That's right, Wookiees and Twi'leks, Mon Calamari and Bothans! It's time for a war amongst the stars! STAR WARS! Even moreso than my beloved Jurassic Park, Star Wars shows up in my day-to-day. My high school graduation present was a gnarly Stormtrooper Fossil watch. I have five lightsabers (green, blue, purple, red, and red). The Original Trilogy (OT) on VHS is a prized possession. Nearly every one of my blogs has a reference to this gigantic space opera. This started as a blog about cheesiness in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Then I started watching a lot of Star Wars on Spike. Then I popped in the DVDs. And here we are, with a kind of finished product! Since my page count was getting pretty high, I'm breaking one giant blog into three smaller entries (sounds familiar, does it?).
What better place to start than the beginning? The beginning being the middle, of course. Originally released as Star Wars, A New Hope (ANH) kicked us right into the Galactic Civil War. First thing we see is a space ship (the Tantive IV, of course) being pursued and overtaken by one of the greatest creations in cinema, a Star Destroyer. What really makes the opening shot is how long it takes for the Star Destroyer to come completely in frame. Which really sums up the Rebellion and the Empire rather elegantly. The badass space battle continues into badass hallway combat (one word, “badass” is, according to Merriam-Webster. Know this, I did not). It's here we meet a ton of major players: R2 and 3PO, Leia, and making one of the most intimidating entrances ever, Darth Vader. In the middle of corpse-strewn hallways, this 7-foot, clad-in-black monster walks over bodies and gets everyone to stop what they’re doing. That’s how you show an audience this guy commands respect/fear. He's a man/machine on a mission, and as Captain Antilles found out, you don't survive long in Vader's path. He crushes throats, with his hands or the Force, whichever is most convenient, he watches a planet explode, he fights his old master, who put him in that menacing life-support-system. Did a group of fighters break off from the main group? No worries! Vader will just hop in his custom TIE Fighter and blow them up. Seriously, there isn't much he can't do. Or won't do. Darth Vader is a villain afterall. Not some whiny snot of a teenager. That'd be ridiculous!
The best part of ANH, and it’s been said before, is the setting. In this case, it’s Tatooine. Instead of flash and pizzazz (still use pizzazz, do people?), we get rundown and worn-in. This is a planet of one climate and one geographic description: hot and desert (a pattern, this will become). On this planet, we meet a whole horde of creatures. First are the Jawas with their creepy, glowing eyes, short stature, and giant Sandcrawlers. There’s the Sand People, who ride Banthas in single-file, hide their tracks, and kill like it was breathing. Can’t have a planet without humans, of course, so we see a few of them at Luke’s place and Mos Eisley. But once we get into Mos Eisley (a wretched hive of scum and villainy), humans are the minority. Seriously. In the cantina, it’s Luke, Obi-Wan, Han, and the bartender. Everyone else is an alien. That right there is George Lucas doing work, showing us this universe is huge without telling us a thing. And frankly, I appreciate the diversity here because after we leave Mos Eisley, the movie gets a lot more human. (And white. A-whole-nother bag of womp rats, that is.) Speaking of Mos Eisley: awesome. It’s as close to the Wild West as we get in Star Wars, with bar fights, murder, shoot-outs, and daring getaways. Bodies were left where they fell. I’ve always been curious about what happened to Ponda Baba’s arm.
Of course, the cantina serves as the birthplace of one of the most idiotic of Star Wars controversies: Who shot first? In the 1977 release, Han Solo, smuggler extraordinaire, is confronted by Greedo. Turns out Jabba the Hutt put a price on Han's head. Right when it looks like Greedo is going to collect, BAM! Han shoots him under the table, tosses the bartender a credit, and walks out. That's character development. Here's a guy who doesn't have time for stooges or two-bit bounty hunters. He has no problem taking decisive action in a dangerous situation. Naturally, George Lucas thought that ought to be changed. Can't have a hero acting like a villain, or some such BS (think too long about it, and explode, your head will). So Georgie has Greedo shoot first, using terrible CGI to make Han dodge and return fire. And because he can be a giant tool, he wore a "Han Shot First" shirt while filming the PT. Dude is an ass-hole.
After Mos Eisley, we witness the destruction of Alderaan, in all its peacefulness and beauty. Heck, they don't even have weapons! I wonder what that sudden gravity vacuum would do to the remaining planets of that system. Billions die in an instant, and Obi-Wan senses it, adding more intrigue to the Force. The Death Star capture and prison break is fun to watch. You see Luke appealing to Han's blank blank, Leia taking charge, and Han wondering what the hell he and Chewie got dragged into. It all culminates with the showdown between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader. What they engage in isn't your typical fight: Vader may have his head in it, but Obi-Wan is just distracting him. If the Dark Lord of the Sith is concentrating on the man that maimed him, he won't see the criminals escaping. It works, too, although Obi-Wan has to sacrifice himself. Only kind of, though. Since he's still kind of alive through the Force. Which is neat. Creepy, too, when he starts talking to Luke and appearing to him. But mostly neat.
Logical is not a word too often associated with ANH. Or Star Wars in general. After an escape from the Death Star, Leia surmises they’re being tracked by the Empire. Naturally, they go to the hidden Rebel base. This would be the same hidden Rebel base the Empire was so desperate to find, they blew up Alderaan. Younger Joey didn’t pick up on that, but older, wiser, bitchier Joey sure did. It’s as illogical as the Empire allowing for a single vent that, if discovered, could be the undoing of a space station the size of a moon. I’ll chalk up the latter to designer laziness/fear of telling someone he/she/it made a mistake and have to face the wrath of the Emperor. The former, well, I guess you don’t need to pass an IQ test to become Alderaanian royalty. Or to be Jedi Master. Obi-Wan hardly changes his name. He and Yoda decide to let Luke keep his dad’s last name, and then let him be raised by his dad’s step-brother. And all of that on Anakin Skywalker’s home planet. But those logical fallacies exist because Lucas can’t write any better than we understand Chewie.
It's wild watching ANH, seeing the characters at the start of the journey. The contrast is huge, and a large part of that is because they aren't full-fledged characters in ANH. Yes, they have arcs, but they're more archetypes, each person playing a role. Don't take that as a mark against them because it isn't. Lucas drew heavily from the works of Akira Kurosawa and the ideas of Joseph Campbell when creating ANH. These are classically defined roles Han, Luke, and Obi-Wan are filling: the anti-hero, the hero, and the wise, old mentor. Leia's a spin on the tried and not-so-true damsel-in-distress, and she shines because of this. The droids are the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern of the group, and Chewie is the faithful sidekick. These latter three don't get much in the way of growth, to be honest, but it's good to have constant characters sometimes. It's not a perfect movie by any means. Fortunately, it doesn't have to be. That's what we have The Empire Strikes Back for. That's next! Until then, may the Force be with you.
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