REVIEW: Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

    A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

    This is where it all started, back in 1977.  This was the movie that introduced audiences around the world to the Death Star, lightsabers, the Millennium Falcon, and the Force.  While we now know it as "Episode IV: A New Hope" (ANH), which is its official title in the opening crawl, at the time of its release and for the better part of a generation it was generally known as just "Star Wars".  It all came from here.

I can't help but feel like Chevy Chase is playing Han Solo in this poster.

    While it was the first film released, for timeline purposes, ANH is set about eighteen years after the end of Revenge of the Sith, though all Star Wars continuity uses ANH as 'year zero' to date everything.  Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) is fleeing Imperial troops led by the sinister Darth Vader (David Prowse, and voiced by James Earl Jones).  Before her capture, she entrusts secret plans to two droids - C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) and R2-D2 (Kenny Baker), who in turn fall into the hands of a farmboy, Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill).  Luke soon finds himself on a mission to return the plans to the princess, accompanied by aged Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his partner Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew).  Along the way, Luke finds his destiny unfolding before him, in the face of a terrifying threat.  Peter Cushing also stars as Grand Moff Tarkin, and there are appearances by Phil Brown, Shelagh Fraser, and Denis Lawson.

   So here's the issue - how does one do a review of a film that's close to forty years old, has spawned multiple sequels, prequels, and spin-offs, and become an international cultural milestone?  It seems almost futile to try and look at ANH without reference to the impact its made on the world (my inner English major pipes up yelling 'New Criticism'), but all the same, let's try and take a look at the film itself.

"Go ahead, call me 'Ani' one more time....."

   It's funny, actually - the movie at its root is really something of a B-movie, or at least an homage to the classic sci-fi serials, shows and films that preceded it, and not designed to be a blockbuster in the sense that we now understand the term.   It's chock full of sci-fi cliche, all of the characters are 'types', the film is utterly predictable - simplistic, even, and yet somehow, all of that just makes the movie better.  ANH manages to redefine the tropes of the genre, and in the process, comes to exemplify them, perhaps more than any other story ever has.  The bildungsroman youth, the lovely princess, the aged wizard, the roguish hero, the comic sidekicks, the relentless uniformed henchmen, and the terrifying black-clad villain - I think it'd be fair to say that for many people, the cast of ANH are what would come to mind for most if not all of those.

     The story is very straightforward, and much of the dialogue is wordy or even clunky.  There's not a whole ton of character development going on; we don't learn very much about most of the characters in terms of who they are, where they come from, or much else beyond what the plot of the immediate crisis demands.  There's a very good chance that had things gone slightly differently with this movie, the script in the hands of other actors would have led to a trite, forgettable film.  Yet somehow, they caught lightning in a bottle and what could have been drawbacks only serve to enhance the movie.

Never before have two guys in metal plating in the middle of the desert meant so much to so many...

    A lot of the credit must go to the actors, of course.  Every single member of the cast commits completely to the roles - there's nothing self-conscious about any of the performances, and each character resonates as genuine.  Hamill is completely earnest, enough so that audiences could forgive the character's tendency to whine.  Ford is full of ineffable charm that renders Solo instantly likable, and Fisher is fiery, turning a damsel-in-distress role into a young woman to be reckoned with, and generating instant chemistry with both Hamill and Ford.  Admittedly, she does seem to be unclear during parts of the movie as to whether or not she's supposed to have an accent, but that's a relatively minor quibble.  Daniels could have been obnoxious as the fussy Threepio, but manages to remain funny and endearing throughout.  Cushing, a staple of classic horror dramas, is wonderfully understated here as the iron-willed Tarkin, delivering lines of menace with a lilting purr, and even Alec Guinness, who famously felt himself to be slumming by doing the film at all, gives Kenobi a sparkle and gravitas.

     So while the script doesn't provide a lot of detail about the characters, the cast still manages to make them distinct and vibrant, and immediately memorable, so that an audience doesn't really need to know more to appreciate what's before them.  Of course, the sequels would delve more into the backstory and universe, but one of the things ANH does so well is to present these concepts to an audience and let them wonder about them.  How did the Empire come to be?  Why did the Jedi lose?  Why did Darth Vader fall to the dark side?   Why did Obi-Wan vanish, and how is he still talking?  How much time am I allowed to pretend to use the Force to do things before I should start feeling silly?  Is it morally wrong to make lightsaber noises every time I pick up a stick?  And so forth.

You can't NOT hear the music playing for this shot, can you?

   To be fair, most of the acclaim has to go to George Lucas.  This is his playground, his imagination, and his effort that made this movie come to pass.  Say what you will about his work in the succeeding decades, but you cannot deny the painstaking labor that went into ANH.  Lucas was willing to be a nerd in an era where nerds simply didn't count.  His love of the genre led him to write a script which he then re-wrote and re-wrote, changing and tailoring it over and over, because he had something to prove.  He knew what he wanted to see, and even if he did have to compromise on certain elements, which he claims to be the case, he still displayed a remarkable creativity and ingenuity in bringing this movie together.

   Of course, he had an immensely talented team helping him.  ANH was made in an era where CGI did not exist, and while later editions of the film have benefited from (or been tainted by, depending on your point of view) digital enhancement, the original film features some of the most effective use of special effects ever captured.  Lightsabers, laser blasters, spaceships, exploding planets - they're all truly well done - sights which capture the imagination.  I've seen some of the original costumes and props from the film up close, and it's really rather amazing.  In person, they look cheap and somewhat silly, but somehow, Lucas' crew made movie magic, often with little bits of wood, wire and cardboard.

"I don't know...does anyone have anything resembling a bad feeling about this...?"

   I think the best thing ANH as going for it is that it is a movie with heart.  The absolute commitment of the cast and crew, a swelling score by John Williams with melodies that stayed with audiences from the moment of the first fanfare, and a simple, clear morality of good and evil all combined to create a truly believable, sincere picture.  If you look at a lot of the films of the era, there's a certain grit and weariness to many of them, a hard and often brutal reflection of the world at the time...just post-Watergate and Vietnam, in an economic downturn.  I suspect ANH tapped into something people very much wanted, or even needed to see, with larger than life heroes and villains, fantastic aliens and strange planets, and an unambiguous morality that audiences could have faith in when they weren't feeling to sanguine about the real world.  The first Superman movie followed a year after ANH, and I have to wonder if maybe the first Star Wars didn't open the door to make it acceptable to believe in fantasy again.  I think it's very similar to what we saw happen in late 2001.

   Speaking of that date, it had been almost a decade since Kubrick's film - which, as excellent as it is, could hardly be called uplifting, had been released, and Star Trek had been off the air for the same length of time.  ANH reinvigorated science fiction, and live action fantasy, for that matter, but it caught people rather off guard; I strongly doubt at the time of its filming those involved realized what they had - a cultural icon and future Best Picture nominee.

"Go ahead, Darth, kill me - then I can really screw with your head."

    I realize I'm slipping here, away from ANH-as-movie and into its cultural importance, but I find with the movie it's very hard to separate the two.  Certainly, so much has been said about Star Wars in general and ANH in particular that any attempt to ignore the impact of the movie would be at best disingenuous.  It's an important movie because of its impact, but it's also an impactful movie on its own merits.

   Yes, it has some editing flaws.  Yes, it has a few rather obvious mistakes - badly-timed voice dubbing, slightly stilted effects at times, and rather famously, a stormtrooper accidentally running headfirst into a door.  And yes, there are no real surprises to the movie...those would come later.  I think an argument could be made that the movie might have been more polished, a little sharper and neater - but I think ultimately that lack of refinement only makes the movie more genuine.  Indeed, one of my frustrations with the later re-releases of the film - and the constant editing done after the fact - is that to a certain degree they pave over the sheer charm of the movie.  That charm will never vanish, to be sure, but it doesn't need its creator to clean it up or apologize for it.  ANH did its job better than anyone could have expected.

And already, Chewie knows something ain't right...

   I was too young to have seen ANH in theaters for the obvious reason that it preceded me into this world by thirteen months.  But when I saw it for the first time, on television at my grandfather's house,  I found the concept of the Death Star terrifying, and I fell madly in love with the concept of lightsabers from the moment Luke first ignited his father's sword.  And I was not alone - I was part of that lucky generation that came around in the late '70s and early '80s that got to benefit from this explosion of imagination and fantasy, and in many ways, it all began right here, with this movie.

     So no, it's not easy to look at A New Hope in a vacuum.  It's a movie that defined a genre and changed the face of both Hollywood and the culture, and became one of the most well-known, beloved, and quotable movies of all time.  Is it a perfect film?  No, I don't think so.  But it's one of those very rare works that doesn't have to be.

     I know I'm gushing a bit, but what the hell - it's earned it.

FINAL RATING: 9 PAWS (OUT OF 10):

     There's actually a very specific reason ANH doesn't get a 10-paw rating, but more on that next time....Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back...