A New Hope inducing a new era, for good or for bad...

Rating: 7/10 (19 February 2019)

Whatever it was George Lucas was shooting for with "Star Wars: A New Hope", a rather audacious attempt at a rip-roaring multi-stranded action-adventure piece, it worked. In the years since its 1977 release, the film has become a phenomenon - spawning cartoons; toys; video games and an array of other offshoot memorabilia linked to the franchise. This first film of the series, like "Citizen Kane"; "Casablanca" or "The Godfather", has since buried itself into an elusive canon which essentially sees it critic-proof - it is assumed that it is one of those films you have both seen and liked: if neither applies, then there must be something wrong with you...
Viewing it more recently, and without, admittedly, really knowing an awful lot about it having never really seen the original trilogy, it is a difficult film to place into greatness, but it certainly packs the sort of punch for its genre that a film such as this should. Certainly, what Star Wars has on its side is time - the more garbage that is produced by Hollywood studios in contemporary times, the better these old Star Wars films seem to look: in a 1983 TV discussion with Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel, critic John Simon dismisses Lucas' films as harmful childish nonsense. Meanwhile, modern film theorists lament the infantalisation of mainstream cinema; the dumbing-down of films, particularly sci-fi, which emphasise special effects too much. As far as having a place in history goes, Star Wars was really the unleashing of this particular genie, but it is far from mere stupidity.
Lucas wastes no time in getting the show rolling - we are dropped, headfirst, into the middle of an intergalactic war between two sides which has been raging for some time. There is no time for set up in this regard; we don't know how things came to be as they are - the politics of the situation is sidestepped for crash-bash causality: we know that there are heroes, dressed predominantly in white, and villains, dressed predominantly in black; that the rebels are a broad spectrum of men, women, funky robots and large hairy creatures called wookies, whereas the members and soldiers of the Empire all look the same. The scale of the task in-front of the rebels is established in the opening shot, when its ship is dwarfed by the mammoth-sized one belonging to the other side that it is chasing it.
On board is a feisty Princess by the name of Leia (Carrie Fisher), who might ordinarily be a male character - she has stolen, along with her crew, the plans for the film's universe's equivalent of an A-bomb, which allows their opponents (known only as "the Empire") to annihilate an entire planet at the touch of a button. Within these plans lies of course its weakness, which will allow the rebels to destroy it. Chaos erupts when Leia's ship is boarded; a dithering robot by the name of C3PO confirms just how powerful a certain Darth Vader is within the Empire's ranks when he wonders if he will have him and his accomplice R2D2 sentenced to the salt mines. The plans are smuggled onto the database of the latter droid, both of whom are ejected down onto a barren planet so that one of Leia's allies may find them...
From here, Lucas weaves a tale which is at once a little childish and, yes, simplistic, but does so through a series of worlds unlike few others and with an array of likeable supporting characters which possess a surprising amount of individuality. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) is going nowhere on his uncle and aunt's ranch, harvesting crops and maintaining machinery - he longs for adventure and a shot at studying at 'the academy'. Eventually, he comes into contact with Obi-wan (Alec Guinness) when Skywalker accidentally purchases R2D2 - Obi-wan lives in solitude, depressed at the destruction of his race. This in turn leads the twosome to Han Solo (Harrison Ford), who attempts to pay off a debt to a slug-like gangster the film seems to think important by smuggling goods around the galaxy.
What is refreshing is that these characters are essentially on the periphery of the war, only later to become more involved once they have matured through learning the lessons of allegiance and responsibility. "A New Hope" does not revolve around muscular all-action heroes saving the day, which elevates it above some of what Hollywood would produce in the action genre in the 80's. Its triumph in this respect lies in its attention to detail; to background; to that which supports the central focus - we have seen the story before, while the film's climax, with its twists and epiphanies, is far from unpredictable.
But it is the vastness of the mise-en-scene which pulls wool over our eyes, and we cannot help it - the invention of the concept of 'the force'; the diversity of the alien species hovering around, each with their own hideous features and characteristics; the varying worlds the characters can visit and the infinite possibilities that brings.
At a time when thrills-and-spills filmmaking was largely confined to either the, often dingy, backstreets of the wrong part of town, or the disaster movie genre specifically, "A New Hope" merged entertainment with a sense of the cinematic - soon after adding business to the equation - to revolutionise what a film studio might take-on when attempting to produce a new project. This has, of course, led to today's climate which is responsible for some complete rubbish - we have all skulked out of a multiplex having felt cheated of our time and money at the latest in sci-fi/action jiggery-pokery, and "Star Wars" more broadly is to blame for the inception of the 'event' movie. In spite of this, I find it difficult to redirect these levels of frustration, even hatred, at "A New Hope", which has an idea and a vision in mind and sprints for it - pulling it off in the process.