Queer Eye for the Jedi

I digitally put Jabba the Hutt back into the original Star Wars movie! I do what I want!

Worked a Doc screening of Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope Monday night.

Correction: Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope: Special Edition: 1997.

It's odd to have to specify which version of Star Wars played — the original 1977 release (Han shoots first), the 1997 special edition (Greedo shoots first) or the 2004 special edition (Han and Greedo shoot at the same time) — but I won't knock Lucas' revisionist tendencies because I repeatedly revise my work too post-posting.

Besides, the revisions in the 1997 special edition are minor, save for the computer-generated Jabba, which does NOT hold up well. What was cutting-edge then now looks like a character from The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius.


To this day, Lucas' decision to leave the Star Wars universe's graphics technology intact bothers me immensely.

I detest how the graphics on the monitors inside the Millennium Falcon's turrets and the X-wing starfighters consist of grids and basic shapes and how during the Rebel Alliance pilot briefing, a screen depicts the destruction of the Death Star with a circle and a line and then an (ugh) asymmetrical dotted asterisk.

Apparently, a galaxy full of elaborate spacecraft and droids cannot engineer video graphics more sophisticated than an Atari 2600's.