You’ve probably heard of Star Wars Uncut: the collaborative project aiming to recreate Star Wars by stitching together hundreds of 15-second fan-film clips…
If not, you have now. Well, the final film has finally been catapulted onto the web:
It feels like an incredibly important cultural artefact, especially in light of the current SOPA shenanigans. I can’t think of a better counterpoint to all the ignorance, cynicism and powermongery (that’s a word right?) than this video and project. The fact that it concerns such a ‘mass-breach of copyright’ on one of the most lucrative entertainment franchises in history makes it even more poignant.
I’ve watched about twenty minutes of it so far. It’s a fascinating experience. Although the disparate vignettes make it a little hard to follow, the iconic characters and famous story hold it together. I found that the effort required to connect memory with the idiosyncratic fragments actually makes the experience very rich. You can’t glaze over and passively consume.
SWU is a wonderful metaphor for what is great about the web: Chaotic, imperfect gestures colliding around a shared passion and generating something raw, beautifully clumsily and spectacular that no one person could have achieved alone—and at no detriment to the original film. I.e. It merely rekindles one’s Star Wars love, more likely inspiring purchase/viewing of the original, than in any way harming it.
This film is symbolic of an ocean of other projects and experiences that would never see the light of day if SOPA, PIPA, or their next iterations got their way.
