Star Wars Uncut: Director's Cut (Film Review)

This film is bizarre, disjointed, creative, varied, mixed, diverse and a bunch of other things on a scale not seen before in any Hollywood film. The only comparable experience there might be to watching this film is the times when Godfrey Ho used footage from other failed films to try and create a completely new one. Characters change actors between scenes, scenes change between shots, video quality jumps between camera and the film even leaps genres.

You’re probably all very confused by this point so I’ll just quote the description by the film’s creator: 
“In 2009, Casey Pugh asked thousands of Internet users to remake "Star Wars: A New Hope" into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted. Within just a few months SWU grew into a wild success. The creativity that poured into the project was unimaginable.

SWU has been featured in documentaries, news features and conferences around the world for its unique appeal. In 2010 we won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.”

So yes, this is Star Wars: A New Hope where hundreds of different production crews were used, each one making only a scant few seconds of footage each time. Oddly enough though, it actually proves to be extremely entertaining. You never quite know what you’re going to end up with next as there’s a huge number of different ways people have filmed this.

In the first half of the film you’re going to see:

-children playing the roles of the heroes,

-scenes filmed in stop motion, animation, rotoscoping, 

a car journey which looks like it was shot as a low budget Michael Bay film,

-a live action political argument,

-scenes turning into sections of a Japanese sitcom, a western and a musical,

-scenes apparently created in Minecraft,

-and a few seconds of footage based upon the original Monkey Island.

If the entire thing had stopped and everyone had broken out into a hundred man performance of One Night in Bangkok it would have felt entirely in line with the film.

It sticks to the overall basic plot of A New Hope, ninety-nine percent of the dialogue remains the same as the first Star Wars film, sometimes using the sounds of the film it's parodying. At the same time however it remains utterly surreal to the point of hilarity. It’s definitely the most original idea for a fan project I’ve seen on the internet and even when some of the acting was bordering upon being unbearable or downright disturbing, yet at no time was I bored. There is a lot of entertainment value in it and the unpredictability makes it well worth the two hours spent watching it.

Bottom line – Worth watching. It’s very strange and uncanny but it’s original and you’ll not get bored watching this one. Well worth a look, just be ready for some unfortunately memorable moments.

Star Wars Uncut can be viewed in its entirety on youtube Here.