As a fan of old-time radio and Star Wars I had been a little fascinated by this series' existence. It took me quite some time to actually seek it out and I'm glad that I did.
In case you're unaware, the radio dramas were produced by the University of Southern California with the first film adapted in 1981, Empire Strikes Back in 1983 and Return of the Jedi not covered until 1996 (during the 90s Star Wars revival mania).
The talent in the programs is pretty decent - the big notable draws are that Mark Hamill reprised Luke Skywalker for the first 2, Billy Dee Williams reprised Land Calrissian for the 2nd and Anthony Daniels reprised C-3PO in all three. Further, there was some interesting casting like Brock Peters as Darth Vader and John Lithgow as Yoda - not the same, but they work. The only performance I found lacking was Perry King as Han Solo. In the first play he delivered almost every line with a sarcastic tone which was often at odds with the tone of the scenes. Thankfully, he improved as the dramas continued.
But what really helped put the dramas over the top is that the adaptors were given access to all of John Williams' music and all of the distinctive sound effects. Since in an audio medium characters like Chewbacca and R2-D2 are nothing more than sound effects, it essentially added the 'originals' to the cast.
So are they any good? Yes and no.
The production quality is certainly well-above par for a new-time radio program - the music and sound effects cover up a lot of the plays' defects. There are some interesting new scenes added, particularly in the first play during which the first two episodes invent mostly-new scenes set before the start of the film (the 1st episode is a Luke episode which mostly uses the deleted scenes of him with his friends on Tatooine; the 2nd episode tells how Princess Leia stole the Death Star plans). But mostly, the plays' runtimes were puffed-up thanks to padding. The Star Wars films have a certain pace - they tend to move very rapidly from one scene to the next. But the radio dramas s-l-o-w it all down. Again, outside of the first adaptation, the dramas mostly didn't add new scenes. Instead, the existing scenes were increased in length as characters banter back and forth and repeat information which was already understood. It's clunky.
The other problem I would say is that the dramas didn't have a narrator. Whenever an action scene arrives, the drama becomes unbearably silly because everyone shouts out what they're going to do before they do it (or immediately after). A narrator could have helped make these moments clear without making the characters sound silly(er).
I suppose I could say that I recommend the Star Wars radio dramas to Star Wars fans, but that's obvious; still, if you're one of them and you really like audio drama then this is for you.
I was amazed to learn that these dramas were created by the same people who made Star Wars: Rebel Mission to Ord Mantell, an audio tape I owned as a child (and probably still have in a box somewhere). I always thought that tape was a bit juvenile (slightly below the Marvel star Wars comics I grew up with), but I loved it just as an oddity. I would've really enjoyed hearing the radio programs had I access to them back then!
No comments:
Post a Comment