A Legend Begins... from the middle...

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2007)

*Star Wars* was a revelation and a revolution. There will never be anything like it again. From its unique production values, to its pioneering special effects; it was cops and robbers, it was swords and sorcery, it was politics and romance; it was royalty and rebellion; it was car chases in space chariots and computer whizbangery from sentient trashcans. A villain in black, a hero in white, a wizard in robes, a cowboy and his trusted, naked animal friend...
Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is a farmboy on the desert world of Tatooine (even though his sandy-haired complexion screams surfer dude from Palos Verdes), who dreams of piloting a fighter plane instead of working a farm. Like all young men, he has been brought up to believe murdering innocent children in war is a more romantic idiom than toiling the soil and bringing forth sustenance for humanity. I digress.
His dreams might have remained as distant as Palos Verdes is from Tatooine, had he not met two robots (née droids), a sentient trashcan (R2-D2) and an acolyte of Dr. Zachary Smith (C-3PO  an interpreter fluent in 6 million languages with the unfortunate default setting on Perturbed Butler). In R2-D2's memory banks, Luke accidentally discovers a holographic cry for help from a princess (Carrie Fisher). So begins a journey which will take him to the farthest reaches of the galaxy  to him, that would be ten miles down the road to the cave of doddering Alec Guinness (as Obi-Wan Kenobi), who spins wild tales of galactic war, Imperial armies, Luke's deceased father and The Knights Who Say Jedi.
At Mos Eisley spaceport, while canvassing for a clandestine captain to fly them to planet Alderaan (where the cry for help bid them go), Luke and Obi-Wan meet the most sexual character of the *Star Wars* series  no, not Han Solo  Chewbacca the Wookiee; after all, he does the whole movie without ever wearing any pants.
It is during this Mos Eisley "cantina sequence" that *Star Wars* does its most insidious good. George Lucas unwittingly shows us a universe where aliens were neither inherently "good" nor "evil", rather co-existing in a truly "universal" society, where good or evil individuals populate *every* species and race. The term "alien" is a moot point of reference in this movie, as every being (human and otherwise) traveled extensively between worlds. (The fact that this cannot be achieved without faster-than-light travel is tangential to the point.) The common thread of these disparate organisms is their multifarious strangeness; their co-existing diversity.
Ironically, the cantina sequence - which features some of the most childish, lamest face-masks and character designs - is ultimately where the movie displays its most maturity.
Meanwhile, a hulking, black-clad, helmeted menace in a fruity cape and 7-inch platform boots plots to rule the galaxy, with theme music heavy and minor and an army of stormtroopers - the military equivalent of fast food (plastic-coated and unhealthy) - bringing war in the name of hokey religion.
His name is Darth Vader. To three generations, Lord Vader was the blackest, meanest, most badass villain to dress like the Pope since the Pope. Years later, we would discover that Darth Vader meant "dark father" in Swahili, a fact which jigsawed with the puzzle pie that George carbon-scored into the *Star Wars* sequel, *The Empire Strikes Back* (1980), proving that it wasn't just  as he liked to call it  a "space opera," more like a space SOAP opera.
Darth and an old lady who looks like Peter Cushing kidnap the princess and tool through the galaxy in a planet-sized battle station called the Death Star, proving its awesome utility by decimating Alderaan, whereupon Obi-Wan, en route, coincidentally suffers indigestion and attributes it to mysticism rather than his ninety-year-old intestines, "as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced." (More like that Neimoidian calamari you ate, which was in the Millennium Falcon's fridge since before Han made the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs.)
(Read this full review at: www.poffysmoviemania.com/StarWarsANewHope.html)