Star Wars A New Hope Modern Trailer
When Star Wars A New Hope first came out, a long time ago, it had a god-awful trailer. To be fair, scifi space operas were pretty new in the cinema and the trailers were done in a weird way.
I was five when A New Hope was released, (or simply Star Wars as it was known back then,) I did see it in the cinema and it was awesome. It changed everything with its incredible effects and the sequels cemented what it was suddenly possible to do if you had the budget and know-how. Even so, the voice-over in the original trailer still makes me hark back to those old pre-CGI times and the wobbly sets, puppets, lipgloss and spandex of most scifi in the 70s and 80s. It makes me feel a pleasing blend of cringeworthiness, nostalgia, and mild arousal.
It is not just the voice-over either, the film quality was blurry compared to what you get now. You can even watch A New Hope in 4K! Instead of waffling on, here is the original trailer:
It is still pretty fun but it looks so old. There is also the fact that when the narrator mentions ‘romance’ it cuts to Luke and Leia. Awkward.
The New Hope New Trailer
Kids these days have better access to editing equipment than in the time of yore. You probably have better editing capabilities on your phone than most edit suites back in the day. Modern youth is also more clean-cut and spends less time underage drinking in parks and more time doing clever things on the internet. I suppose its an improvement. Consequently, clever people have been doing fun and impressive things with editing such as turning comedy films like Mrs Doubtfire into a horror.
I wrote here about SC 38 – the re-imagining of the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Vader in A New Hope. It is absolutely superb. You can see it here. Well, someone has done a modern trailer for a whole bunch of Star Wars movies. Feel free to go down that Youtube rabbit hole if you wish. But I am particularly fond of the one for A New Hope as it uses footage that I saw in the cinema but has only relatively recently been re-released (Biggs), along with newer stuff and even SC 38. It is pretty cool. Enjoy.