simply the best

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2001)

In my opinion, the original 1977 version of Star Wars is the single greatest feature film ever made. It combines the five elements any movie should have: spectacle, humor, suspense, drama, and memorable characters. It is almost perfect.
The opening is perfect - a quick pan across a sea of stars, then a small rebel ship, and then the huge Imperial star destroyer fills the screen, its engines roaring. That shot is incredible, and does exactly what a movie opening should - it sets the tone and atmosphere of the movie visually and aurally, without a word of dialogue.
My only criticism of the movie is that it gets a little bogged down in 3PO and R2's journey to meet up with Luke Skywalker. Luke is the protagonist of the movie, and he should be on screen a little sooner. Lucas should have trimmed a few bits with R2 and 3PO on Tatooine - especially involving the Jawas - not because the scenes aren't well done, but because a first-time viewer (if there is such a person) might be wondering where the story is going. Of course, it is worth remembering that in the 70s movies tended to start more gradually than they do now.
Once Luke is in the picture, the movie starts to move and just builds and builds to the incredible climax. We add Obi-Wan, Han and Chewie, and Leia to the team, and the battles grow faster and more intense (to borrow Lucas's notorious line of direction to the actors). Contrary to what some have said, this is the best screenplay ever written, with many great lines that appropriately bring humor and wit to the remarkable situations on screen. The special effects and production design bring this incredible story to life in a way that should have surpassed even Lucas's high expectations.
The final attack on the Death Star is without a doubt the most exciting action sequence ever filmed, and it ends perfectly. What an incredible achievement. Thank God the suits at Fox didn't cut it from the budget, as they threatened in pre-production! And the "throne room" coda (which apparently borrows from Leni Refinstahl's Triumph of the Will) is a remarkable capper (again, without dialogue). Did I mention John Williams's inspiring score?
I have a feeling that the single greatest movie-going experience of all time must have been the preview of this film a few weeks before it opened in May 1977 at the Northpoint theater in San Francisco. According to published accounts, the audience went crazy from the first appearance of the star destroyer and cheered wildly when the Falcon made the jump to hyperspace. And when Han Solo blasted Darth Vader's wingman at the end, the crowd leapt to its feet and cheered as if their team had just won the seventh game of the World Series. It was then, that Lucas and Fox began to realize they might have a hit on their hands.
By the way, I think this movie has to rate as the greatest personal accomplishment of any filmmaker in Hollywood history - rivaled only by Titanic for James Cameron. In both cases, the filmmaker spent years developing and writing a script that many thought was a fool's errand. Both directors were extremely hands-on, taking a very active role in cinematography and editing. In Cameron's case, however, he was at least working from the facts of a true story, whereas Lucas completely invented the vivid Star Wars universe himself - with compliments to Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Joseph Campbell, and many others, of course.
My one request is that Lucas release this movie on DVD in its true original form - without "EPISODE IV - A NEW HOPE" in the crawl (that godawful title was only added in 1980 when Empire came out) and without the ridiculous Han Solo-Jabba the Hutt scene and other CGI tweaks added to the film in the 1997 "Special Edition." I want to see the movie the way it was when released, not with anachronistic effects tacked on. Lucas has started a trend (although I suppose it really began with Spielberg's travesty of a "special edition" for Close Encounters in 1980) that now has continued with the Exorcist, Star Trek the Movie, and E.T.'s scheduled re-release next year. What will they do next - use CGI to smooth out King Kong's movements on the Empire State Building, or make the Wicked Witch of the West fly more realistically? Let us see the movies the way they were originally shown! Don't mug our memories, to borrow a phrase from Pauline Kael.
Bottom line: in its original form, this is the best movie ever made.