The Retro Star Wars Film Festival

You would think that May 25th would be a better choice for the annual Star Wars Day celebration, because that's the opening date of the first Star Wars movie, which was for some reason just called Star Wars. Now it's called Star Wars Epsiode IV: A New Hope.  But someone somewhere, probably many, heard the date as "May the fourth" and automatically added "be with you." The pun stuck. Today, in lieu of a links list, since I don't have enough links, I decided to stage a Star Wars film festival instead. Around 15 years ago, when YouTube was really taking off, there was a slew of people retrofitting the Star Wars movies to show what they would be like in the earlier eras of cinema. Some of those videos survive, although most of them are have disappeared. That's the way of the internet. They are of varying quality.

In the 1900s



Oh, there are a lot of Star Wars remakes as silent films. All you need are the proper filters and some intertitle cards, since everyone knows the story.

1910s Imperial Propaganda Reel



A recruitment ad for World War I enlistment. For which side? The audio implies Britain, while the video implies Germany. But it's Star Wars, so it really doesn't matter.

A 1920s Silent Film

YouTuber lizzylizzy1 explores the relationship between Luke and Leia before they were revealed to be twin siblings, which even George Lucas didn't know at the time. Obi-Wan's line about Leia resembling her mother is explained in a followup silent film involving the prequels. Note how Anakin comes back from two years away and finds Padme pregnant, but still has no clue.   

As a 1930s Nazi Propaganda Film



There were once a whole slew of videos that showed historic footage of German soldiers marching into those huge Nazi rallies, overlaid with the Imperial March from Star Wars, mainly to illustrate how the bad guys in the movies were patterned after historical bad guys. Most have been deleted since, because no decent Star Wars fan wants to be associated with Nazis in any way. I may have put myself on a list somewhere just for looking for them.

Space Knights: A 1940s Serial



Probably the most well-done of the surviving retro Star Wars remakes.  

If The Empire Strikes Back were made in the 1950s



If you had any trouble following the story, here is a side-by-side comparison to show how faithfully the story was told.

As a 1960s Art Film



In 2023, the trend of retro Star Wars is coming back, but they are now relying on artificial intelligence algorithms to produce the images, and it's tres creepy.

In the 1970s

Since the first Star Wars movie really did come out in the 1970s, there's no better way to illustrate cinema of the time than to post the original 1977 trailer.  

As a 1980s TV Show



Imagine if Star Wars was a TV series! That was a really weird idea 13 years ago when this retro TV intro was made, in the style of a 1980s prime time show.

And May the fourth be with you.