We have finally arrived. We took up the
task of watching all of the Star Wars films, starting with
Episode I: The Phantom Menace… which we have to admit was a
bit of a struggle… but we made it through the prequels and
have finally arrived at the one that started it all, Star Wars
Episode IV: A New Hope. Allow to me tell you that
A New Hope is not my favorite movie, it's not even my favorite
Star Wars movie, that film being 'The Empire Strikes Back'
which I firmly believe is one the three greatest movies ever
put on film. But I maintain that Star Wars is the most
important film of the second half of the twentieth
century. This is the movie, along with Jaws, that
changed the movie theater to the multi-plex. This is the
movie that shattered the boundaries of imagination.
Almost all modern filmmakers working today, who saw this movie
as a child, I was nine when I first saw it theaters, are
influenced by Star Wars. This is the one that changed
everything.
But here was my personal dilemma. Do I watch the
laserdisc version which I have on DVD, or do I watch my
altered Blu-Ray version? I so badly wanted to watch the
laserdisc version, almost identical to the 1977 film, but
about ten minutes in… I just couldn't do it. The video
was grainy, the sound was awful and while this would've been
more than acceptable on my old 27" Magnavox, on a 60"
Panasonic mated to a Pioneer surround system, it wasn't
working, not even a little bit. So I succumbed to the
whims of George Lucas and put in his constantly altered vision
of his movie, hell if I know which version this is, but I know
that Gredo and Han shot at the same time. Guess
what? 'Star Wars' is still terribly awesome. There
are some things which clearly do not belong in this altered
version, but it doesn't change the core of the story.
You know the story, a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away
and whatnot. Many years have passed since the events of
Episode III, the Empire is firmly in control and now exists to
stamp out the remaining rebels that litter the universe.
I would like to tell you that in charge of this operation was
Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones)… but no… Vader is
inexplicably taking orders from
Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) who is
running things on his newly created Death Star. Still,
Vader with his unique skill of choking people, either with his
bionic right arm or by thinking real hard, knows that the
freshly captured Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) is behind some
of these rebel shenanigans, and she will talk… one way or the
other.
Eventually we meet our star Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), a
young farmer who stumbles upon an image of Leia needing to
deliver a message to old Ben Kenobi (Alec Guiness) via the
R2D2 Droid. Their adventures will eventually lead us to
the scurillous smuggler and ace pilot Han Solo (Harrison Ford)
and his right hand beast Chewbacca the Wookie (Peter Mayhew)
and now adventure is afoot.
Our heroes get sucked into the Death Star, rescue a very angry
and bitter princess, Luke seems to be kind of sweet on the
princess, which in retrospect is super uncomfortable knowing
what we know now, and old Obi Wan Kenobi will meet his former
pupil Darth Vader once again. What we need to do is find
a way to stop that invincible, super huge indestructible death
star… but that's just not going to happen… unless you can say
'design flaw'?
Books upon books upon books written, and more documentaries
have been filmed about this movie have than you can shake a
stick at, and such I have nothing I can possibly add to this
except my own personal opinion… so that's what we are going to
do.
Watching the Special Edition Blu-Ray, my goodness does it look
and sound good. Criticize George Lucas if you must, but
think the man knows a little something about image and
sound? Yes he does. Now there are some things as
you watch this special edition that clearly just don't look
like they belong, and I think that would almost be the case
even if this altered version was the first version of Star
Wars that you have ever seen. When the Jawa's get on
that odd beast with the Ram's horns, it's fairly obvious that
there were a couple of guys in that thing making it move, a
nice old school efffect, which completely flies in the face of
some random storm trooper riding CGI dinosaurs, or CGI Jabba
or more CGI robots. In those moments, those are
obviously modern effects shoehorned into a 1977 film, and they
really don't fit, but the doc 'The People vs. George Lucas'
went into deep detail about all of that, which we discuss on
this site as well, but we will admit that more than a few of
the enhancements just look plain wrong.
But I will maintain that these alterations do not take away
from the film itself which is just as rousing an adventure as
it always was. Just hearing the hum of a lightsaber or
the squeal of a tie fighter or the asthmatic wheeze of Darth
Vader still sends chills down my spine. Almost
everything in this movie seems to just work right. No
one would ever accuse Mark Hamill or Carrie Fisher… heck, even
Harrison Ford at that point in his career of being great
actors, but they fit these parts perfectly. The dialog
was cheesy and sometimes clunky, but completely
effective. The narrative wasn't too terribly original
but because of the sense of excitement that was brimming
throughout almost every frame of this classic, you hardly
noticed. And it doesn't hurt to have a John Williams
score in the background driving everything relentlessly
forward.
Are there spots I can whine about? Sure there are.
Blowing up the Death Star for instance. Luke pretty much
murdered thousands upon thousands of people, most of whom were
just poor storm troopers doing their jobs. Secretarial
staff, IT pros, Janitorial and cooks... all freaking
dead. That, if anything, should've sent Luke to the
Darkside. And good luck finding a brown face among the
non-alien cast. I guess minorities weren't invented yet
a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. At least in
this movie. Future movies will rectify all of that.
The difference between the prequels, compared to this film as
I work my through them, is that after watching a prequel, I
knew I would get around to watching the next one…
eventually. I had to, because it's a project.
After watching 'Star Wars', I have to actually force myself to
hold off on watching 'Empire' because that's how good this
movie is, and 'The Empire Strikes Back' is even better.
For my money. But there is no Empire without this one,
if not the greatest film ever made, certainly one of the most
important.
