The Unauthorised Star Wars Story

• Cat.no: VSLD 10095
• Cert: E
• Running time: 63 minutes
• Year: 1999
• Pressing: 1999
• Region(s): 2 (UK PAL)
• Chapters: 10
• Sound: Linear PCM Mono
• Languages: English
• Subtitles: None
• Fullscreen: 1.33:1
• 16:9-enhanced: No
• Macrovision: No
• Disc Format: DVD 5
• Price: £15.99
• Extras : Scene index

The Unauthorised Star Wars Story :There’s something cynical that can be said about a product when it continuallystates how it is “unauthorised” and has not been “prepared, approved, licencedor endorsed by any entity that created or produced the Star Wars properties oris otherwise associated with them in any way”.

On the plus side, there’s snippets of interviews withdirector of episodes 1 and 4, George Lucas,Harrison Ford (Han Solo),Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker),Samuel L Jackson (Mace Windu),Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia),Anthony Daniels (C3PO) andPeter Mayhew (Chewbacca) andKenny Baker (R2D2), gelled together with footage of people coming out ofthe cinema in 1977 stating that what they’ve just seen, ie. the first film, haschanged their lives as well as shots of the endless queues this year whenAmericans camped outside their local cinema for over a month in the hope to bethe first to see the latest Lucasfilm product, Star Wars: The PhantomMenace.

On the minus side, while we get to see shots of the Phantom Menace set inTunisia, we don’t get to see any clips of the four films made to date or anybehind-the-scenes footage of them being filmed in the process. Also, during theinterviews, some were clearly intended for the German market as any postershung up behind the actors are mostly blurred out around the actor, so you canonly make out certain words behind the actor’s head, which makes it look ratherunprofessional, but that’s the price you pay for it being unauthorised.

The picture quality is very good, with not much in the way of artifacts and,hence, has been encoded very well, the average bitrate being a very good7.94Mb/s, barely fluctuating from that. As it’s just interviews with no filmclips from the Star Wars saga, the content is presented in its originalfullscreen ratio, but can comfortably be zoomed-in to 14:9 on a widescreen TV.

The sound is mono and is only used for the actors to voice their opinions andtell stories about their Star Wars lives. Most of the time they comeacross fine, but some footage has decidedly muffled speech. There’s no DolbyDigital logo, so I presume it’s uncompressed Linear PCM Mono.

The programme is in English only, with no subtitles.

Menu :

The menu is silent and static, with options to start the programme or selecta scene.

Most of what’s on view will be worth a watch for anyone with a passing interestin the Star Wars saga, but how much of a fan you are will depend onwhether you want to know that Kenny Baker‘s R2D2 costume was adornedinside by topless pin-ups for a laugh, or what George Lucas‘ childhoodfriends thought of him all those years ago.

If you’re in the former category, I’d recommend you rent the DVD before you buy,whereas die-hard Star Wars fans will have snapped it up already andwill probably be quite happy to find out some more information that they haven’tcome across before.

Whichever way you look at it, this is going to be your only chance to getanything of Star Wars on DVD for a while, since Lucas has said he won’t issueany of the feature films on DVD until 2005 after the three prequels have beencompleted.