like the Bill Finger of Star Wars.

The video also indirectly highlights how George basically wrote his wife and editting team out of the history of Star Wars. Without them, Star Wars would have been some forgettable schlock sci fi movie with some good effects. It's only after the prequels exposed George that people have realized how much he leaned on others. Which is perfectly fine, no one can do stuff alone. But taking nearly sole credit for a collaborative work was shitty of him.

As a filmmaker, editing is rewriting and a good editor can make it even better. This was such a beautiful essay. So true, wonderful and something many people should watch and learn from on how a film should be made. Awesome, awesome job.

"How A New Hope was almost The Phantom Menace"

Holy fuck... isn't this exactly what editing is for? To save it?

The original turned into the classic we know it today because there were people around to tell Lucas "Nah, let's go back and take another look at this." If only they'd been around when he made the prequels...

Looking at how bad it was pre-editing, Episodes I-III suddenly make sense.

Aged terribly lol

You should take this down after Nerdonymous body bagged you 😂

3:00 Shows that Lucas is a genuis with a huge imagination, but needs other experts to help him simplify. It's like channeling the rage of a beast to something great

Conclusion: Let professionals do their damn job!

Please do some actual research before you believe this guy's continuous lying, because most of the things he says are downright misquoting and lies.

It should be noted that Marcia's work on Star Wars (about 4 weeks worth) was on the BAD version, being discussed at the beginning of this video. She was in tears after the fateful New Years Eve screening for their friends. All of the improvements were made AFTER she had already gone back to work on another project. Certainly Star Wars was greatly improved by the time of its final edit, but it was long after Marcia's work had ended.