This is the first in a series of reviews I’ll be writing for each of the live-action theatrical Star Wars films. I’ll be reviewing the films in release order in order to give the proper historical context for each film. I’ll also be grading and ranking each film as I go.
Everyone knows the story of Star Wars, and almost everyone has seen it, so to many the idea that it one of the most important film in modern cinema history might be taken for granted. What isn’t as obvious is just how close it came to not being what it is – the singular blockbuster film that set in motion the last 40 years of cinema.
As a concept, Star Wars was almost exclusively the work of George Lucas – he wrote and directed the film, the last one he would serve double-duty on until the Star Wars prequels. With a basic story rooted in Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey and a classical score composed by John Williams (perhaps the most important film score in history), the film followed a recognizable formula, providing a sense of comfort to the new and strange world – a “used future” set in another galaxy in the distant past, a singular Force connecting all living things, and an evil Empire trying to solidify its rule. However, it took a collaborative work with editors Paul Hirsch and Lucas’s then-wife Marcia as well as composer John Williams and the visual geniuses at Industrial Light & Magic to truly trim the masterpiece we know today.
As a film, Star Wars holds up incredibly well, especially if you watch the unaltered original film. Having watched both the original edition and the “special edition” re-release, the original stands out as far superior, in part because of its meticulous editing. Rocket Jump’s excellent video “How Star Wars was saved in the edit” goes into depth on this, but the gist of it is in production, Star Wars was on the brink of disaster – the film was slow-paced and bloated. Edits drastically improved the film’s structure, particularly in the film’s final trench run sequence. In a clever bit of editing, the film was modified to provide the ticking clock element of the imminent destruction of the rebel base – an element that, remarkably, was not in the original cut. This new addition added the incredible tension in the final act, as fighter after fighter is picked off until only Luke is left to finish the run.
Star Wars isn’t a perfect film – no film is. As the first film in the saga, some things don’t quite hold up – half the characters pronounce “Leia” as “Leah”, the lightsaber fight is quite tame even by the standards of the original trilogy, and some of the dialogue can seem a tad off. But this hardly harms the film, which remains as exciting as it was 40 years ago – if anything it adds to the charm. The film’s editing, score, and acting are all phenomenal. Even with all the minor imperfections, Star Wars remains the archetypical blockbuster film – not a perfect film, but the perfect film for the blockbuster age.
Of course, any discussion of the original Star Wars trilogy is incomplete without discussion of the Special Editions. Having watched both the original edition and the “special edition” Blu-ray release, the original stands out as far superior, in part because of its meticulous editing. The CGI additions into the film generally stand out poorly against the incredible practical and model effects, and the added scenes, while interesting relics, are just that – relics. Even the best of these new scenes – the short reunion between Luke and his friend Biggs – is simply the ending of a story that was wisely aborted in editing. The worst addition by far is the Jabba the Hutt scene, which was rightfully cut for being redundant. The Special Editions, while an interesting experiment, mostly detracts from the excellent film, but regardless of how you see it, both versions are still very watchable. I would recommend seeking out the original cut, however, either in the Laserdisc releases, the rare DVD transfer (regrettably presented in non-anamorphic widescreen), Harmy’s Despecialized Editions, or the newest version, 4K77.
The original Star Wars opens my rankings at an A+ grade. As a bit of a spoiler, it’s not my favorite film in the saga – but it’s right up there with the best of the bunch.
Star Wars saga ranking:
- Star Wars – A+
One thing that I think is also notable is the tenor of all of the movies that were coming out around the same time.
Like, every single other movie was The Brave Little Toaster and Star Wars comes in and it has a happy ending. Sure, (spoiler) dies… but he becomes more powerful than we could possibly imagine. A breath of fresh air? It was like going out side for the first time since Kennedy died.Report
This was intentional. The great documentary Empire of Dreams goes in to this, but Lucas intentionally avoided the darkness and negativity of films in the 70s. The soundtrack (grand orchestral, a style that was unbelievably on the way out at the time) was part of it but also the concept itself. It was a breath of fresh air at the time.Report
I always wonder how stuff that I *LOVED* when I was a kid would do if it were released today.
Of course, it’s a silly thought experiment. I live in the world that Star Wars created. You can’t imagine Star Wars being dropped off in 2019 because 2019 as we understand it only exists in the context of Star Wars.
But I wonder if Star Wars would take off today.Report
I think it would, like you say it’s a silly thing to think about because I want to say something like, “With the same story and today’s effects” but we wouldn’t have today’s effects without it, but yeah, I think it would work. The OT would be something like the MCU.
I’m about 60-70% sure of this.Report
I’m probably only about 30-40% sure, although like you and Jaybird, I recognize it’s a paradoxical speculation, given how what’s now is how it is because of what came earlier.Report
That’s an interesting question especially because a world without Star Wars looks very different from the one we have now.Report
The closest thing to a not-Star-Wars-at-all Star Wars that I can think of is Legends of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole.
If you haven’t seen it, just ask yourself “what if they remade Star Wars with owls and owl-appropriate levels of technology?” and, yeah, you’ve pretty much seen it.
And it didn’t take off.
I mean, sure, it was derivative as hell and we live in the world that Star Wars created. But it didn’t take off.Report
Also probably because…it was about owls?Report
Movies about dumber animals have taken off.Report
The thing about Owls Of Ga’Hoole is that it’s very much like the Japanese anime OVAs of the 1980s, in that it was primarily made as an advertisement for the print product and that’s why it seemed like a weird incomplete stub of a story.Report
Sure, (spoiler) dies… but he becomes more powerful than we could possibly imagine.
Sort of like Gandalf. And somebody else that I can’t quite place.Report
Westley (aka, the Dread Pirate Roberts)?Report
While it’s completely fair to give lots of credit to the editing, editing alone doesn’t make a movie great. The tone, and the visual imagery are all George. Darth Vader was probably the most iconic villain of the last 50 years, with the black armor and artificial breathing – “more man than machine”. And that’s George, and, I’m sure, his collaborators.
We note how easily and readily Lucas stepped aside for other directors and even writers, while maintaining his influence on story and visuals. That’s what he inhabits.
I saw this in the theaters when it came out. It’s hard to describe the impact it had – how different it was from everything else in the theaters.
For instance, A Bridge Too Far came out the same summer, and competed with SW. It is a great, great film. It is classic 70’s in the sense that there is plenty of heroism and sacrifice and nobility, but it ends with failure. I own it, I still watch it, but it didn’t capture people the way SW did.Report
Oh I don’t mean to give all the credit to editing. The film is George’s dream and he’s responsible for the best parts of it (and participated in the editing process – he made the decision to fire the original editor of the “Lost Cut”). I just thought the editing in particular is one of the best things about the film – it actually won an Academy Award for Best Editing and it was well-deserved.Report
{Ed Note: Hey man. Hope things get better for you soon and you get out of this funk. -Will}
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How could there not be a single person working on a freaking science fiction movie who didn’t know that a parsec is a unit of distance?Report
The original Star Wars was a mash-up of westerns, kung fu movie mysticism, and WWII aerial combat movie effects. Almost incidentally set in space. Why do you think there was anyone working on it who knew about parsecs and who was also in a position to tell Lucas that his dialog failed basic dimensional analysis?Report
It’s like Harrison For said: “George, you can type this shit, but you sure has hell can’t say it passes basic dimensional analysis .”Report
They fixed that in the Han Solo movie. Han Solo managed to make the Kessel run in less distance than anyone else by taking bold shortcuts through a very dangerous nebula.Report
FWIW it was also fixed in Legends in the same explanation. Although I like the newer canon version more because Han is actually lying about how many parsecs it was – it was actually over 12 parsecs (he justified saying 12 by saying it was 12 if you round down), then in A New Hope he said it was under 12, and he corrected Rey that it was under 12 in The Force Awakens. It’s a fun little gag in the films now, really.Report
I completely agree about the mistake of putting Jabba the Hut into the special edition. It was, as you say, redundant. It also was a spoiler of sorts, or at least it would have been a spoiler had it been in the original version. I remember before Jedi came out, one thing my 9-year old self wondered was, “what does Jabba look like? what kind of monster/gangster is he?” That uncertainty, in its own way, may Jedi more interesting than it might have been for me. Of course, I was 9 years old and wouldn’t have been uninterested in Jedi regardless, but the mystery of what new characters would show up helped feed my interest.Report
The interesting thing is the original scene wasn’t redundant. The Greedo scene did not contain the same information as the Jabba scene until after the Jabba scene was cut for technical reasons – everything Greedo said was dubbed, so they could put all that stuff there.Report
Thanks for the info. I hadn’t realized that.Report
It’s in the video I linked to. Really worth a watch. A lot of the Special Edition changes were Lucas adding in scenes that were edited out for good reason, like the Jabba scene (made redundant by the Greedo scene) or the Biggs scene (made pointless by the removal of Biggs from the first half of the film).Report
The Greedo Scene keeps getting lamer with every iteration; the last I heard was Lucas claiming that Greedo actually shot first in the original film but because of “bad editing” that shot didn’t make it into the movie…Report
While I know “Mindless diversions” is a slightly tongue in cheek category tag, I’m pretty sure this doesn’t qualify.
Very much enjoying a little slice of your life and experiences.Report
One of the other big “fan rework” ideas has been redoing the Vader / Obi-Wan fight to make it seem more flashy and spinny, more in line with the style established in the Prequels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to2SMng4u1kReport