The Rest Writes Itself...

Rating: 10/10 (21 December 2001)

I have spent some time commenting on lesser movies and it suddenly occurred to me... hey, I could comment on Star Wars! It's like playing football at your local park and then suddenly being picked for England. People might even read my comments, as you are doing now...
To get to the point, in 1977 my pal invited me along with his kid sister to see this movie. I'm 18 years old, I'm not expecting much, I hadn't paid much attention to the hype, but we did make the extra effort to go to see it at The Odeon in Leicester Square, a big cinema in the centre of London which I had never visited before.
In we went and I'm already taken aback by the sheer size of the theatre and the screen... we are quite close to the front. I'm already very impressed. Then the opening titles spring up, the huge sound system bursts to life, John Williams unparalleled orchestral masterpiece.
And then the sound, shaking the whole theatre, rumbling, you can feel it in your diaphragm. The gigantic star ship looms majestically into view from the top of the screen, it is huge, you are there in space looking at it...
It took me about two minutes to draw a breath and the rest writes itself.

I saw the movie again only last week on one of the movie channels on Sky satellite and it was as big and bold as ever. Still 100 percent watchable.
The sequels... at time of writing The Empire Strikes Back is a very creditable number 17 in the IMDB voters chart and Return of the Jedi at 117. Phantom Menace is not in the top 250. Clearly the echoes are growing fainter so let's hope Mr. Lucas can maybe give us one more really good one from the remaining two?