'Star Wars' Video Essay Examines The Assault On The First Death Star

With Star Wars: The Force Awakens just landing the biggest opening weekend of all time, it's clear that the appeal of tales from a galaxy far, far away is still high. And since the new sequel shares quite a few story beats and similarities with the original Star Wars from 1977, there's no better time to look back at what made one of the most iconic sequences in the movie work so well.

A new installment of The Discarded Image takes an in-depth look at the Death Star assault from Star Wars: A New Hope, taking into account the political climate of the time, technical aspects such as sound design, John Williams' iconic score and the change in George Lucas' storytelling style when compared to his previous filmmaking endeavors.

Here's Julian Palmer's The Discarded Image: Episode 5 – Star Wars (via The Playlist):

After you've seen a movie so many times, you begin to take for granted the nuances of any given scene that make it so great. So it's always refreshing to dive into a movie and break down the pieces that make it work so well.

In the case of Star Wars, the innovations that Lucas was forced into making by a combination of ambitious vision and limited budget resulted in some of the most brilliant, original filmmaking cinema has ever seen, and some of the most spectacular work that came from it can be seen in the above climactic sequence. It's that kind of work that inspired Lucas to go on to create such as Skywalker Sound and Industrial Light & Magic, which have been responsible for even more groundbreaking filmmaking techniques.The only downside to this Star Wars video essay diving into the perfect of the first Death Star assault is we begin to notice some of the shortcomings of retreading familiar territory in The Force Awakens. But it's probably not enough to ruin the latter movie for fans.