These Aren't The Droids You're Looking For ...

Rating: 8/10 (21 August 2005)

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, an evil Empire has constructed a massive battle station called the Death Star, which can destroy an entire planet. Rebel forces, led by Princess Leia, have captured the Death Star's plans, but are being pursued by the sinister Darth Vader. Leia hides the plans inside a robot, R2-D2, who falls into the hands of Luke Skywalker, a restless farmboy stuck on a remote desert planet. Luke learns of the important plans and teams up with Obi-Wan Kenobi, an old Jedi Knight, and Han Solo, a smuggler and mercenary, to rescue the Princess and get the plans to the Rebels.
It's difficult to review Star Wars objectively, for two reasons; firstly, it is undoubtedly the most successful and influential movie-making phenomenon of all time, and secondly, I was an impressionable young boy when I first saw it and instantly fell in love with it. Its genius is of course the great genius of thirty-two-year-old Lucas, who wanted to update the hair-raising science-fiction serials of the thirties he'd seen on TV with modern film techniques, and to enhance them with a profound sense of alien culture and classical mythology (he cites Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress as a key influence). The movie, despite being a very arduous and risky production, is an absolute triumph on every level, and redefined how populist movies should be made, both technically and artistically. The story seems both new and old, the characters are unique yet archetypal, the settings are wonderfully bizarre and the performances are terrific (Ford in particular). The technical realisation of the alien words is stunning, especially in the use of art-direction, unforgettable sound-effects (by Ben Burtt) and amazingly innovative use of mattes and model-shots - the movie pioneered the use of computerised motion-control for optical compositing. The credits list is a who's-who of brilliant visual effects men; John Dykstra, John Stears, Rick Baker, Doug Beswick, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, Bruce Logan, Bruce Nicholson, Joe Johnston, Peter Kuran, Phil Tippett, Dan O'Bannon and John Wash, to name a few. Finally, the incredibly powerful orchestral score by John Williams adds tremendous panache to the picture, sweeping along the emotions and the actions with deliriously dramatic music. That this film is a pop culture icon is undoubted - what makes it truly astonishing however is that Lucas made it on his own terms, without compromise, when everyone was advising him otherwise. The work of a true artist should always be measured in these terms. Okay, it's just a movie - but what an exceptional, original, exciting, dramatic, eye-popping, dazzling, brilliantly-made and unforgettable movie. This review is of the 1997 re-release, which features many new effects shots (mostly in the Mos Eisley sequence), a new scene with Han Solo and Jabba and a few other shots not in the original film.