When Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was first released on DVD, Lucasfilm included an extensive set of behind-the-scenes features that chronicled its making and the fan frenzy surrounding it.
In one of those features, after introducing the entire film to his production crew using storyboard drawings, Lucas made an interesting comment. While his team of artists pored over the storyboards, Lucas pointed out something about the prequel's extensive visuals.
"You see the echo of where [the story is] going to go," he said, gesturing to the drawings while referencing moments from the original trilogy. "It's like poetry. [The moments] rhyme."
A cynic might wonder if this was merely an excuse. Maybe it was what Lucas told himself to justify how poorly-written the prequels' scripts were.
On the other hand, Lucas has mentioned several times over the years that he always saw the visual language of Star Wars as akin to a silent film. In other words, he believes you could hypothetically watch all six movies and follow what's going on even without sound. His "rhyming" statement dovetails with this.
Whatever you believe of the prequels, there's no denying that one area Lucas did put plenty of thought into was his eye candy. And that doesn't mean just the visual effects. The way his shots are framed, their composition, the timing and movements of his actors... It's all very specific — and intentionally made to echo moments from the original trilogy. Probably more so than you ever realized.
Pablo Fernandez Eyre is a professional editor, working on movie trailers, TV commercials, montages and more. Eyre regularly hones his skills by piecing together bits of existing films in interesting new ways, to create short films that he posts to Vimeo. One recent video matches up scenes from both trilogies that demonstrate the visual symmetry Lucas embedded into them.
And it's pretty darn amazing. Our only complaint is that it goes by so fast; many of the clips are less than a second long, so you may find yourself pausing the video to get a better look.
That last shot would probably have been better paired up with the famous moment from A New Hope where Luke Skywalker stares out over the Tatooine desert, gazing at its twin suns. That said, Eyre's "Star Wars Poetry" is a brilliant little reminder of the beautiful, calculated design that goes into the films' making.
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