10 Genius Edits That Totally Saved Movies
8. The Death Star Trench Run Was Totally Re-Structured - Star Wars: A New Hope
By all accounts, principal photography on the original Star Wars was anything but smooth, and George Lucas' roughshod shoot was ultimately painstakingly sculpted into shape by a team of three editors - Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas, and Richard Chew - who scooped Best Film Editing Oscars for their editing magic.
Though the trio made countless adjustments to Lucas' scripted arrangement of events, by far their most impressive contributions were in comprehensively re-building the climactic Death Star trench run with Lucas' existing footage.
In Michael Kaminski's 2008 book "The Secret History of Star Wars," he writes:
"Marcia [Lucas] had reordered the shots almost from the ground up, trying to build tension lacking in the original scripted sequence, which was why this one was the most complicated... She warned George, 'If the audience doesn't cheer when Han Solo comes in at the last second in the Millennium Falcon to help Luke when he's being chased by Darth Vader, the picture doesn't work.'"
The entire idea that the Death Star was about to destroy the rebel base on Yavin IV was constructed entirely through clever editing and off-screen voiceover dialogue added during post-production.
In Marcia Lucas' own words, "it was all editorially manufactured," and without it, A New Hope's climax would've been a slack, tension-free bore.