Take 'Em Men! (14)
Last Updated (Friday, 11 March 2011 14:31) Written by Administrator Wednesday, 09 March 2011 00:00
Such an exciting scene in the film, I loved it when I was a kid. They showed a clip of it on the 3rd of April 1978 Academy Awards show. Fleeting but intense! I probably couldn't sleep after that. I sat through the whole boring thing a year later in the forlorn hope they'd do it again (why would they?). Nowadays, you simply pop in a DVD or go to YouTube!
Ben Burtt, C3PO and Mark Hamill alone in the corner at the high school prom
Art Notes
Brevity was was this 9 year old's strong-suit
NO TIME FOR TALKING - AND PLOT AND CHARACTER-DEVELOPMENT
GET BLASTING AND BLOWNG UP AND JUMPING OVER EXPLOSIONS!
Phew!
The two best bits are:
Solo doing a little whistle or a "Phew - that was too close for comfort!" Did you ever use that line when you were playing soldiers and stuff? That little puff from his lips is lifted straight from The Dandy comic! Or The Beano.
The Dandy Comic's 'Desperate Dan'
The other bit I really like is the panel of Chewie's legs, running, with blaster fire exploding at his feet. When we were kids playing soldiers - and Star Wars, it was fun to pick up lumps of dry earth and throw them at the ground near your feet while you ran for cover - Ka-Pow!
"Phew - too close for comfort!"
"What's that mean?"
"I'm not sure but they say it in comics and films."
Film Notes
Brevity - again
Seriously though, do you see just how brief the action-packed part of this scene is? Star Wars was like that. Apart from a couple of exceptions, like the TIE Fighter/Falcon battle, and the action-fest Final Battle against the Death Star; most of the action os over pretty quickly. So quickly in fact that you'd have killed to go outside the cinema, get inline and see the film again. Oh yeah... people did.
It's about the story
Wee 'ickle George
But George wasn't just emptily trying to sound like a serious film-maker when he maintained that it was all about the story, the characters and their psychological underpinnings. Yes, the budget and schedule were tight and he didn't manage to shoot a lot of what he wanted - but he must have had an intention, or instinct to not overdo the action sequences. Shooting, and lightsaber swinging and deflecting lasers, gets boring after while, as you can see in the PT and the Clone Wars.
No Time for Boredom!
But in this film, nothing gets enough screen-time to become boring. Lucas himself says that "At the time, this was considered to be a very fast-paced film. These days it's a pretty slow film." Now, he does qualify that by saying that it's partly due to the 'unfamiliarity of the environment'; that people were struggling to keep up with so much new stuff. But actually, it still feels pretty fast. There are lots of good set pieces, it has emotional dynamics, the action sequences are 'blink and you'll miss them' affairs, and the characters and story are so interesting that the time flies. He was an impressively mature young film-maker
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