Star Wars Uncut is a Fan Film remake of the original Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope by Casey Pugh made with the participation of hundreds of fellow Star Wars enthusiasts: in 2009 Pugh put out a call for people to make 15 seconds worth of the original film, which he then spliced together to make Uncut. When mulitple people provided the same scene, a Fan Vote [1]
was held for which to include. The result is a Shot-for-Shot Remake of Star Wars using 473 5-15 second clips.
The film won a Creative Arts Emmy for "Outstanding Achievement in Interactive Media" at the 2010 Emmy Awards. The "Director's Cut" version, which includes the highest rated clips, was posted to YouTube in 2012. (Unfortunately, Fox took it down, but a backup copy can be seen here) A sequel, The Empire Strikes Back Uncut, has also been released.
In addition to the tropes in the original film, Star Wars Uncut provides many of its own.
Trope Wars Uncut:
- Absurdly Ineffective Barricade: Instead of Luke blasting the controls, we have him putting tape across an elevator door. "That ought to hold them off for a while!"
- Action Figure Speech: In scenes where the characters are being played by actual action figures.
- Adaptational Early Appearance:
- Jar-Jar Binks can be seen in a few scenes.
- There are Ewoks at the medal ceremony at the end.
- Affectionate Parody: They parody it because they love it.
- Alphabet News Network: ENN, the Empire News Network.
- Auto-Tune: Used in the dialog between Han and Leia about R2-D2 carrying the stolen Death Star plans.
- Black Comedy: After Vader cuts off Luke's hand and he's hanging under Cloud City, Luke calls Leia on his mobile saying he could really use a hand right now. Cue his severed hand falling out of the closing hatch on top of him.
- Chess with Death: In the Seventh Seal inspired clip of the fight between Vader and Kenobi.
- Cluster F-Bomb: In the Big Lebowski clip.Han: Anything's fuckin' better than just sitting around here waiting for them to come in and fucking pick us off.
- Crawl: during the scene where the dissolution of the Galactic Senate is discussed on ENN. "Senate Dissolved...Moisture Farmers see Record Low Season"
- Crosscast Role: Sometimes Luke, Han, Vader, and others are female, and sometimes Leia is a guy.
- "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Several of the action scene clips feature people humming the portion of the soundtrack that occurs in that particular scene, even though Pugh added the original soundtrack background music.
- Fan Film: This movie is made up of hundreds fan films.
- Fauxtivational Poster: Luke has one from Biggs. "Dear Luke, You're never gonna get out of here!"
- Fun with Subtitles: In the first part of the Greedo scene the person playing Greedo speaks English, but it is subtitled in Rodian.
- Good-Times Montage: Luke's line "That droid and I have been through a lot together" cues a montage of Luke and R2 together partying, shitting, and making love in the same room with a woman and an iPhone respectively.
- Heart Symbol: Floating around Luke when he first sees Leia's hologram.
- Homoerotic Subtext: The
Accidental Innuendo in the original film is (inevitably) played for this trope.C3PO (leering at Luke) Is there anything I might do to help? (drops his jocks) - Hypocritical Humor: Han says "Laugh it up, fuzzball!" while being portrayed by a fuzzy-headed puppet.
- Infomercial: The sequence where Obi-Wan gives Luke his father's lightsaber is played as one, without changing a single word.
- Intermission: A brief one at the 1:12 mark.
- In the Style of: Many clips are filmed as if they were in other films, including The Big Lebowski, Yellow Submarine, The Seventh Seal, TRON, and Clerks
- Knee-High Perspective: Two upper class people are seen driving their car enjoying the view, only to scream in horror. It turns out that they're in the tiny MSE-6 Repair droid that Chewbacca scares.
- Lampshade Hanging: Of the fact that Chewbacca doesn't get a medal at the end. After they turn around and see that the crowd is full of Ewoks, complainy audio clips of Leia, Han and Luke are played over the scene, while Chewie says via subtitles "at least you got a damn medal!"
- Logo Joke: The spotlights of the 20th Century Fox logo turn into lightsabers and start fencing.
- Loud of War: A speaker-headed Vader blasts Luke with a rock version of the theme while Luke tries to fend him off with his guitar.
- A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away...: Done as a Twitter status update.
- Ninja Prop: One character pulls across the Idiosyncratic Wipes at the end of his scene.
- No OSHA Compliance:
- The door slams shut on the torture droid, knocking it to the ground.
- A stormtrooper falls into the giant hole in the hangar bay that the Millennium Falcon is in on the Death Star.
- A technician working on the carbon freezer gets frozen by a random spray of gas.
- Off-the-Shelf FX: R2-D2, C3PO and Darth Vader are often played by toys. The human characters are sometimes played by action figures too, though not as often.
- Opening Scroll: Played With. The scroll is the same as in the original film, until some blog-type comments pop up after it. The first comment is "First!"
- Pop-Up Texting: The discussion between Luke & Han as Han prepares to leave the Rebel base with his reward is presented as an iChat.
- Reaction Shot: When Leia kisses Luke, clips are shown of the audience reacting in horror.
- Recursive Reality: One portion of the trench run scene is Darth Vader playing with Legos and doing all the sound effects himself, including his own TIE fighter taking out a rebel ship.
- Red Shirt: One of the X-Wing fighter pilots in the trench run has "Cannon Fodder" printed on his helmet.
- Retraux:
- A Silent Movie shows the guards dialogue while Obiwan is sabotaging the tractor beam generator.
- The lead-up to the Big Damn Kiss scene between Han and Leia, with several scenes done in the style of old time movie romance scenes.
- Rotoscoping: Some of the clips are done in this style.
- Shout-Out:
- Several of the actors are wearing Starfleet uniform.
- One scene between Han and Luke takes place not in the Millenium Falcon cockpit, but in a DeLorean.
- Bert and Ernie are attending the Rebel briefing.
- The Jeopardy! thinking music plays as Tarkin watches the trench run.
- Dorothy and the Tin Man are at the rebel base listening to reports from the trench run.
- Characters are often represented by actors wearing a facemask of the actor in the original. In one scene Chewbacca is actually wearing the face of Barf, himself a parody of Chewbacca.
- There's the obligatory gags about Harrison Ford being Indiana Jones; for instance when Luke can't find the rope to swing Leia across the chasm, Indy does the job with his whip, leaving Luke behind on the platform.
- Shot-for-Shot Remake: The whole point of the exercise, though many of the recreators take liberties with their scenes.Luke: Well, if there's a bright centre of the universe you're on the planet that it's farthest from.C3PO: You mean Afghanistan?
- Stylistic Suck: Many of the clips use blatant Special Effects Failure, and/or are filmed in people's homes or backyards without any attempt to hide the background.
- Suspiciously Small Army: The crowd of rebel soldiers at the closing ceremony is represented by eight people.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: In the scene where they're pulling a Trojan Prisoner little signs saying "Not Han" and "Not Luke" are attached to Han and Luke disguised as stormtropers. (But maybe "Not Han" is Luke and "Not Luke" is Han?)
- Talking Heads: The scene where the dissolution of the Senate is discussed is presented as an ENN news show with Vader, Tarkin and Tagge shot as if they are in three separate places.
- Tempting Fate: The Opening Scroll is followed by some blog-type comments; poster alderaan_dude says "Glad I live on a peaceful planet."
- The Other Darrin: Invoked since there are literally hundreds of 15 second clips, so there are many different people playing the main cast throughout the course of the film.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: Shown between Leia and Chewie after Luke and Han fight off the TIE fighters.
- Unsound Effect: When Princess Leia's ship is being attacked at the start of the film, written sound effects include "Holy Crap" and "WTF?"
- Waving Signs Around: The Ewoks at the medal cememony. " Yub Yub" "See you in Jedi"
- Wrong-Name Outburst: In the recreation of Luke landing back at the rebel base after blowing up the Death Star, the man playing Luke shouts out "Carrie!" instead of "Leia!" when she runs over to hug him, echoing the legendary note same incident in the original film.
