The one teensy-weensy quibble (or 2).

Rating: 10/10 (8 March 2002)

While it is now generally regarded as an all-time time classic, I would just like to point out the one very tiny teensy-weensy quibble I have with this movie. (I still gave it a 10!!!)
It's about the scene when Luke comes back to Ben after finding his homestead destroyed and Owen & Beru dead. You'll know Ben does the "There's nothing you could have done" speech, then Luke does this bit about "I want to come with you to Alderan" speech. To me, this speech seems a bit too forced and formal for the situation. The guy has just lost his primary care-givers and virtually everything he has owned in the world. I hate to say it, but you would expect him to be a little bit more choked up by the situation. It sounds like something Princess Leia would say rather than Luke. I just think this is the one time where the dialogue is pushing the themes at the expense of the believability of the storyline. (It's the one reason I rank certain other movies a tiny bit better than this one.)
Other than that, this is an all time great! Concerning the special edition; I would like to say that the take-off of the Millenium Falcon from Tatooine is absolutely magnificent; but I'm a bit of a purist and I actually like the original Death Star explosion better than the revamped one. It just seems a bit TOO flashy (and just why does the shock wave go vertically anyway?).
The only other thing to wonder why most critics didn't recognise this as a great (or at least half-decent) story to begin with. The official explanation that they didn't pick up on the cultural impact is a tad unfair (they could hardly have known that at the films release). But Gearge Lucas has always stated he was making a modern-day fairy-tale and a Flash Gordon-style story, and you'd think they would have least acknowledged the mastery of the plot at that level. I can only surmise that they were so used to the standard 70-style self-conscious angst-ridden stories where the characters are heavily overtly thematic, that when a dynamic entertaining story came along they dismissed it purely at face-value; and assumed it couldn't have any artistic merit. They failed to realise that a great story has interesting themes INSIDE a good plotline, not INSTEAD of it.