With its release a mere few weeks away, a lot of new Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker content has come down the pike, from TV spots to featurettes. Much of it has leaned heavily on nostalgia, and no wonder: The film (allegedly) closes out the main storyline that began, if not chronologically, with 1977’s original Star Wars. So here’s another one, which juxtaposes behind-the-scenes footage of the most recent trilogy with that of the one that started it all.
Beginning with a rehearsal take on the original Star Wars that features Chewbacca actor Peter Mayhew sans headpiece, the featurette is a reminder that the original Star Wars — let’s not call it A New Hope, please — was a little sci-fi/fantasy that could. No one, save George Lucas and crew, believed in it, much less co-star Alec Guinness, a chameleonic wit who spent much of his remaining years suffering fans of Obi-Wan Kenobi, and not gladly.
Jump 42 years later and Star Wars is Star Wars — an institution that may never die, with new episodes of its new TV show hitting Disney+ every Friday. The featurette that dropped at week’s beginning leaned heavily on fan culture, but this new one sticks solely to those doing the work, and the result is downright cosmic.
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, aka Episode IX, arrives December 20.
(Via THR)
