The Perfect adventure movie

Rating: 10/10 (24 February 2012)

How many influences did Lucas bring together for the first truly big sci-fi (ish) box office smash? Classic Samurai films, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Buck Rodgers. He took a clash of the greatest adventures of the first half of the twentieth century and brought them all into a single, sublime movie.
Read/seen/played a kid with his parents/guardians murdered by the bad guys? Or a slightly mysterious/wise/cooky old teacher to teach the protagonist the "ways" of whatever? Or perhaps a grinning, sarcastic buddy that gets the protagonist out of trouble? Odds are if it was made sometime past 1977 you have Star Wars to thank for that.
Heck, the very idea of background characters being named and rising to prominence is thanks to this movie. Or more specifically thanks to the toys eventually born out of it. Lucas negotiated the toy and merchandising rights and went right to work putting out every character there was, and since they had to have names in order to sell they were given names. Thus birthing the idea that characters once thought totally unimportant might be more than they seemed for fans of an IP.
Oh, and as for the movie itself? One of the best scored movies in history, there might not be another movie in history with music more easily or widely recognizable than Star Wars. It was also written in a way so easy to wrap your head around that much of the dialogue can be recognized even by people that have seen it maybe once or twice.
But the biggest claim I would make for the original Star Wars is that its the best edited and paced movie in history. Every movie study and screenplay writing example I've seen (and having taken college classes, and seen quite a few I have wide sample) has the original Star Wars as its perfect example of how to pace a movie. If you want to look for the perfect example of "the roller-coaster" of movie excitement, rising action spaced out with occasional dips, rising to a peak and then falling as the story ends are tied together; well, you're going to find its the original Star Wars.
Like with any category of product or scientific field, forms of entertainment have things that shove them forward, that innumerable people after the fact owe a lot too. "Standing on the shoulders of giants" as it were. And Star Wars is one such thing, a giant of entertainment that so many works after it have stood upon to reach for their own heights.
But even more important than that, it's just a damned fun movie. I've seen it more times than I care to admit. And yet even years later, years after the rabid Star Wars fanhood of my preteens has long faded, after I've grown bored and have little interest in seeing most any movie a second time I can still watch the original Star Wars and by the end have a huge grin on my face.