STAR WARS: Episode Ⅳ – A New Hope (1977-1997-2004)
directed by George Lucas
★★★★½
To call the original Star Wars a masterpiece might be overselling it a bit. Sure, it’s a good movie (a great movie, in fact, and groundbreaking in many ways — it literally changed the way movies are made, released, and promoted), but strip away everything that made Star Wars special and you have — well, a pretty bare-bones, run-of-the-mill, by-the-numbers humble hero fairy tale adventure.
But it’s because of all of those special elements that Star Wars became a phenomenon, and endures more than four decades later. The characters, worlds, technology, mythology, and the way they all interact transcends the medium in a way no one, not even Lucas could have foreseen.
And while the movie may not be perfect, it is perfectly cast. From Mark Hamill’s wide-eyed optimism, to Alec Guinness’ old-world wisdom. From Harrison Ford’s snark, to Carrie Fisher’s spunk. The special effects as well, rudimentary as they may have been, were near perfect for the time.
The plot itself is pretty standard and derivative of a typical fantasy-genre story: young peasant meets a wise old wizard, learns magic, meets a rogue traveler and comical companions, goes on an adventure far away from home, saves a princess, defeats an evil warlord, and is hailed as a hero. But placing this fantasy story in space with sci-fi technology attracted a whole new audience in the space-obsessed world of the 1970s.
The 1997 Special Edition, released to celebrate this film’s 20th anniversary, added several new elements. Lucas had a number of effects shots redone with CGI, most of which still hold up for the most part. New scenes were also added, including an extended establishing sequence of the Mos Eisley Spaceport and a previously deleted scene wherein Jabba the Hutt (a 3D computer-animated creature superimposed over the original stand-in actor) confronts Han Solo regarding his debt. Most controversially, Lucas also edited Han’s confrontation with bounty hunter Greedo so that the latter takes a shot first, with Han retaliating. Some of these scenes were further enhanced in 2004 for the DVD release.
Like Lucas’ later prequels, the first Star Wars suffers from occasionally flat characters, sluggish pacing, and stunted dialogue, but these problems are far less prominent here. Most of what you’ll get here is an old-fashioned, good-time adventure, with a whole lot of world-building.
