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Now that you know the story (see previous post), a few remarks about the movies.The first episode that was released (Episode IV: A New Hope) was a ground-breaking piece of cinema. The concept of the movie cycle, conceived in multiple parts, was somewhat new for science-fiction-fantasy; the special-effects which, though they depended on miniature models and careful photography, were an enormous improvements over the techniques used in earlier movies (e.g. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey) and Star Trek. The ever-present pair of robots were a whole new generation of successors to robots that had appeared in earlier films. The Storm Troopers, the infantry of the Empire, were an anonymous pack of entities whose only sign of humanity were their voices. But already, their very uniformity paved the way for things to come, such as the clone warriors of Episode II.
[Added later: How did they show what the Millennium falcon saw through its screens as it whizzed past an enormous Star Destroyer? A camera was conducted past the suspended model of the star destroyer. But the camera was suspended in such a way that its motion was controlled by a computer, which jinked and banked as the Millennium Falcon was supposed to be doing. This was a new innovation; in the past, cameras could only be simply dollied past the stationary miniature model. ]
But, beyond special effects, we must talk about style. The Empire fleet vessels and personnel were sleek and antiseptic in appearance, subtly signifying robotic entities, entirely under the control of the Emperor and Darth Vader. In contrast, the Rebel fighters appeared derived from terrestrial models, essentially updated versions of Allied troops from WWII.
In Episodes V and VI, the special-effects gradually improve, still making use of miniatures (and stop-action animation using poseable figures). One of the biggest tools in their chest, of course, was the ability to blend the special-effects animation with the live action using computer smoothing. By the time Episode VI rolled round, more and more was being done on the computers.
All of us fans waited impatiently for the prequels, Episodes I, II and III. By the time Episode I was released, the computer animation game had progressed far beyond the imagination of anyone in 1977. The improvements all had to do with computer animation.
In traditional animation, e.g. early Mickey Mouse, the lead artist would rough out a sequence of figures that represented the stages in an action sequence. They would correspond to points of rest, actually; e.g., a running figure would be represented as each foot hit the ground. These were called the key frames. All the slides that were required to depict the figure in between the key frames were assigned to a second animator. The process of creating these "in-between" slides was called "tweening".
The same technology that is available to PowerPoint is used in animation software. There, in addition to helping us create the individual figures, the software automatically interpolates the tweening. A mathematical formula is used to move each part of a figure from one position to the next, along a straight line, if desired, or along any curve. (This can actually be done in PowerPoint as well! You can have any slide element move along any desired path--within limits.)
All this innovation meant that, by the time Episode I was ready to hit the screen, they had used pure animation to create the scores of robots who appeared in that movie. (Decrepit remnants of these military robots (Battle Droids) appeared in Episodes IV, V and VI as cantankerous "civilian" robots, venting their spleen on defenseless fellow-robots. Their synthesized voices are unmistakable! Added later: I must confess I can't find a single reference to vintage battle droids being used in Episodes IV, V and VI, though there are interesting-looking vintage droids in many scenes, e.g. inside the Jawas' mobile warehouse, and inside the bunker of Jabba the Hut. By the way, robots are called "droids" throughout the cycle.)
More interestingly, the overall effect of the Prequels is smoother, more stylish, more polished. The old-style robots couldn't talk as fine as C3PO (built by Darth Vader in his earlier existence, don't forget), but they looked far more modern than did either C3PO or R2D2. The latter two robots, who were present in every episode, look like model T Fords, compared to the battle robots of Episode I, which look like a Prius, although heavily armored.
But more importantly, Lucas (George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars) seemed to deliberately view the Old Republic as a beautiful civilization in its full flowering, a renaissance time, a cultural zenith. To help in this effort, he actually used some beautiful buildings in Spain as locations for the Prequels. An example is the use of the Plaza de España in Seville:
Next we see a depiction of the Mos Eisley town on Tatooine, where a lot of the action of Episodes I and IV and VI takes place:
As we consider the series of movies from Episode I to Episode VI, the incidence of scenes of grandeur such as the Palace of the Naboo become less frequent, and desert outposts such as Mos Eisley, and the Moon of Endor become more common.
To summarize, the style of the Prequels reeks of Baroque beauty, while the style of Episodes IV, V and VI is all military might and resistance fighters and desert camps, and ancient spaceships. (It is a pretty good trick to make a space-ship look ancient, admittedly.) The point is that the Star Wars cycle starts off in beauty and ends in ruins, even though, plot-wise, we have a hopeful new beginning.
Afterword
George Lucas opened up the development of the post Episode VI Star Wars "universe" to fan writers, i.e. writers who wanted to independently continue to develop the story beyond the end of the movie saga. I regret to report that though, in essence, it involves the new government led by Leia and Luke and Han Solo, at last look the galaxy is as dangerous a place as it used to be, though the central government is now in friendly hands.
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