Star Wars as Silent Film

in Film, Sci Fi | July 6th, 2011 12 Comments

You know George Lucas’ clas­sic, The Empire Strikes Back. Now roll it back a good 60 years and imag­ine the silent ver­sion. It works unex­pect­ed­ly well.

H/T to @wesalwan. And don’t miss many land­mark silent films in our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online. Chap­lin, ear­ly Hitch­cock, Fritz Lang, the first sci-fi and west­ern films — they’re all there. Find them at the bot­tom of the page…

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Comments (12)
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  • sagodjur says:
    July 6, 2011 at 8:30 am

    Star Wars was released in 1977, not 1979 and the footage in this video is actu­al­ly from The Empire Strikes Back, which was released in 1980.

    /geek

    Reply
  • Jake says:
    July 6, 2011 at 3:49 pm

    I sec­ond that /geekmotion.

    Reply
  • Johnny Kerr says:
    July 6, 2011 at 11:33 pm

    This is great! Lucas has always said that the SW movies should work as silent films. Good job — love the music!

    Reply
  • jake storm says:
    July 7, 2011 at 5:38 am

    it seemed like this was the end of star­wars episode 6 but then i real­ized it was star­wars 5

    Reply
  • Seoulman says:
    July 7, 2011 at 7:17 pm

    Enjoyed it a lot, the ONLY thing I would’ve changed styl­is­ti­cal­ly would’ve been using the Impe­r­i­al logo for Vader’s dia­logue and the Alliance Rogue Squadron phoenix logo for Luke’s. Would love to see more!

    Reply
  • college guy says:
    July 8, 2011 at 6:30 am

    BRILLIANT! SW in any form,in any avatar, is a masterpiece,hell id applaud it even if it had only the sound­track and no video!!

    Reply
  • Susan says:
    October 2, 2011 at 4:19 pm

    @college guy: I total­ly agree. John Williams’ music for these movies is amaz­ing. I love Star Wars.

    Reply
  • Alan Keith Simpson says:
    April 27, 2012 at 1:11 am

    There’s an unfor­tu­nate typo at 2:23. It should read “… you can destroy…” not “… youR can destroy…” Oth­er­wise, very well done.

    Reply
  • Ed Muller Jr. says:
    April 27, 2012 at 6:35 am

    That was so cool…different

    Reply
  • daniel rodriguez says:
    April 27, 2012 at 8:39 am

    Very clever. Why tack on the sil­ly joke at the end?

    Reply
  • Gearbreaker says:
    February 12, 2013 at 3:57 pm

    it’s not George Lucas’ Clas­sic… Irvin Ker­sh­n­er direct­ed “The Empire Strikes Back” (you can see it by the know fact, that the movie was direct­ed well ;-) )
    Despite that — fun­ny video!

    Reply
  • Uncle Facts (@unclefacts) says:
    January 3, 2016 at 5:35 pm

    admit it, even though it’s silent, every one of you read Vader’s lines in his voice…

    Reply

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