A long time ago in a galaxy far far away

Rating: 10/10 (4 August 2014)

I saw the original "Star Wars" (you can keep calling it "Episode IV: A New Hope" all you want, I do not have to go along with it) in a theater far and away more times than any other movie (low double figures). I saw "Star Wars" as much as the films I saw the second and third most often in a movie theater, which would be, of course, "The Empire Strikes Back" and "The Return of the Jedi." I even sat through the movie twice in a row, the first time so I could pay attention to everything that happened in the lower left quadrant of the film and the second time so I could watch the lower right quadrant.
Watch the film again for the first time in several years three things stuck out in my mind as to why this film got us so excited way back when. The first, as noted above, was how there was so to look at in this film. Nobody ever laughed at the alien in the sunglasses trailing after the good guys at Mois Eisley, but in addition to the all the weird looking aliens in the Cantina and throughout the film there was the way this galaxy far, far away looked like it had been lived in. The idea that the Millennium Falcon is not only the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy but actually looks like a hunk of junk mattered. Even the wacky white armor of the Storm Troopers meant something to us, even if we questioned its functionality. You could reduce Han Solo to his grin, Princess Leia to her hairdo, and Luke Skywalker to his lightsaber, because the costumes and art design were things we had never seen before. Of course, Darth Vader being able to think people to death was pretty impressive.
The second is that if there is any one thing that made "Star Wars" move than a "B" movie made with an "A" budget it is the musical score by John Williams. The composer had won his first Oscar two years earlier for "Jaws" and was also nominated for "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" when he won again for "Star Wars." One of the things we did because we could not go and sit in the theater watching "Star Wars" all day was to listen to the double-album for the movie's soundtrack (yes, I probably listened to this soundtrack more than any other in history than did not require singing "The Time Warp" or any other song). I do not know how much of the movie is scored to music, but it has to be an extremely high percentage, albeit short of what you would get with a silent film. The only movie score that I find comparable is the one Ennio Morricone did for "Once Upon a Time in the West," especially in terms of have motifs associated with characters.
The final thing that made this movie great was the entire final sequence where the Rebels attack the Death Star. The X-Wing fighters are still the coolest I have ever seen, despite what we have seen from "Battlestar Galactica" to "Farscape" and everything in between. I would really love to see the complete original template George Lucas put together for the special effects crew spliced together from World War II movies. Not only do we have the drama of the "Dam Busters" runs on the Death Star, but the sequences provides a number of memorable characters, most of whose names we never learn: Red Leader (Drewe Henley), Red Two (Dennis Lawson), Red Four (Jack Klaff), Red Six (William Hootkins), Gold Leader (Angus Mcinnis), Gold Two (Jeremy Sinden), and Gold Five (Graham Ashley). Everything that happened was so vivid that when listening to the lengthy "Battle of Yavin" cut on the soundtrack I swear we could recreate every shot in our minds.
Perhaps the best way of describing the impact of "Star Wars" is to say that it must have been similar to what happened a generation or two earlier when Dorothy opened the door to Oz and the screen went from sepia tones to Technicolor. It was an introduction to a whole new world. Even if we never saw a Saturday morning serial we could appreciate the idea of a roller coaster type of ride where Sand People attack, the Millennium Falcon has to escape the Death Star, and the Rebel base is almost within range.
In terms of the controversy over the way George Lucas has tinkered with his 1977 film, I have already bought into the idea of the director's cut, so it is hard to fault the director for having a slightly different definition of that from others. I remember how outdated the special effects looked three years later when "Empire" came out, so updating them makes sense to me. The scene with Jabba sets up what happens in the rest of the original trilogy and I think the scene with Biggs before the attack is important simply because I think the idea that the last person killed is Luke's best friend. Besides, I have the film we saw in 1977 preserved in a letterboxed edition on laser disc and can still watch it whenever I want.
Actually, what surprised me the most with this "final" version of the original "Star Wars" movie was how tacky the attempts by Lucas to retroactively fix his character's flaws. To be clear that Han Solo is not a cold blooded killer Greedo now shoots first, although he is an incredible bad shot, especially from four feet away. Then there was the shock that Leia no long kisses Luke on the lips "For luck" before they swing across that chasm. Now it is a chaste little peck on the cheek.