In A Galaxy Far Away................A Franchise Was Born

Rating: 10/10 (20 September 2010)

The awesome special effects and the creation of creatures that are part of the vivid imagination of George Lucas are not the reason for the enduring popularity of Star Wars and the franchise it spawned. Rather it is because of the characters Lucas created that will live as long as we have cinema and the means to display it.
The spectacle is behind some real, but simple people. No shadings of gray in the first Star Wars we know without any doubt who the heroes and villains are of this piece. On an isolated planet a galaxy wide dictatorship called the Empire and the revolt against come to wear young Luke Skywalker as played by Mark Hamill and his family reside. So does Alec Guinness, a reclusive and mysterious hermit.
An escape pod crashes there with two androids, C3PO and R2D2 and in the latter is a message for Guinness who was at one time a Jedi Knight, fiercest of a warrior class, from Carrie Fisher playing Princess Leia. Also in R2D2 are the schematics for the Empire's ultimate weapon the satellite size death star that can deal killing out on a planetary scale.
This starts an adventure with young Hamill who teams up with futuristic soldier of fortune Harrison Ford as Han Solo and his simian like sidekick Chewbacca to rescue the Princess and defeat the Death Star.
Those are the good guys. The bad guys are the blackest of black villainy. Peter Cushing cold bloodedly commands the Death Star, but the mysterious Darth Vader, clad in black with a helmet completely covering his head, has mysterious powers and even his superiors are wary of him. The voice of James Earl Jones is unforgettable as the black prince of the galaxy.
These are characters that bring out the kid in all of us. The ones who claim the most sophistication in their lives will cheer on for Hamill and Ford and will be fascinated by the double dyed villainy of Darth Vader.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Star Wars and I speak now of all the films is the way such non-humans as the robots and Chewbacca the Wookie became characters. C3PO had dialog, but R2D2 had a few clicks and bleeks and all Chewbacca did was grunt, still they became as identifiable as the human characters.
Star Wars set the standard for science fiction films to come for the next several generations. It was given six Oscars in a bunch of technical categories and it's got a re-release value that Gone With The Wind used to have.
The Force Will Be With Us Always.