Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope - Movie Review

You know, I'm so happy I can finally write about some good movies.

As you've probably caught onto by now, I absolutely love Star Wars. It's definitely the most important movie franchise to me, the story that I love the most, and I have such a strong emotional attachment to it. I've already talked about my history with the lore, but one thing I haven't put on record is that the only concert I’ve ever been to is Star Wars: In Concert. I got an awesome lenticular poster, but still, a lot of people have mocked me for it. I've also cried at all trailers for The Force Awakens, which I believe is the normal reaction, but some people have disagreed with me.

I believe that everyone is a nerd about something, and while people usually love a bunch of movies, TV shows, books, comics, and all of that, there's always one that comes before the rest. Star Wars is that for me, and this movie made me fall in love with Star Wars. I can remember watching the movie for the first time when I was four years old. My dad rented it from a video store...on VHS...holy crap, that was while ago. I was totally sucked into it, and I remember that by the end, at the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader, I was swinging a plastic sword around my basement.

A true nerd from the very beginning, what can I say?

But from that, I just totally dived into Star Wars, I watched the movies again and again, I collected a bunch of Lego sets, and as time went on, I read many of the books in the now defunct Expanded Universe, expanding my knowledge and my love of this universe. I'm also the proud owner of the complete Star Wars encyclopedia.

Everyone has seen A New Hope at this point, that's fair to say, right? I know there's a bunch of people out there who haven't, but these movies are pretty much the quintessential movies to watch, ever. Everyone knows the story of Star Wars; it's the classic hero's journey, Luke Skywalker going from a farm boy on Tatooine to fighting with the Rebel Alliance against the evil Empire and becoming a Jedi Knight.

This isn't really a complicated, shades-of-grey movie. It's very black and white in terms of good and evil, literally, in most cases. But people, including me, don't love Star Wars for the grey area subtext, we love it because of the worlds, the characters, and the story.

The planets, the environments, the sets, are so iconic and classic, and it creates such a distinct universe. It feels lived in, you know? It has a physicality to it, and it makes it feel more real, which is what seems to be going on with The Force Awakens. 

That's the real problem with the special editions of the original trilogy, because everything going on is so cool, but then all this distracting CGI starts popping up and covering up what everyone loves. The changes just feel so stupid and unnecessary, and I really hope that at some point in the future, there'll be a major release of the Star Wars trilogy in its original form. If Disney wants a way to win a huge amount of goodwill with fans who don't like that Disney's in charge, that would be the way to do it. Because it seems that with every new re-release of the films, there's minute little changes all over the place, George Lucas has even changed things and then changed them back

The galaxy has a real feeling of history to it, with the Empire having total control, the mention of the Clone Wars, and Obi-Wan talking about Luke's father. Speaking of which, after the prequels, I don't think Obi-Wan would ever remember Anakin as a good friend. He would probably remember him as that emotionally challenged guy who killed a bunch of kids.

This movie also has some of the best characters ever, and even though a few of them are just archetypes, it still works. You've got Obi-Wan Kenobi, who's the mentor who eventually ends up dying to save the heroes, you've got C-3PO and R2-D2 as the comic relief, but all the characters work so well together. Han Solo is the coolest rogue character ever, and him and Chewbacca really steal this movie. There's a reason why as a kid the ship I really wanted to fly was the Millennium Falcon. The interactions between Luke, Leia and Han are perfect. Their characters work off of each other so well, and that chemistry stays consistent throughout the trilogy. Darth Vader is just the coolest character in all of film, and definitely my favourite of all of Star Wars. From the look to his voice, he's so imposing and intimidating, and he just gets more interesting and complex throughout the movies. 

Throughout the original trilogy, I mean. I’ll never pretend that anything done in the prequels resembles character development.

And this movie has some real heart to it, some real humanity. Luke not being satisfied with his life, wanting more, seeking a future beyond what seems possible. Everyone's felt that at some point, everyone can relate to that in some way. Plus, Tatooine just looks like a terrible place to live. Nobody likes the desert, so when you live in the middle of nowhere on a planet in the middle of nowhere, it'll make you feel a bit trapped.

It's actually really interesting to look at George Lucas' original script for Star Wars, which is being adapted into a comic right now. Seeing things like how Han Solo was going to be a big, alien fish man, stuff like that, although I’m really glad that it turned out to be Harrison Ford, that was a choice for the better.

And as cool as the environments on planets are, space in this movie is just as cool. I love the space battles in his movie, every dogfight, every shot. This movie really did revolutionize special effects, by using unique camera angles around models of the ships, and the fact that they built all of it makes it even cooler. It cost them 3 million dollars to do this stuff, and it looks better than effects in movies today that cost 200 million to make. The scene where the TIE fighters are attacking the Falcon after they escape, with Han and Luke on the turrets, it's so much fun. That final run on the Death Star is also awesome. I love the way it's filmed, especially those shots of the X-Wings going down into the trenches, dodging laser fire, that stuff is still exciting today.

All of the action in this movie is pretty awesome, because it feels real. The shootouts aren't super accurate, there are shots flying all over the place, it's just chaos. And the lightsaber battle between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader is especially great. Yes, it's slow, yes, they aren't flipping and jumping all around, but it feels like two people who can't move very well fighting with swords. Again, it's that realism, that feeling that these are just people that makes Star Wars so great, and that humanity was sorely missing from the prequels. The effects aren't perfect, no, but that's not the point. They were amazing when it originally came out, and I think they still really hold up.

In a lot of ways, the sound of Star Wars is the most famous part. Everyone knows the sound effects, the lightsaber, the blasters, the explosions, the ships. And with the individual songs, the music is just perfect. I've talked about it before, but I could go on for days about how perfect every piece of music that John Williams composed for these movies is. From the opening crawl to the end credits, I've found myself humming the music several times in my life. Something I do a lot more, imagining action scenes from other movies with Star Wars music, because that music can make anything better.

PRAISE WILLIAMS.

Overall, I obviously love this movie, and watching these movies again just makes me more excited for The Force Awakens, because I really want to see more Star Wars that looks like this, and feels like this, and The Force Awakens really does look like it will. Star Wars itself has rightfully earned its place in film history; it was one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, and has evolved into an extremely impactful cultural phenomenon that's only continuing to grow and expand, becoming deeper and more interesting. In a time when science fiction was very slow, thoughtful and methodical, like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Star Wars was a huge space adventure that everyone could enjoy.

Well, so far we've gone through the bad, and now that it's really getting good, next time we'll be talking about the best of them.