Star Wars: The Deleted Scenes #1: Luke and the space battle

Watching the space battle: This was to have been our first view of Luke Skywalker

Luke being taunted by fellow teenagers; Han Solo canoodling with a woman; and the appearance of a very human Jabba the Hutt. Over the next few posts, Episode Nothing looks at the scenes deleted from the final cut of Star Wars.

Looking back at Star Wars Weekly – issue 10

The cover of Star Wars Weekly issue 10

Our look at the UK's Star Wars Weekly from Marvel comics reaches issue 10, April 12 1978.

Laughing at Star Wars: the Top 10 funniest jokes in the original movie - part one

Big laughs: the original Star Wars had more jokes than people think

Here's a fact that's sometimes forgotten about the original Star Wars: It had some very good jokes.

I don't just mean in-jokes, i.e. references to other films and literature that made critics and movie buffs feel clever when they spotted them.  (I wrote about some of those references here.) No, I mean genuine jokes which prompted audiences to laugh out loud.  I remember some of the laughter quite vividly from that first viewing all those years ago.

From The Wizard of Oz to Hidden Fortress: the moments from other films spotted in Star Wars

Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940)

Star Wars

Read some of the original reviews and you’d think that making Star Wars was a lot like creating Frankenstein’s Monster: You just stitched together bits of other people’s films and then let it loose upon the box office. Critics of the time loved to show how clever they were by cataloguing the images and plot ideas they had caught Lucas lifting from other films.