More credit to Gary Kurtz

Rating: 10/10 (4 November 2002)

All-time classic of cheezy pop space battle opera. Poorly developed characters are given life by the excellent cast, especially Ford (who rose to fame in the role) and Guinness. Story from the Kurosawa film "The Hidden Fortress" is full of climaxes, but Lucas keeps the pace moving and the film never fails to entertain audiences of all ages. The goriest of all the series (just look for severed arms and bloodtrails); Ford is more convincingly "hardboiled" here than in the sequels (in the last of which, sadly, he is reduced to trading one-liners with the robot comic relief duo).
A few notes on this film. I was surprised not to see the uncredited script contributions by Gloria Katz and Willard Huyck here on IMDB. As Lucas' more recent solo efforts show, a lot of the credit for ANY believability in the dialogue, not to mention good structure to the film, should be credited to them. In fact, a lot of the reason this film is great has nothing to do with Lucas; it's a solid production that came in under fire, and more credit should go to Gary Kurtz than is generally given. In fact, although you won't have much trouble finding a "Star Wars" fan who can tell you all about the eating habits of the Wookie (or whatever), you won't find many who even know the name of the film's producer. Most fans agree that the first and second films ("Star Wars" and "The Empire Strikes Back") are far and away the best he has made, but few people have connected this fact with producer Gary Kurtz, who has been absent from Lucas' subsequent efforts.
Although the second film is more polished and is much better directed, this first one is I think the true all-time classic because it's just so much fun and it has no shame in being what it is. You don't yet see the infusion of puppets that followed Lucas' semi-merger with Jim Henson Enterprises in the 80s, you don't see fuzzy teddy bears killing professional soldiers, but you do get a princess with a really weird hairdo (all respect to Carrie Fisher for even being able to carry off the part without laughing; some of the lines she has to say are just too much), guys with laser swords fighting, and cool space battles. That's another thing -- hasn't anyone else noticed that the cool space dogfights that were the high point of the first trilogy are totally absent from Lucas' last two Star Wars films? The battle in Episode I was very short and unexciting, and there was no outer space battle at all in Episode II.
One thing that makes the film such a classic is that it is so involved. No matter how many times I see it, I always seem to notice some new object lying around that I can wonder about, or some nuance in the acting (which is mostly very broad, I will admit) that has implications I haven't considered. There are also some technical flaws and continuity errors that are fun to look for.
One very smart move Lucas (or, more likely, Kurtz, since this looks to me like a "frozen funds" film for Fox) made was to involve 2 very solid British character actors: Guinness and Peter Cushing. These 2 anchor the movie in case the robots and guys in suits hadn't proved convincing (which they did). A lot of people don't comment on Cushing in this movie, but I think he's great here as always at implying a menace that is carefully controlled within a strong personality. There are some interesting scenes were Vader appears to defer to Tarkin, making him the senior power in the Empire, while there is a suggestion that Vader is simply humoring Tarkin.
However you break it up, though, this one is for all time.