Revisiting Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977): Written and directed by George Lucas. Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing and Alec Guinness. Rated PG (Mild scum and villainy). Running time: 121 minutes.

3 stars (out of four)

Imagine reading the opening crawl of Star Wars for the first time. A strangely worded, yellow text drifts upward and fades into the stars. It references a war, a princess, an evil empire and a DEATH STAR (inexplicably capitalized) and the whole thing sounds like more than you’ve bargained for. But, really, how can you be expected to focus on flying words when music like this playing underneath them? Trumpets and strings and timpani! All that nonsense about a hidden base and stolen plans was a bit discouraging but it’s hard to resist the triumphant pomp of the score so, okay, for now, you bite.

The movie quickly recovers from a risky opening with a stunning first image and any hesitation you may have felt is rendered irrelevant. The camera pans downward to reveal a single planet floating among the stars. The camera continues to pan and you see a second, larger planet. Then another, the biggest yet, enters the frame and a spaceship soars, apparently from behind you, onto the screen. And just when you’re starting to think, “You know, maybe this movie will be kind of cool after all,” a second one, a real behemoth of a battleship, follows the first in hot pursuit, firing lasers at the little guy.

That the opening shot of Star Wars is still effective testifies to the visual bravura of director George Lucas but it must have been all the more thrilling in 1977 when the idea of a summer blockbuster loaded with special effects was still sort of new.

The first line in the movie is stupendously underwhelming. Inside the ship, as two classes of soldiers shoot laser guns at each other, a gold-plated humanoid robot says to a rolling garbage can, “Did you hear that? They shut down the main reactor. We’ll be destroyed for sure. This is madness!” As if you are actually paying attention to dialogue at a time like this.

Okay, let’s take stock of what’s happened so far. There has been an awful lot of excitement but still not much of a sense of what’s at stake here. That robot just mentioned something about “being sent to the spice mines of Kessel,” whatever that means, but that seems a dubious premise for a movie so you decide to wait for the next piece of information.

And it comes quickly! A man in a black mask, black suit and black cape marches onscreen accompanied by more of that great music and he chokes a guy to death after a brief dispute over whether or not the ship has an ambassador. We have found our villain.

As the film continues, it eases us into its universe one step at a time. The robots, which are being called droids, land on a desolate planet with vast deserts and fall into the hands of a local farmer (Phil Brown). The farmer’s nephew is a pretty boy named Luke (Mark Hamill) whose idea of a good time hanging out with friends includes “picking up power converters” (we may assume that Luke and his buddies are intoxicated for such shenanigans and that this is way more fun than it sounds).

While cleaning the droids, Luke discovers a holographic message hidden inside the rolling garbage can. A beautiful girl (Carrie Fisher) begs for help from an “Obi-Wan Kenobi.” Perhaps a relative of old Ben Kenobi, a hermit who lives in the nearby caves? That hermit, played by Alec Guinness, who brings some much-needed thespian gravitas to the film, turns out to be the Obi-Wan from the message. He tells Luke all about the boy’s father, a warrior from back in the day slain by Darth Vader (the guy wearing all black from the opening scene). He invites Luke to leave his dull life as a farmer and join him in rescuing the girl, who, as it turns out, is a princess.

Star Wars is a classic adventure story, told with a sturdy, traditional structure that is effective in its simplicity. The film hops from one lavish set piece to another, each new place populated by fascinating creatures and characters from Mr. Lucas’s imagination.

In its quiet moments, Star Wars is not so nimble. The dialogue is often lead-footed and Mr. Lucas is less self-assured in the downtime between action sequences. There are some light-hearted moments in these passages, however, often thanks to the inclusion of Han Solo, a smuggler (played by the irrepressibly charming Harrison Ford) who begrudgingly joins our heroes because the price is right.

In spite of its flaws, Star Wars has a lovable scrappiness about it. In the decades that followed its release, studios have tried again and again to replicate its success. But few of their slam-bang summer action movies have been able to capture the essence of Star Wars. George Lucas made this movie with a simple goal in mind. To entertain audiences and craft a film that would thrill and delight them. He did and it still does.

- Steve Avigliano, 3/5/12