Thursday, May 31, 2007

Star Wars as a libertarian epic

I found this article fun to read. It posits that Star Wars is really a libertarian epic, based in part on a scene between Biggs and Luke that was cut from the beginning of the film (and stayed cut, even after the Special Edition of Star Wars IV came out in 1999).

It probably was a good artistic choice (to cut it, I mean, to allow the flow of the movie to follow the droids, introducing characters as the droids meet them), but I've always wondered about the scene. I remember when I was a little kid having this huge Star Wars movie picture book that told the story of the movie with a little bit of text per page and a huge picture or pictures on each page taken from the movie. That book actually had pictures of Luke with Biggs at the beginning, and I've always wondered about that, since I never saw the actual scene (almost no one has).

So now it is funny years later to find it had libertarian content to it. How disappointing that it apparently isn't even on the special features of the new DVDs. (At least, not that I've found, though I did not look specifically for it, I did look).

2 comments:

armagh444 said...

Gods, but it's good to know that I wasn't the only kid who had that book and that I'm not the only person who remembers the "Biggs leaving to join the Rebellion scene" existing and who has wondered about it from time to time. (When the Special Editions came out, I was actually hoping against hope that it would be restored, if only in the special features section.)

DBB said...

Yeah, for me, for years, the memory of that scene in pictures had a strange, otherworldly "did this really happen" kind of quality to it - I'm not even sure my parents still have the book, though I would like it if they did.

I still am glad it wasn't in the restored version of the movie - I think it just doesn't fit with the flow of the start of the movie, where you meet characters as they meet the droids, but I would love to see a clip of it on DVD.