Star Wars: A New Hope (1977)
Somewhere in space, THIS may all be happening RIGHT now!
Brief Backstory
George Lucas, the man behind THX-1138 (which I’ve seen and liked) and American Graffiti, wanted to make a love letter to the great classics of the 1930s and 1940s which included Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. In his power trip he created what would become one of the greatest inventions in society, Star Wars.
Star Wars, later known as Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, would set numerous standards for filmmaking all over.
Story
Princess Leia has been captured during a raid for the Death Star plans. Two droids, C3PO and R2D2, flee the besieged ship and land in Tatooine, where they become in possession of Owen and Beru Lars. After the two are murdered, Luke Skywalker, their stepson, joins Obi-Wan Kenobi, one of the few surviving jedi knights, to retrieve Princess Leia and take the droids to Yavin IV to assist in the attack against the Death Star.
Random Facts
A New Hope is one of the VERY first movies to introduce the sound system (Dolby System) that is used to this date, which has gone through numerous improvements.
Earlier scripts had a character calling Vader a Sith lord. The term “Sith” was not used in the trilogy, but was all over the place in action figures, cards, etc. The manuals to the Super Star Wars trilogy on the SNES called Vader a dark lord of the Sith.
Jabba the Hutt WAS supposed to appear in this, but he didn’t originally. Lucas had to resort to poorly aged CGI to include the scene of Jabba the Hutt (which was originally some man that I don’t know much about) that was removed from the original.
The opening crawl didn’t say episode IV originally. This was fixed in the early 80s.
Until the late 90s, Greedo never attacked Han. The change was due to how George Lucas didn’t like how Han Solo was portrayed as murderous (Greedo was pointing his gun at Han, which is a threat!). I don’t have much to say on that one, but that isn’t an excuse to change filmmaking history.
When originally released, Star Wars had different audio tracks. Both the mono and original tracks have differences in sound effects and voices. Unfortunately, this plagued the home video releases, as the audio tracks kinda fluctuate in terms of which copy you have. The CBS/FOX release from the mid 80s included C3PO’s explanation on the tractor beam, but on the later release in 1995 (which I have) the explanation isn’t heard. Audio errors were completely fixed in the special editions.
The guy who plays Porkins voiced Dingodile in Crash Bandicoot: Warped.
A New Hope is the breakout film for Mark Hamill (known for voicing the Joker in Batman TAS) and Harrison Ford (known for Indiana Jones). James Earl Jones later was in Conan the Barbarian (I need to take a look at that one) and he voiced Mufasa until he died. Still waiting for Jeremy Irons to be portrayed as a Jedi.
Random Opinions
A lot of people don’t like how Luke was griping a lot, but come on, his stepparents were murdered! Give him a break! He’s gone through a LOT in this!
I consider the OG Star Wars (A New Hope) to be the VERY first MODERN movie. A lot of this is due to the state of the art sound quality system that’s been used for nearly half a century and the amount of insane work that was put in to making this.
No, I do not consider Star Wars sci-fi. I consider Star Wars high fantasy.
I mentioned in my views on the “special editions” that Return of the Jedi took the worst damage, however A New Hope isn’t that far off. I only say A New Hope didn’t suffer as much due to how it fixed some audio errors. That should’ve been the ONLY thing done for these films – fix the audio! For reference, The Jungle Book had a similar issue with home video copies; during the monkey song when Bagheera and Baloo enter the ruins the instrumental solo was gone.
Halo CE’s plot is very similar to this. The first three levels are basically the pillar of autumn is attacked and you have to get off. Then you crash land onto the ring’s surface below. Afterwards you have to get inside a ship to save Captain Keyes who was captured during the attack.
Pros
- Pretty much everything.
Cons
- No cons. Trivial grievances are not enough.
Rating: 10/10 – Perfect
Star Wars: A New Hope is one of those pieces of history that changed society. In a good way.
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