30 Films That Made Me Who I Am - #4

Star Wars

     You all knew this was coming, didn't ya?  Well, here it is.  When I refer to Star Wars, I'm referring to the original 1977 film.  Most nowdays call it by its retconned title A New Hope.  I think it's a stupid title, and I continue to just call it Star Wars.  I grew up on the Star Wars Trilogy, even though the last film of that series came out two years before I was born.  My dad had taped The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, and we had an honest-to-goodness official VHS tape of the first film.  This one, in fact.

    When I was little, Return of The Jedi was my favorite film of the three.  I think this was due to all the cool monsters that were in it and the Ewoks, which are awesome for kids but not so much for adults.   When I was a teenager, The Empire Strikes Back became my favorite of the films, as this is when I was getting really into filmmaking, and it was directed the best.  However, for the past 10 years or so, I've enjoyed Star Wars the most.  It's more of a rip-roaring adventure than Empire and it's not just a seemingly never-ending action sequence like Jedi seems to me to be these days.  Sure, it's got the worst acting, worst dialogue, and worst special effects of the three, but it's also not as heavy as the other two.  It could be self-contained, as in fact it was for 3 years after it first came out!  It was considered a stand-alone film, and sometimes I wonder if it should have stayed that way.  I'm not dissing the other two films, I'm just actively wondering if I would enjoy it even more without the backstories that the other two films, and sadly the prequel trilogy added.  Imagine never knowing that Leia and Luke are related.  Imagine not knowing anything about Darth Vader being Luke's father.  Ah, the bliss of ignorance.... Ah, the horrible fanfiction ideas that would be had!

     Everyone knows that the movie heralded in a new era of American cinema.  It helped with the rise of the summer blockbuster (though Jaws really started that), it's genius special effects started a new boom in Hollywood after all the studios had shut down their effects departments earlier in the decade, and of course it brought science fiction back to Hollywood, along with Spielberg's Close Encounters which was released the same year.  Let's also not forget the invaluable contribution that John Williams made to film scores here.  Before this film and Jaws, Williams' scores were not that memorable to general audiences.  He'd done things like The Towering Inferno, The Poseidon Adventure, Goodbye Mr. Chips, and Earthquake.  In other words, he did melodramatic music scores, which is what the music is in this, but it just fits like a glove here.  He started to use liet-motifs for his scores with people and places being represented by a specific tune.  (Much like Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and those damned tunes you had to learn to be transported different places or have that damned horse be called to you.)  This was not a new idea, as it was used a lot in the early years of film.  Really John Williams is just an old-school composer that brought back old ideas to great success.  Still, old ideas they may be, the tunes were so memorable.  Everyone knows the opening theme to Star Wars, though I prefer the end credits music which basically is a collection of the different themes used in the film all bundled together. 

     Now why choose this over the other two films?  (Don't even ask about the prequels, as I don't really like them anyway.  They are not even near the same league.)  Well, I like fun.  Pure, simple, joyful fun.  Without baggage.  This is why I love theme parks also.  There's no baggage with Star Wars.  There's no bogged down second act like there is in Empire, where we're stuck on Dagoba with Luke and Yoda.  There's none of the overwhelming darkness that's present in the other two films at times, such as whenever Luke is fighting Vader or the Emperor.  I know a lot of you are scoffing at me saying these things.  It's tantamount to heresy, but it's what I think.  The darkness of the other two films make them less fun, especially Empire.  Now I know that Lucas had never intended that film to have a clear beginning or end, as it was intended as the middle picture, but the film is mainly just exposition with a few cool battle sequences thrown in.  If you look back at initial reviews of the second and third films, they didn't get the unabashed good reviews that Star Wars got.  It's only been with the passage of time that they've grown in stature... Mainly Empire. 

     I love that Star Wars is not an origin story.  You're seemingly thrown into this story in the middle, really.  The film opens with robots escaping a hostage-taken ship in an escape pod and landing on a desert planet where they are promptly stolen by hooded midgets and sold to some farmers.  One robot runs away talking crazy, and the nephew of the farmer has to go chase after him.  Then this old hermit that lives in a cave tells the teenager that he knew his father and that he should go with him off-planet to help this girl that was in a hologram that the robot showed.  Yeah, that's basically what you think the first time you watch the movie, as besides the crawl at the beginning of the film, you come into the story cold turkey and have to figure things out as you go along.  But man did Lucas come up with some interesting characters, even if they were stolen from Kurosawa films and mythology.

    Don't forget what a breath of fresh air the film was considered when it came out.  It's contemporaries were such dark nihilistic things like Marathon Man, Saturday Night Fever, All The President's Men, Taxi Driver or Network.  All realistic, dark, and depressing.  Even the few sci-fi films of the time were on the depressing side.  (Logan's Run or Soylent Green)  Escapism needed to make a comeback, and here we had it!  Finally we could have fun at the movies again without it being a comedy!  Go watch the film with 1977 eyes and try not to be amazed!

*  A small note here:  I really dislike some of the changes Lucas made to film, but some have made the film better.  I like Luke seeing Biggs before the Battle of Yavin starts.  I like the Praxis wave when the Death Star explodes.  I like the better effects during the Battle of Yavin.  I hate Obi-Wan's new yell to scare the Sand People off, as it sounds like he got kicked in the nuts.  I hate the new Mos Eisley stuff...  Sure I liked this stuff when it first was re-released to theaters when I was 12, but now I see them for the mixed bag they are.  At least it's not as bad as the stuff they've done to Return of the Jedi, which I refuse to watch in it's altered form these days.  And seriously...  The prequels are not canon to me.  They aren't Star Wars, but simply fan fiction done by the series creator.  These aren't the stories you're looking for.