I have seen
the original Star Wars films many, many times. I once watched all six movies in
one day, from Episode I to Episode VI. Having endured four plus hours of pod
racing and a lovesick teenage boy with mommy issues in the first two films, the
other four movies breezed quickly by. This past weekend my wife and I decided
to watch A New Hope and I realized I
hadn’t watched the movie from beginning to end in several years. Considering
how often I had watched the film as a child, I wondered how it would hold up
after several years.*
*Note, I watched the original theatrical cut of the film
that was briefly made available on DVD several years ago. I refuse to watch any
other version of the film. No Greedo shooting first, no Han Solo talking to
Jabba, no altered dialogue or effects.
The cast
represents one of the film’s greatest strengths. In his non-Indiana Jones
iconic role, Ford plays the roguish Han Solo with the right balance of confidence,
cockiness, and cunning. These traits shine through in the Cantina scene with
Greedo. Greedo holds a blaster on Han the entire time. Yet Solo never betrays
any concern over the situation. He calmly talks to Greedo while preparing to
draw his weapon—confident in his ability to talk or blast his way out of the
situation. When the conversation goes south, Solo demonstrates command over the
situation by drawing first and killing Greedo. Ford’s nonchalant delivery of
the “Sorry about the mess” line provides some darkly humorous closure to the
scene. Mark Hamill successfully portrays Luke’s youthful angst and wonderment
at the larger world. Even though the viewer has no idea what he is talking
about, Hammil’s exasperated “But I was going into Tosche Station to pick up
some power converters!” highlights the world weary attitude unique to moody and
sullen teenagers. I imagine the world of Star
Wars must have confounded and frustrated Alec Guinness. Guinness won an
Academy Award for The Bridge on the River
Kwai, starred in Doctor Zhivago,
Lawrence of Arabia, and the BBC adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. A veteran Shakespearean actor,
Guinness provided much of the exposition that drove the plot and made the
fantasy world of Star Wars believable.
Rewatching the film reminded me that Lucas served his female characters well.
While Princess Leia spends much of the film a prisoner, her character never succumbs
to the cliché of a damsel in distress. Carrie Fisher’s chemistry with Harrison
Ford becomes apparent in their first scenes together. Leia sarcastically
berates Luke’s foolhardy plan of breaking her out her cell without a plan to
get out of the detention block. Fisher plays Leia with a commanding and defiant
air that serves her well opposite Luke’s naiveté and Han’s brashness.
Lucas’s
clunky dialogue—especially in the later prequel trilogy—presents the biggest
problem in the film. He frequently causes the actors to nearly swallow their
own tongues with his difficult to parse sentences. Darth Vader’s warning, “Don't
be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed” may read well on
the page, but speaking it and listening to it are another matter. The hard tongue sounds required to tie the
alliteration of “technological terror” together ruins the flow of the sentence.
There is a similar problem with Luke’s description of his home planet, “If
there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's
farthest from.” The real problem is the subordinate clause, “that it’s the
farthest from.” It is not immediately clear that the “it’s” refers back to the
planet, and the “universe” is the unstated object of the preposition “from.” Dialogue should not require this much literary deconstruction.
The
climactic Battle of Yavin IV, where the Rebels attack the Death Star,
demonstrates the best that Lucas has to offer as a filmmaker. The visual
effects remain believable even thirty five years later. Filming much of the
battle within the cockpits of the X and Y Wing fighters gives the viewer an
intimate view of the battle and as the beleaguered pilots die off, the battle becomes
even more contained and personal. Eventually Luke and Darth Vader square off as
Luke races to destroy the Death Star. Lucas paces the battle scenes well, shifting
between the battle raging in space and the Rebel and Imperial command centers
as the Death Star nears closer to its firing possession. The ticking clock
provides increasing tension as the Rebels launch their bombing runs. Lucas
takes the viewer right to the edge as Vader seems set to destroy Luke’s X-Wing before
the triumphant return of Han Solo and the Rebels snatch victory from the jaws
of defeat.
While it
has been parodied and copied a million times over, A New Hope remains a delightful and eminently re-watchable film, even thirty five years later.
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