The fourth disc of the Star Wars Trilogy box set contains just about everything you could possibly need to know about this franchise. It does become a bit too promotional at times, but with the almost flawless "Empire of Dreams" documentary, all is forgiven. A few other shot featurettes round off this disc.
Running at an unheard of two and half hours, "Empire of Dreams" is worth the price of admission for most fans. If you have only seen the version on A&E, you're missing out on a lot. This is a documentary so good, it even had a small theatrical release. The majority of time is spent on "A New Hope," but that's hardly a real complaint. This is a thorough look at these classics, one that hardly misses any detail. In fact, it is so complete, it makes the individual film commentaries seem obsolete. There are only a dozen chapter stops for the feature, which seems quite low considering the running time, but once you start watching, you can't turn it off.
Three featurettes of various length focus on the characters, the series legacy, and on the creation of the lightsabers and are a nice compliment to the main documentary. "The Characters of Star Wars" runs at just under 19-minutes with multiple interviews. It looks at how each character was created and how the actors felt about them. "Birth of the Lightsaber" looks at how the iconic weapon came to be and how it has become more prominently featured in each of the films while running just over fifteen minutes. "The Legacy of Star Wars" branches out a bit to other people in Hollywood as they tell how the films affected the way they make movies. You'll sit down with this for about thirteen minutes.
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
terrific job on the set Matt, thanks! great to get all this info on the extras and bonuses, since just about everyone and their mother has seen Star Wars
2 - Jim S
no criticism that absolutely no "never-seen-before" footage was included outside of the "Empire of Dreams" documentary? Even that didn't include an exorbitant amount that wasn't on the A&E edition.. it had "just enough" to satisfy...
In the picture gallery, they include plenty of pictures of deleted scenes, behind the scenes stuff, etc. It was a tease and 1/2. I wish they had put in the deleted & unfinished scenes like they did with the Episode I & II DVD's...
but then, you can't satisfy everyone, can you? The movies themselves look and sound incredible... and we FINALLY have them on DVD.