Well Made, Entertaining Adventure, but not a Classic

Rating: 7/10 (9 January 2005)

I have a confession to make. Although I consider myself a film buff, I had never seen "Star Wars" until recently, even though in Britain, it is regularly voted the greatest film of all time. To call it a cult movie would be an understatement; it seems less like a cult than a full-blown mainstream religion. (That is not necessarily a figure of speech. In the 2001 British census nearly 400,000 people, when asked to state their religion, replied "Jedi", a greater figure than the totals for several well-known denominations).
I have finally overcome this gap in my filmic knowledge and have seen the film which has caused so much excitement. In essence it is a simple science-fiction adventure story, set in a galactic empire ruled by a despotic government which is being challenged by a popular resistance movement. The government forces have captured Princess Leia, a rebel leader, and a motley group are attempting to rescue her. These include a farm boy named Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan Kenobi, a survivor of the Jedi (a once-powerful brotherhood of warriors sworn to uphold good against evil), Han Solo, a cynical and mercenary space pilot, Chewbacca, an abominable snowman-type monster and two robots. One of these talks in an old-fashioned upper-class British accent, the other only in a series of squeaks and whistles. The government are also attempting to destroy the planet that serves as their base using a "death star" that can destroy whole planets.
The only episode of the "Star Wars" franchise I had previously seen was "The Phantom Menace" which struck me as a high-tech version of those old space invader games, distinguished mainly by its wooden and lifeless acting. I initially wondered whether the original "Star Wars" would be more of the same, with clunking seventies special effects in place of more advanced nineties ones. I thought that seldom can such an influential and well-known film have used so many obscure actors in leading roles. Were it not for this film and its two sequels, neither of the two leads, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher, would be household names outside their own households. The main villain Darth Vader was played by an actor best known in his native Britain as the "Green Cross Man" in a series of children's road-safety commercials.
The film improves with the entry of Alec Guinness, possibly Britain's greatest ever screen actor, and a man who probably could not have given a wooden performance even if he had wanted to. His Kenobi is not only wise, noble and authoritative but also kindly and amiable. He can make us believe not only in the Jedi Knights but also in their belief system, centred upon a mysterious "Force" that permeates the universe. In other hands this "Force", which the Jedi draw upon for their powers, might have seemed mystical nonsense (as indeed it does in "The Phantom Menace"); with Guinness as our guide it seems quite plausible. There are also good performances from Peter Cushing as another leader of the villains and from the young Harrison Ford as Solo.
One of the reasons for the film's popularity is the way it draws upon other film traditions for its source material. One much quoted is the Japanese samurai film, with the Jedi as the samurai and belief in the Force as the equivalent of Zen Buddhism. I also detected another Oriental influence, the Chinese martial arts movie. Such films often glorify rebellion against a repressive government and frequently also feature religiously-inspired brotherhoods of warriors such as the Shaolin monks. In "The Phantom Menace" Obi-Wan's teacher is named Qui-Gon Jinn, a name probably chosen for its vaguely Chinese sound, just as the name Obi-Wan Kenobi was designed to sound Japanese. There are also elements of the Western (particularly the character of Solo and in the scenes set in the spaceport) and of the Robin Hood type of mediaeval adventure. One might have thought in that a society which had developed the means to destroy planets from a distance of thousands of miles hand-to-hand combat would be an irrelevance, but Kenobi and Vader fight a duel with close combat weapons known as "light sabres".
The most obvious influence on "Star Wars" is, as its title might suggest, the war film. The patriotic war film had gone into a decline in the post-Vietnam late seventies, but there was clearly still a demand for films that could stir similar emotions. Much about the villains is reminiscent of the Nazis- not just their ruthlessness, but also their black uniforms and the description of their crack troops as "storm troopers". Even Vader's helmet recalls the German "coal scuttle". The later part of the film, where brave and idealistic young rebel pilots try to destroy the death star before it can destroy their planet, is strongly reminiscent of British films about the RAF, such as "The Battle of Britain", "633 Squadron" and "The Dambusters", with spacecraft taking the place of aircraft. Another touch of Anglophilia might be seen in the fact that, although the rebels are nominally fighting for "the Republic", their leader is a Princess. Over the next few years, the film's vocabulary entered the real-life Cold War, with President Reagan denouncing the Soviet Union as the "Evil Empire" and his own Strategic Defence Initiative becoming known as the Star Wars project.
I would not claim "Star Wars" as my own favourite film, and I cannot see that it could serve as the basis for a new religion. (I doubt if anyone ever intended it to). It is, however, a well-made and entertaining adventure story. Prior to 1977, science fiction films, although there were exceptions, were often embarrassingly bad. We remember tenth-rate examples such as "Plan Nine from Outer Space" with a sort of amused contempt, but there were also plenty of eighth and ninth-rate examples, now largely forgotten. If it achieved nothing else, "Star Wars"; at least rescued the genre from that sort of association. 7/10