A New Hope - for the movie industry

Rating: 10/10 (29 August 2010)

This was a landmark movie made by an independently minded film maker that ultimately created a blueprint for studio driven, manufactured summer blockbusters.
However, very, very few subsequent blockbusters have come close to this. Thirty years on, it is still fresh, and the digital extras and clean up in the special edition work very well. Populist films nowadays do move at a relatively faster pace, but if you are willing to be just a touch patient and absorb the story it's a superb combination of fantasy, mythology and sci-fi, with a thrilling and absorbing climax.
Performances are not really the point of this film, but Lucas's penchant for naturalistic acting seen in both THX and American Graffiti is very much present. The young cast works well, with the sparring between Harrison Ford and a young Carrie Fisher particularly notable. In fact Harrison Ford's roguish character plays off very well with all the characters he interacts with. Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing both bring gravitas to their roles and add contrast to the younger actors with a subtly more theatrical style to their performances. James Earl Jones's vocal performance is excellent and really makes Darth Vader work.
Lucas's style of directing, which meshes classical composition with a more reality based European verite style of film making, actually works very well and gave the film a freshness when it was first released, supported by Gilbert Taylor's gritty photography . Even now, with some effective digital embellishments, it holds up against today's releases remarkably well. This was helped by the tremendous design work by production designer John Barry, mechanical effects maestro John Stears, and customer designer John Mollo, the former two being Bond movie veterans of the time. This was of course based upon Lucas's fantastic imagination. Lucas's nascent visual effects outfit, ILM produced ground breaking work that was brilliantly edited into the film by Lucas and his editorial team of Richard Chew, Paul Hirsch and some part time help from his wife at the time, Marcia Lucas. They got the right balance of real location footage with excellent production design with miniature optical effects. While the added digital effects are noticeable, (though some blend with the film flawlessly) their modest number added allows the film to maintain this reality based quality, something that the subsequent prequels lost sight of to some extent.
Deservingly the film won 7 Oscars, for Art Direction John Barry and his Art Directors Les Dilley , Norman Reynolds and Roger Christian, the former 2 went on to be outstanding production designers in their own right, the latter becoming a film director as well.
The landmark visual effects and special effects artists contribution was led by John Dykstra, who was the overall supervisor. He went to work on many more films including Star Trek – The Motion Picture, 2 Batman films (the Joel Schumacher directed ones), and 2 Spiderman films, winning his second Oscar for his work on Spiderman 2. John Stears won an Oscar for his on-set effects. Richard Edlund was the main effects cameraman, and would go on and win 3 more Oscars for his work on Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Return of the Jedi while at ILM and would later run his own effects studio. Grant McCune, a miniature specialist, also runs his own effects company. Robert Blalack won for his optical compositing work and would go on to win an Emmy Award for his work on the famous TV movie The Day After.
Building on Lucas's pioneering sound design work on THX 1138, the sound effects team contributed fantastic work in giving this film a reality based feel, with the use of real life sounds. The sound team was Don McDougall, Ray West (who would go on to win 2 Emmy awards for his sound work), Bob Minkler and Derek Ball. Ben Burtt won a special technical achievement award for his sound effects work and would go on to be a regular contributor on many high profile films, winning Academy awards for his sound work on Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
However, for me the stalwart technical contribution has to come from film composer John Williams, with a truly landmark, Oscar winning score – it was his third Oscar at the time and for me has gone on to produce a magnificent body of film score work – present day included. The subsequent Star Wars prequel certainly owed a lot to him, as his magnificent work on these films went a long way to hiding some significant flaws that were largely absent from the original trilogy.
Finally, huge credit has to go to Mr Lucas for having the imagination to put this together, and the tenacity to see the production through to completion despite many challenges, which included: a storm which damaged sets and held up shooting on location in Tunisia; some of the actors and film crew sceptical of what they were working on; some difficulties with the camera crew; a cynical studio; a rush to finish the film be a rigid deadline and challenges with getting ILM to finish the visual effects. While I know that the experience meant that Lucas stayed away from directing for some twenty years, he nevertheless became a hugely successful figure in Hollywood as post production guru and pioneer of digital technology, yet maintaining his independence outside of the studio system.
A landmark achievement.