Star Wars
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This film has been preserved in the National Film Registry in 1989. | ||
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 "Remember, the Force will be with you... always." - Obi-Wan Kenobi, posthumously
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Star Wars (retroactively known as Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope since its 1981 re-release) is a 1977 American epic space opera film written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first installment of the original Star Wars trilogy, the first film in the franchise to be produced, and the fourth chronological installment of the main Star Wars saga.
Plot
It's the year 0 BBY and The Imperial Forces under orders from the cruel Darth Vader hold Princess Leia hostage in their efforts to quell the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Moisture farmer Luke Skywalker, Jedi master Obi-Wan Kenobi and smuggler Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon, work together with the companionable droid duo of R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess, help the Rebel Alliance and restore freedom and justice to the galaxy.
Why The Force Is Strong With This One
- Without a doubt, this is the most iconic movie franchise of all time.
- While movies, TV shows, and books all helped inspire George Lucas to write Star Wars, he had a more immediate reason for dealing with the project. After the success of his previous film American Graffiti, he stated that making a positive film was exhilarating, and that kids in the present didn’t have a fantastical world to be in awe of, the way Lucas and his generation did growing up, so he wanted to create a film similar to his previous film, but for younger kids. Lucas repeatedly told everyone this was a Disney movie as he targeted the film towards a preteen audience.
- To the 70s audience – who became sophisticated from European and New Hollywood films – this film essentially returns to the simplicities of the pre-60s Golden Age of movies.
- For the project, Lucas was trying to combine science fiction with swashbucklers, and the script was tinkered with for nearly three years, with a cosmology that owed equal allegiance to The Wizard of Oz and The Lord of the Rings. Lucas’ plot is extremely similar to Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress.
- A special effects production house – Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) was formed for the film, which Lucas poured money into. His assistant John Dykstra used a camera whose motions were controlled by computer, so the same shots could be filmed repeatedly in perfect registration, allowing technicians to add special effects with very little difficulty. The opening shot shows off this new capability, placing in a tilt across moving objects that would have been basically impossible to get a few years earlier.
- Impressive casting choices with the lead role of Luke Skywalker being given to the relatively callow Mark Hamill, while Harrison Ford was saved for a supporting role as daredevil mercenary Han Solo.
- Bombastic score by John Williams, that’s a masterpiece in of itself. And when the soundtrack was recorded in Dolby Stereo, it helped popularize the process throught the industry
- Back in its day, moviegoers were obsessed with the film, to the point were they often returned to see it again, and even formed clubs, and edited newsletters. It proved to be an extremely durable mythology, leading to Lucas expanding his vision to contain loads more material (including two separate trilogies). In a way, he changed how movies are made and marketed.
- The characters have become well-known by thousands of people alike for their great character development and their iconic designs that fit with the space aesthic the film was going for and it shows with them using guns as weapons and being great role models for kids in general.
- A benevolent ex-Jedi Knight (Obi-wan Kenobi)
- Princess Leia of the peace-loving Rebel Alliance
- Two comical robotic droids (R2D2, named after a piece of film editor's jargon - Reel 2 Dialog 2, and C3PO)
- A smuggler/mercenary space-pilot (Han Solo)
- A beastly creature named Chewbacca (a Wookiee)
- And an idealistic young boy who becomes trained in the righteous ways of the Force (Luke Skywalker)
- It pays homage to media such as Flash Gordon and Star Trek while still keeping it's core identity as an original film, which is impressive for a film released during the 1970's.
- "May the force be with you" became a mainstream phrase, thanks to this film.
- The film was so influential that it would kickstart George Lucas' career and inspire millions of other films like it with great to meddling results, and it helped the sci-fi movie genre to become extremely popular and famous to the point where many films in the 80s started to use a more sci-fi esque tone such as E.T and the Aliens films thanks to the success of Star Wars.
Bad Qualities
- In 1997, George Lucas created the Star Wars "Special Editions", which included unnecessary additions and alterations to the original cuts of the movies, most notably an excess amount of CGI. Lucas kept making more changes to them until Disney bought out Lucasfilm in 2012, although one last change was added by Lucas in the 2019 Disney+ version. Since then, they never officially re-released the original versions of the films on DVD, Blu-ray or digitally, except for the bonus discs for a 2006 DVD release, which were sourced from 1993 Laserdisc masters.
- Although most of the aspects of the movie are great (as mentioned above), they sadly haven't aged well, such as the effects, models and sets, which are one of the main reasons George created the "Special Editions".
- One scene features Obi-Wan saying that the Stormtroopers have super-precise aiming, but they actually can't even hit the broad side of a barn unless the plot demands it.
- The scene where Han Solo says that the Death Star is too big to be a space station doesn't make any sense as space stations can come in any size due being constructions
Videos
External Links
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope at the Internet Movie Database
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope on Rotten Tomatoes
Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope on Metacritic
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