Introduction to Star Wars Retrospective

On December 20, 2019, Disney and Lucasfilm will release Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the ninth and final film in the Skywalker Saga. This will bring an end to a storyline started over 40 years ago when a New Hollywood filmmaker named George Lucas bucked the existing Hollywood trends to make a science-fiction fantasy adventure in the style of classic serials. He ended up creating the most popular series of all time.

For many cinephiles, a love of the movies in general traces all the way back to Star Wars, either the first film that has since become known as A New Hope or the franchise that would follow it. This has been the case for us here at 3 Brothers Film. Star Wars was our first love in pop culture. It was the series we would have on repeat on Saturday afternoons or obsess over in the form of action figures, customizable card games, or video games. It’d be impossible to count the number of times we’ve seen the films of the Original Trilogy, and it’s likely that we’ve seen the films of the Prequel Trilogy dozens of times as well. We make a point of seeing the new films on opening night and even if we’ve become jaded by film promotion, we still get excited when a new Star Wars trailer appears.

Star Wars has shaped a portion of our lives and remains the wellspring of our passion for the movies. But we’ve never truly explored why we find the Star Wars films so exceptional or articulated our interest in the movies in the manner that we’ve discussed other films on this website.

Until now.

To mark the end of the Skywalker Saga and to finally offer an in-depth commentary on our favourite film series, we will review every single theatrical release in the Star Wars series. That includes the three trilogies—the Original Trilogy, Prequel Trilogy, and Disney Trilogy—as well as spinoffs, including the Star Wars Stories, Rogue One and Solo, the Ewok films, Caravan of Courage and The Battle For Endor, and the feature pilot for The Clone Wars television series from 2008. As we’ve done with previous retrospectives, we’ll also have roundtable conversations after each phase in the franchise, and conclude with a final ranking of the films after the release of The Rise of Skywalker.

It’s no secret that we’re passionate about the Star Wars series. It’s also no secret that we openly admire the Prequel Trilogy. We have spent a lot of time discussing the recent Disney films at the time of their release, and have reflected back on the Original Trilogy and Prequel Trilogy on occasion, but we’ve never offered exhaustive examinations of all of the films of the series. Furthermore, we’ve never examined these films primarily as films. To be clear, don’t expect lame apologetics for the Prequel Trilogy or coverage resembling the rantings of fanboys. But do expect our idiosyncrasies and unique perspectives to come out within the reviews of all the films in the series. As well, we will be reviewing the versions of the films available on Blu-ray, so if you despise the Special Editions, don’t expect us to ignore them. However, we will comment on George Lucas’s revisionism in the course of reviewing the latest versions of the films.

So get out your preferred format, whether VHS, Laserdisc, Blu-ray, or streaming, and join us as we explore the most popular film series in the history of cinema. Our retrospective will begin with Anton examining the film that started it all, 1977’s Star Wars a.k.a. Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope.