59) Star Wars

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)

Director: George Lucas

Starring: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, James Earl Jones, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, David Prowse, Peter Mayhew

I haven't watched a Star Wars movie for a number of years. They were a big part of my childhood and I knew them back to front, so even though Star Wars featured quite prominently in some of the research I've been doing over the last couple of years, I hadn't taken the time to rewatch it. That being said, over the last couple of months I've really felt like watching one of the old Star Wars trilogy. I had thought it was going to be The Empire Strikes Back, but after a long day of marking essays I needed something a bit more happy ending, so went with the original.

When Imperial forces, led by Darth Vader (Earl Jones/Prowse) attack a diplomatic vessel which is secretly smuggling the stolen schematics for the Empire's newest weapon, the Death Star, Princess Leia (Fisher) is forced to load the plans and a distress message onto a small droid, R2-D2, and send him off, along with his companion C-3PO, in an escape pod to the nearby planet Tatooine in the hope that he can find the reclusive Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi (Guinness) who lives there. The droids fall into the hands of young farm boy Luke Skywalker (Hamill) who helps them find Kenobi, and then joins him on the mission to transport these plans to Alderaan, with the help of smugglers Han Solo (Ford) and his co-pilot Chewbacca (Mayhew). However, they find that the planet Alderaan has already been destroyed by the now fully operational Death Star. When they get taken on board the space station, their mission becomes to rescue the Princess who can then lead them to the Rebel Alliance's secret base.

Where do you start talking about Star Wars? You could make a fair argument that it is the most influential film of all time. In 1977 Hollywood changed forever. The 'Star Wars moment' effectively spelled the end of the more adult, more artistic films of the Hollywood Renaissance of the 1970s and ushered in the 'high concept' blockbuster mode of filmmaking which has dominated Hollywood since then. Star Wars introduced the idea that a film could be a franchise, revolutionising the way film studios thought about merchandising. George Lucas, who very cleverly made sure he retained merchandising rights to the film, made millions of dollars on action figures, sound tracks, novelisations, bed spreads and more recently video games, not to mention the US$260,000 worth of 'intergalactic bubblegum' sales (a favourite statistic of mine I came across in researching my honours thesis). Star Wars revolutionised special effects and post production. If you take the time to look at the credits at the end of the next blockbuster you go and see it's odds on that you will see Industrial Light and Magic or Skywalker Sound mentioned, both companies founded to work on Star Wars. Star Wars changed the game.

While Lucas managed to write an epic saga which seemed to strike a chord with audiences all over the world, you would never accuse him of being a good scriptwriter. If you watch the film as an adult you will be struck by just how grating some of the dialogue is. On the set of the film Harrison Ford famously berated Lucas on his writing ability saying, "You can write this shit, George, but you can't say it."

As a kid I always thought Luke Skywalker was great, but watching it again I find him to be a bit whingey and annoying. He is definitely the weakest character out of the central cast, compounded by the fact that Mark Hamill is probably the weakest actor in the cast. I also wonder whether he would still have got the part had they known he would quickly lose the boyish good looks he possessed in the first film, becoming quite an ugly man by the third.

Alec Guinness is a cut above the rest of the cast in terms of class, and was understandably frustrated that he was forever remembered for his supporting role in Star Wars rather than his many other quality performances in brilliant films. Harrison Ford fits the bill perfectly as the space cowboy Han Solo, but I do find it strange watching him perform in this role which for 99% of actors would have been a career defining performance, but for him was trumped by Indiana Jones.

Carrie Fisher became the pin up for a generation of nerds with her performance as Princess Leia. When you consider George Lucas had her wearing a bronze bikini in Return of the Jedi it is interesting to note that in the first film he made quite a conscious effort to tone down her femininity, to the point that in some scenes he ordered that her breasts be taped down with electrical tape. As Fisher later joked, "There's no jiggling in the Empire."

There have been numerous releases of Star Wars on DVD, each with slightly different features to prey on the devoted fanatics who will surely re-purchase the film. The version I have is the original DVD release from 2004. For this Special Edition release they did some digital restoration work on the film. There were certain things in the film which needed fixing, certain effects warranted a bit of touching up (the explosion of the Death Star is now a more impressive spectacle), but I whenever I watch it I'm frustrated by the amount of unnecessary effects that have been included in the digitally remastered version. In the early scenes taking place on Tatooine, specifically the scenes at the port at Mos Eisley, a number of digitally created space creatures have been added into the shots. This bugs me for a couple of reasons. Firstly the shots were not composed with those creatures in mind so once they've been added in it makes for a very cluttered, busy looking screen. Secondly, part of the beauty of the Star Wars trilogy was that all the weird and wonderful creatures were done with costumes and puppetry. When you have a digital character (and we're not talking as advanced as you see in Avatar. Things have come a long way in five years) inserted next to a puppet it looks ridiculous. A new scene was also added, and was easily the worst scene in the film, in which Han Solo is intercepted on his way to the Millennium Falcon by a digital Jabba the Hut (which looks very little like the impressive puppet used in Return of the Jedi). Not only is all of the dialogue in this scene effectively repeated from the scene before (obviously the footage of Harrison Ford was from a scene which was redundant and therefore cut), but watching Han 'interact' with a digital creature that wasn't there looks awful (eye lines are all wrong, etc). Looking at those digital special editions, and then at the prequel trilogy, I can't help but think that no one has done more damage to the Star Wars brand than George Lucas himself.

While I may have been momentarily swayed by my recent viewing of Star Trek, the Millennium Falcon is still the coolest spaceship ever. Suck it up Trekkies.

Star Wars is not the perfect film. It is not even close. It is not one of the best films ever made. But it is the most influential film ever made and one of the most beloved films of all time. Worth watching just for the experience (but if you are going to watch the series you watch them 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 rather than in order. The first three take some of the mystery out of the last three).