Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with t...
WHAT I LIKED: The reason the first 'Star Wars,' was so successful, and the reason it remains such a compelling film to this day, is that it's such a fabulous melting pot of classic cinematic ideas.
On the one hand, the world-building - the thing the film undoubtedly spends most of its time doing - is delivered extremely delicately and mysteriously. We begin in a strange spaceship where a small team of people we don't know are being captured by a mighty villain, only for a few of their robots (or "droids") to escape with some apparently vital information to a nearby desert planet. There, we later hear from an old hermit about a powerful force that he and some ancient "Jedi Knights," used to fight the evil ruling Empire with, but even that seems to be shrouded in doubt. Then there are the countless deals and discussions we witness between alien creatures, robots and other people that we simply have to accept at face value, and the strangely lived in texture of the production and costume design makes everything look tangible but alien at the same time. Together it all builds a whole host of burning questions about this world - what is the force, how have the empire come to take control of the galaxy, what are all these aliens, why is the milk blue - that the film simply never answers.
But though the script's approach to world-building is to tease present as mysteriously as any great sci-fi film, its approach to character arcs and narrative is as archetypal as a Samurai or Western picture. Our central hero is of course Luke Skywalker; a naïve teen whose only dream is to leave his farm life for school. But right from the moment the droids encounter him after they land and relay their message about Obi-Wan, it's as clear as day from the music and framing that he's going to be the one to take the fight to the mighty Empire and become a Jedi himself. It's a similarly graceless delivery with the other main character Han Solo (a self-serving scoundrel that Luke and Obi-Wan pick up to help them travel to the rebellion) as he also has a classic inevitability to his arc where you just know he's going to reluctantly join forces with the good.
That may seem a little glib and trite at times, but the thing that elevates their fight into something meaningful for me is that, at its heart, it's fairly obviously about taking down dictators. Now of course, stories about good fighting evil are as old as time, but ones that paint the rebels and their fascist rulers quite as overtly as Star Wars are few and far between. We may not know who Darth Vader is, or how his Empire is keeping everyone suppressed, but it's clear from the costumes and production design of their base, and their discussions about squashing the rebellion, that they're basically just Nazis in space. The contrastingly grubby, rag-tag depiction of Luke and his newfound friends and the rest of the Rebellion in the final act only makes the fight seem all the more tangible, and their inevitable victory all the more uplifting.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: Luke and Han's journeys are never particularly engaging - not only because their destinations are so inevitable, but because the conflicts about leaving their lives behind to join the rebellion are never really explored.
VERDICT: Though its character arcs are glib and archetypal, the first 'Star Wars,' is a brilliant watch for its mysterious world-building and powerful thematic core.
