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Star Wars Special Edition
George Lucas does it the way he wanted to
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Star Wars Special Edition
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Rated PG
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Starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher
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125 minutes
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Review by Frank Garcia
 hen Star Wars returns to the big screen on Jan. 31, viewers will have the opportunity to see the titles "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." after a 20-year break. This time around there will be extra scenes and 100 to 150 new special effects refurbishing the film.
Star Wars, of course, takes place in a galaxy where an evil empire rules with an iron fist. The film presents the legendary tale of a young farm boy named Luke Skywalker (Hamill) on the desert planet Tatooine, who acquires a pair of droids named C-3P0 (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2. When R2-D2 takes off into the desert in search of a "previous owner" named Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke is swept into a series of life-changing events that send him off-planet and into the moon-sized Imperial battlestation, the Death Star.
With new-found companions such as Jedi Knight "Ben" Kenobi (Alec Guinness), space pilot Han Solo (Ford) and Solo's co-pilot Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew), Luke attempts to rescue Princess Leia Organa (Fisher). Leia is being held by the insidious dark Jedi Darth Vader (David Prowse) in a prison cellblock on the Death Star. It is Leia, secretly the leader of the rebellion, who has hidden the technical schematics of the Death Star inside R2-D2.
After Ben manages to release the station's tractor beam, allowing Solo's ship to escape the gigantic Death Star, Luke and his friends are delivered to the rebellion's secret base, but the empire is in hot pursuit.
CGI strikes back
Is it worth seeing Star Wars again? Are the new special effects good, and do they enhance the experience at all?
The answer is yes. There are many small, welcome additions that help the story along, such as an extra shot of the Millennium Falcon lifting off from the Mos Eisley spaceport. In the original edition of this film, as the Falcon heads toward the rebel base on Yavin, viewers see a sentinel standing on a tower, pointing a gun-thingamajig at the distant horizon. Now he does this as the Falcon comes in for a landing.
Surprisingly, almost all the raging rumors on the Internet over the film's new content were true. For example, there was chatter that Greedo would fire off a blast at Solo before being killed.
What strikes against the Special Edition, unfortunately, is the expansion of the Mos Eisley spaceport. The opening, establishing shots of the spaceport as Luke and Kenobi arrive in the landspeeder are good, but primarily the many small additions are terribly distracting.
The worst of all the new additions is when stormtroopers stop and interview Luke and Kenobi. "How long have you had these droids?" a trooper asks. At this point Lucas saw fit to add a CGI creature walking from right to left, in front of the action. What was Lucas was hoping to achieve? The results momentarily obscured the scene with a bad CGI graphic. It's times like this when restraint is necessary.
Overall it was a pleasant experience, after a 20-year break, to see Star Wars on the theater screen again. It's particularly satisfying to hear the film in Lucasfilm's THX sound stereo system, adding an aural richness which home video cannot provide.
If George Lucas is using the Special Editions to help finance the upcoming prequel films, I think that's a great idea and I wish him all the best! -- Frank
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Mystery Science Theater 3000
After seven seasons of satire and slapstick, does MST3K have anything more to say?
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Mystery Science Theater 3000
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Starring Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett, Kevin Murphy
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Season 8
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The Sci-Fi Channel
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Premieres Saturday, Feb. 1
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4 p.m - 6 p.m ET; repeated 11 p.m - 1 a.m. ET)
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Review by Tamara I. Hladik
 he last time anyone heard from the Satellite of Love, Dr. Forrester had given up the ghost, and Mike, Gypsy, Tom Servo and Crow T. Robot were discorporated and floating through space. Well, it's 500 years later, and Mike, Gypsy and Tom are plunked back into their bodies aboard their ship, where they meet up with Crow, their old gold pal. The Milkbone-shaped ship looks different (Crow redecorated), Crow sounds different (he's now voiced by Bill Corbett), and they don't exactly know where they are.
Gypsy does some quick calibrations and determines they are hovering over a Class M planet. They contact the ruling class -- sapient apes -- and discover that the planet is Earth. Apparently Mike's descendants have had a predilection for monkey matrimony, contributing to the decline of civilization as the SOLers knew it. The cast then barks off a litany of Planet of the Apes jokes.
Overall, the hardy quipsters are weathering the reorientation well, until the Head Ape informs them it is time for their movie. "But why?!!" the crew cries out in agony. "Because the Lawgiver says so," comes the easy, nerdlink-in-the-chain-of-command answer. It is only at the end of the day's experiment that the stalwart, yet irreverent, group discovers -- gasp!!! -- that the Lawgiver is Pearl Forrester, who has vowed to continue the movie experiments of her dead son.
Has MST3K survived?
Are the bon mots still bon on the Satellite of Love, now without the wit of series creator Joel Hodgson, Frank Coniff (TV's Frank), and Trace Beaulieu (Dr. Forrester/Crow)? Yes indeed, and the show is still more fun than a barrelfull of Roddy McDowells. In the first experiment of the eighth season, Revenge of the Creature, when a performing dolphin in a Sea World-type aquarium is referred to as "Flippy" by the aquarium's emcee, someone on the SOL screeches, "I do not accept my slave name!" Funny indeed.
Another, more ominous fan concern has been "How is the show going to survive without Dr. Forrester/Crow?" Because Beaulieu's role was so prominent this is the more prickly point (although the loss of Crow is more lacerating than that of Dr. F). However, the transitions of lead MAD from Clayton to Pearl and the switch from Crow's old voice to his new one are handled well, the last with just the right touch of self-awareness -- during Robot Roll Call Crow quips, "I'm different!" As recasts go, this one's pretty okay.
Undoubtedly, Mystery Science Theater 3000 will be afflicted with Darren Syndrome, and some longtime fans will be reluctant to accept the refurbished 'bot and premise, just as some were reluctant to accept Nelson when Hodgson left. Ironically, the best boost to MST3K, more than recasts and rewrites, has been the series' hiatus. Because of it, audiences intensely loyal to the old format and crew will probably give the show a fairer hearing because they've been deprived of fresh material for so long, and will give MST3K the time it needs to find its new footing.
Despite all the monkeyshines, the new premise doesn't have Pearl permanently sequestered in Ape Central, but also has her chasing the SOL through the universe in a Volkswagen bus, although this is not clearly conveyed in the skits of the first episode. -- Tamara
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