I knew going into this whole ordeal that A New Hope would be the hardest of all the Star Wars films to write about, simply because at this point it’s incredibly difficult to look at it as a piece of filmmaking. While most do not claim it is the best of the Star Wars films (that will come next week) it is A New Hope that kicked off a cinematic phenomenon unlike anything in history. It is this film that introduced all the characters that became Happy Meal toys and PEZ dispensers. It is this film that inspired a generation of kids to make their own sci-fi movies, books, and so much more. Also, it is this film that created a legion of fans large enough to start up the geekiest and most ridiculously thorough website in existence: Wookieepedia. (Seriously, check out some pages. It’s insane.) The release of A New Hope back in 1977 is one of the most important turning points in movie history, and there’s little I can say about it that hasn’t been said before. So, here goes.
It’s also hard to think of it as a standalone film, simply because these days it’s viewed more as the cultural launching point that it is. In particular, when one watches A New Hope after going through the first three prequels as I have, it stops feeling like the first Star Wars film and starts feeling like the beginning of a second adventure. If anything, watching A New Hope made the storytelling of the prequels—particularly Revenge of the Sith—look all the more impressive. There are no plot holes to speak of, and even though it’s clearly a movie made in the ’70s and not the ’00s it still feels like the same universe. Plus, none of the information presented here contradicts the events of the prequels. Lucas really thought this whole thing out, and as a result the whole thing feels impressively consistent.
If you’ll indulge this analogy: given the context of the other five films, A New Hope feels more like a really exciting season premiere than its own film. I don’t mean that as a knock on A New Hope—it’s one of the most re-watchable blockbusters in history—but these days it’s incredibly hard not to think of it as a piece in a much larger puzzle. The two Star Wars trilogies are structured much like two seasons of a modern serialized cable series; albeit the most expensive cable series in the history of mankind. The prequels are season one (with Revenge of the Sith being the “finale,” if you will) and the original trilogy is season two, with A New Hope as the “premiere.” It introduces us to the heroes, villains, and overarching plot that we will be dealing with throughout the “season,” and it does so in very entertaining fashion. Obviously, this isn’t a perfect analogy, and experiencing the story in this order completely takes the surprise away from the once-shocking revelations that will come later in the series, but I’m just saying this to describe the general vibe I got watching A New Hope in this fashion.
However, most people did not experience A New Hope with all this external knowledge. Heck, most people did not experience A New Hope as A New Hope. At the time of its release, it was known simply as Star Wars, because if George Lucas titled his film Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, he would have been thrown in the loony bin. Also, even he had no idea what his monster would become. If you told him that one day, a group of unhealthily-devoted fans would create a website like Wookieepedia, he would have punched you in the face. (Actually, his first reaction might have been “What’s a website? Are you a witch?”) When moviegoers sat down in their seats to experience Star Wars, they barely even knew who this George Lucas character was. At best, they knew him as the guy behind American Graffiti.
I tried to completely clear my head of all outside influences once A New Hope began for what I’m estimating to be my gazillionth viewing. (Though it has been a while since the last time.) As evidenced by what I’ve said so far, I did a pretty lousy job. What I appreciated about the early sequences is Lucas’ refusal to spell out the situation with extraneous exposition or dialogue. The Star Wars films have always gotten right down to business with an exciting action sequence or two, but filmmakers are usually more willing to do that when they trust that the audience knows what’s going on. Often Lucas uses his opening crawls to get the audience up to speed and then throws them right into the action, but that’s a much greater risk when you’re throwing them into a universe that has never before been seen on film.
The first act of A New Hope works best as a showcase for George Lucas’ imagination, as he slowly reveals the vastness and intricacies of the universe he has created. This is embodied in the film’s famous first shot, which shows a small Rebel ship attempting to outrun a large imperial Star Destroyer. It is a moment of awe that promises the audience that they have entered a world of infinite possibilities. In one shot, George Lucas showed the world exactly what he set out to do with Star Wars.
The rest of the first act has a similar spirit of wondrous discovery, as our two droid heroes C-3PO and R2-D2 find themselves on Tatooine looking for the now-elderly Obi-Wan Kenobi. For audiences in the ’70s, I can’t imagine what this experience was like. Our hero, Luke Skywalker, doesn’t appear on the scene until well into the thing, and until then it amounts to little more than a series of charming droid misadventures. (Side note: why does the droid comic relief work so much better in A New Hope than in any of the prequels? I keep trying to think of a reason but I can’t.) It takes a little while for the main plot to kick in, but Lucas always keeps it from dragging. He’s sure to throw a fun surprise around every corner, and the discoveries made in the first act introduce the audience to the world without bombarding them with dialogue.
One of the many problems people have with the prequels is the dialogue, which is admittedly… lackluster. However, a re-watch of A New Hope proves that writing dialogue has always been one of Lucas’ weaker areas. Let’s face it: there’s only so many times your characters can say “I have a bad feeling about this” before it starts to become a problem. My personal favorite is one of the first lines spoken by Luke Skywalker, which is said in a tone of voice best suited for a whiny 12-year-old who wants to go to McDonald’s with his friends: “But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters!” It’s moments like this that serve as a reminder that the George Lucas of the late ’90s and early ’00s was not a completely different filmmaker than the George Lucas of the ’70s. People just started to notice his flaws.
The acting is also not the strongest aspect of A New Hope, and it would take until the later films in the series for the main trio of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford to find their groove as performers. Only Ford really makes much of an impression here, with Fisher and Hamill doing a fine enough job of projecting the emotions they need to without ever hitting anything deeper. This film may have been completely lost at sea were it not for Alec Guinness’ turn as an elderly Obi-Wan Kenobi. He is the stable center of the film, and he spends much of his time acting his co-stars under the table. Besides John Williams and the people behind the special effects, Guinness is very much in the running for MVP of A New Hope. Without him, it may not have been that easy to get invested in the adventures of Luke Skywalker.
Plot-wise, A New Hope is the most minor of all the Star Wars films. That is not a complaint one could have possibly made when it came out, because—as I’ve said before—there were no other Star Wars films to compare it to. All five of the other films delve deeper into their universes and advance the story to a greater degree, and A New Hope is just a really fun adventure movie that throws in a lot of memorable characters, environments and battles. When the film is over, the characters all still resemble the stereotypes they were at the beginning. They are all dynamic to a point—Luke learning the ways of the force, Han being selfless enough to come back and help the Death Star assault—but it’s all pretty typical of a Hollywood adventure movie. Only in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi do the characters go any further. In A New Hope, any potential romance between Leia and her male counterparts is only hinted at. Not that you care as long as the movie is playing.
In many ways, A New Hope feels like a very early crack at a Quentin Tarantino movie; or at least one of the many “movies about movies” that we’ve seen in recent decades. It is a film inspired by classic Saturday morning serials, Flash Gordon, and many of the old-fashioned adventures that George Lucas grew up with. In many ways, Lucas was Tarantino before Tarantino; between Star Wars and the Indiana Jones movies he was able to turn his favorite childhood film memories into beloved classics. Lucas is different in that he aims for a much broader audience than Tarantino, whose source material is of a far seedier sort. Lucas would make the universe wholly his own in later Star Wars films, but A New Hope is still a fantastic adventure that takes these other pop culture influences and mashes them together into something magnificent.
Something that has always amazed me about A New Hope is the sheer amount of crap that George Lucas and his cast and crew had to wade through just to get the darn thing made. This was one of those infamous Hollywood productions where everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong. When filming the Tatooine sequences in Tunisia, shooting was plagued by everything from rainstorms to electrical problems to costumes that physically hurt the actors. There was also the problem that no one working on the film believed in it besides Lucas. Everyone thought it would be a failure, the actors and crew were mostly goofing around, and Lucas was so stressed that he wound up hospitalized. Star Wars was, quite literally, going to be the death of him. Those interested in the behind-the-scenes story should check out the interesting documentary Empire of Dreams that comes with the Special Edition DVDs.
Even in these days before CGI effects, the Star Wars films were always going to be made in post-production. These are movies that rely on monsters, aliens and spaceships, and only so much of that can be done practically with the actors involved. Everyone not named George Lucas was positively shocked when they sat down and saw that Star Wars was, in fact, a fantastic adventure film. The action was exciting, John Williams’ score was rousing, and the combination of all the elements was so perfect that it became the top-grossing movie of all time. (This was broken when Lucas’ buddy Steven Spielberg made E.T. several years later.) This was a film that clicked with just about everyone in the movie-going public. People didn’t go to see this movie just once; they went two, three, four times. And possibly more. Lines frequently went around the block. This wasn’t just a hit movie. It was a phenomenon. This meant that George Lucas could make the sequels he wanted to make, and he could make them his way. Even if it meant that he’d step away from behind the camera.
Next week: Something, something, I am your father in The Empire Strikes Back.
P.S. – I thought I’d throw in a quick note on George Lucas’ Special Edition changes, which are minor but occasionally unfortunate. The problem isn’t even that he changed the film—if a director thinks a work of theirs can be improved with a new cut, they can go for it—but it’s that throwing CGI in the middle of an old ’70s film throws everything out of whack. In the added scene between Jabba the Hutt and Han Solo, Ford’s eyeline isn’t even close to the eyes of his slimy companion. These additions seem to come out of a different filmic universe, and none of them add to the final product. They’re just unnecessary distractions, though I don’t feel like they ruin everything.
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