When “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” opens this Christmas, it will undoubtedly be a surreal experience for George Lucas. It will be the first live-action “Star Wars” film released without Lucas at the helm. As we wait to see what J.J. Abrams does with the first installment of the franchise’s new era this December, let’s look backwards and marvel at what Lucas was able to accomplish.
Beginning with a clip of Lucas telling his collaborators “You see the echo of where it all is gonna go. It’s like poetry, they rhyme,” Pablo Fernández Eyre’s “Star Wars Poetry” replays clips from both the original trilogy and the much derided prequel trilogy directly on top of each other, revealing echoes, similarities and symmetries between the two. Shots, actual plot events and specific action beats in different scenes are repeated across the two trilogies. Mentors are struck down in front of their pupils… C–3PO gets dismantled… and a Skywalker loses a hand. Like John Williams did in his scores for the series, Lucas repeats motifs all throughout the films and no matter what your feelings are towards the man now, there’s no denying that it’s quite an accomplishment to have been the filmmaker in charge of the series that changed cinema forever between 1977 and 2005.
Watch “Star Wars Poetry” below.