Greatness

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2010)

You know what the dirty little secret about Star Wars is? It's a really frickin' great movie.
I'm not entirely sure why that gets glossed over or ignored or disputed, but it does. Maybe it's because the prequels left a bad taste in everyone's mouth. Maybe it's because people feel something as commercially successful as Star Wars can't also have creative merit. Or maybe some people just resent the way the film fundamentally changed the movie industry. But I do think there are many people today who don't appreciate just how good this move is.
For those of you just arriving Alpha Centauri, Star Wars is the story of young Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), a farm boy on a desert planet in a galaxy far, far away. Luke yearns to escape his small and simple life and run away to the stars. He gets his chance when two droids, R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels), come into his life carrying the secret plans for a new superweapon constructed by the vile Empire. That's brings Luke to old Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness), a hermit who used to be a mighty Jedi Knight and is being called back to battle by the lovely Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) to help the Rebel Alliance defeat the Empire. Luke and Ben hook up with smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and his co-pliot Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and they end up trying to rescue Princess Leia from the clutches of Grand Moff Tarkin (Peter Cushing) and Darth Vader (David Prowse and James Earl Jones), the evil Jedi who killed Luke's father, and racing against time to destroy the Empire's Death star before it can annihilate the Rebels.
There are so many good things to Star Wars, but let's start with the well written characters and the good acting that brings them to life. Don't laugh. Luke is a whiny adolescent when the story begins who really isn't much of a hero. Even when Ben Kenobi offers him a chance to come with him on a great adventure, Luke declines because he doesn't want to be bothered with other peoples' problems. But as he grows into a hero willing to risk his life for what is right, Luke never stops being a kid. Alec Guinness does a fine job as Luke's mentor, giving a sense of serenity and grace to a role where he has to impressive enough to be believable as the man who changes Luke's life without overpowering Hamill's performance. Of course it is rather weird to rewatch Star Wars and recognize that the Obi-Wan Kenobi of this film doesn't really fit with the way the character was portrayed in the rest of the series.
Carrie Fisher also has a tougher job than you might think. She had to make Leia tough and strong and commanding with a condescending sarcasm befitting a young woman who grew up fast in the world of galactic politics, while still being a beautiful princess for the audience to fall in love with. And Han Solo is actually more than just a rough around the edges rogue. Harrison Ford gives him a puffed up self-importance but let's us see that he's trying to impress himself as much as he is other people. He also has to be both not quite as smart as Luke but still show he's a bit wiser as to the ways of the universe.
The movie is also better written than people realize. Luke starts out as a kid and doesn't magically morph into some super skilled warrior. For most of the story, the fighting is handled by the older, more experienced characters and Luke's contribution is coming up with some great ideas. It's really only at the end after going through all his experiences that Luke is ready to be a warrior himself. When Luke and company escape the Death Star, the script has enough confidence to not try and dumb things down. It realizes that it's far more believable for the Empire to let them escape, rather than pretend that 3 people, a wookie and a couple of droids could really shoot their way out of a moon-sized space station staffed by possibly millions of soldiers. But it doesn't just let the audience understand that, it let's the characters be smart enough to understand that.
And of course, the writing of Star Wars can't be discussed with the subject of Greedo shooting first being addressed. In the original, Greedo is a hired thug who corners Han in the cantina and is about to kill him when Han blows him away with a hidden blaster under the table. In the special editions, George Lucas made Greedo shoot first and Han kill him in self-defense. A lot of fanboys have bitched about that and here's why it's important. While shooting him first from under the table is still arguably self-defense, it's a cold blooded and ruthless act. It's something that good guys, especially in 1977, don't do. With that act, the audience understands that Han isn't like Luke or Ben, that he'll do things that are unheroic. That tension in the character is what underlies his actions and his relationships with other characters throughout the film. It's the reason why you can believe he really is leaving just before the final battle, because you've already seen him do something like that. When Lucas made Greedo shoot first, he eliminates that moral dimension to Han Solo and he just becomes another hero in the story.
Star Wars is the Babe Ruth of comics. Jaws may have been the first summer blockbuster, but this is the film that changed the way the game is played. The way movies are made, what movies are made and how they're marketed changed with this film. But its historical significance shouldn't blind people to its artistic greatness.