It’s a period of superior writing. Rebels strike the evil
empire from their hidden base without the need for a cumbersome backstory.
As the movie begins Princess
Leia is fleeing a star destroyer on her starship, The corvette is quickly
captured and boarded by Darth Vader. Thinking quickly Leia hides the Death Star
plans on an astromech droid named R2D2. With his counterpart the protocol droid
C3P0 he escapes to the surface of the desert planet Tatooine. Captured by
Jawas, the two droids are sold to the family of Luke Skywalker, a nineteen year
old boy eager to leave Tatooine at the first opportunity. That opportunity soon
comes when R2D2 runs away from the farm in search of Obiwan Kenobi, who R2
claims is his owner. Luke finds the runaway droid only to be attacked by sand people
and rescued by Obiwan. Obiwan tells Luke that he and Luke’s father were Jedi
knights. Obiwan tries to convince Luke to learn the ways of the force and come
to Alderaan with him, to return the information stored in the droid to the
rebellion. At first Luke refuses but after learning his family has been killed
by the empire in an attempt to track down the droids, he decides to join
Kenobi. Together they head to Mos Eisley space port where they meet Han Solo:
owner of the Millennium Falcon and his co-pilot Chewbacca. Together they head
to Alderaan only to find it has been destroyed by the Death Star.
The Falcon is captured by the death star using a tractor
beam. Obiwan, Luke and Han sneak onto
the space station. While Obiwan deactivates the tractor beam Han and Luke recue
princess Leia. Obiwan is confronted by Darth Vader. While the two duel everyone
else boards the Falcon and Luke watches Vader strike Obiwan down. They escape
on the Falcon and head to the rebel base on a moon of Yavin four. Darth Vader
has tracked them however, and it’s up to a handful of rebel pilots to take down
the death star by exploiting a design flaw revealed by the recovered plans. As
Darth Vader systematically shoots down the rebel fighters Luke hears Obiwan’s
voice who guides him to use the force to target and destroy the death star.
Compared to the prequels A New Hope is short, and much, much
better paced. While the movie leaves you guessing at the back story, in this
case it’s simply not required: the characters actions and words convey who has
good motives and who has bad. It gives you just enough backstory to ignite your
imagination, and no more. This does two things. It makes the movie highly
watchable, and leaves hard core fans wanting more, which means books, sequels,
supplementary material, etc.
For its time, A New Hope was a special effects masterpiece,
but compared to today’s movies it is less impressive. Great cinematography still make the dogfights incredible, but the
star destroyers and other large ships mostly fly in straight lines, often
shooting lasers from invisible cannons. Unlike many I like the CGI X-wings
added in to the special addition, though admittedly we could do without the CGI
animals that were added, as they have not aged well.
The fighting is a mixed bag. I’ve said before I prefer
lightsaber fights to gun fights but A New Hope makes it work though clever
writing. On the other hand the iconic showdown between Obiwan and Darth Vader
is somewhat lacking. At the time of filming the lightsaber props they used were
rather fragile and couldn’t take hard contact. They also lacked the wires and
CGI used in so many fight scenes today.
Another problem is there are continuality errors with the
other movies. Obiwan doesn’t recognize R2D2 and C3P0. He refers to Vader as
“Darth” as if it’s his first name and not a Sith honorific, he didn’t really
“serve” Bail Organa in the Clone Wars, and his lie to Luke about his father’s
death just seems cruel. None of these are really faults of A New Hope, but of
the movies and books that came later. But it does make certain scenes jarring
when they don’t conform to events that canonically came before them.
It’s also clear how young many of the actors are and they do
a decent but not perfect job of making the dialogue sound natural. There is
even the famous scene were Luke calls Leia by her actresses’ name: “Carrey”.
They are good actors, but it’s not the level of professionalism we have come to
expect today. Luke Skywalker has also been called whinny, his wining sound more
like that of a cloistered youth than a young A-hole with something to prove.
This makes his immature somewhat natural, and causes you to emphasis with him
rather than reject him like Anakin. The comic relief is also better. C3P0 is at
least tolerable, and his banter with R2D2 is somewhat amusing. While some of
the elements that people hated in the prequels are still hear, they are much
better done or at least kept to a tolerable minimum.
A New Hope is a film that stands the test of time not so
much for its effects which are dated, but because it has an interesting story
to tell and it tells that story so well that we can overlook its flaws. Its
flaws hardly even feel like flaws because they just do such a good job overall
and the story is so compelling. If you’re going to start someone on Star Wars,
don’t go in Chronological order, start with this film.
9.1 out of 10
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