Star Wars
1977
**** (out of 4)
Star Wars was not the first movie I ever saw. If memory serves (and it probably doesn’t) it was possibly Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, Charlotte’s Web, Benji, Snoopy Come Home or some similar children’s film. In any case I was too young to process them as anything more than instant gratification or appreciate them in any lasting way.
No, it was Star Wars that introduced me to the movies. My lifelong love of film is a direct result of George Lucas’ vision and, whatever cinematic sins he has committed since, I’m grateful for that. I was eight when I first saw Star Wars with my father. It was not during its initial 1977 run, but during the 1978 re-release that I saw it in full.
I had already been part of the marketing machine thanks to Kenner and its action figures and board games. Our family even has a silent film splice of the dog-fight sequence that was played on our old home projector for special occasions. By the time I saw Star Wars it was already part of my life as it was for my generation and the culture at large. It may be a nostalgic haze that brings me the conclusion that no movie event in my lifetime has ever reached the phenomenal heights of this one, but I doubt it.
I’m not going to pretend any of the following observations are original. Has any film ever had so much written about it? No, Star Wars is communal memory, but it’s also my memory and if I’m going to write about film, it has to start here.
That Star Wars has become communal memory was by design. George Lucas was famously a protégé of Joseph Campbell, an author and professor who specialized in the study of myths. Campbell’s book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” put forward the notion that there are really only a small number of basic stories in the human memory and, over the span of time and culture, different generations have found new ways of retelling those stories. These basic myths are innate within us. How else to explain why so many similar tales are found among early peoples who could not have had contact with each other?
One basic myth is the hero’s quest. An innocent is faced with tragedy and seeks to persevere through the assistance of a wise mentor. After suffering defeat, he gathers the courage to defeat his enemies and achieve glory. Yes, this is the story of Luke Skywalker, but it is also the story of King Arthur and countless others. Lucas was unique in that he studied these concepts and sought to incorporate as many hardwired myths as possible in his saga.
What he added was the perspective that a film history background provided. He took the old Flash Gordon / Buck Rogers serials of the thirties with their simple heroics and cliffhangers and added a good does of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, “The Hidden Fortress.” That film featured a Han Solo-ish samurai rescuing a princess with the help of two comic relief peasants not unlike our favorite droids. Any question of inspiration it literally swiped away as both films use the same swiping editing styles.
Another ingredient was, of course, the special effects. They may seem quaint by today’s standards, but they were revolutionary in 1977. Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas’ special effects team, made such advancements that they have remained ever since, the dominant leaders of their field in the movie industry. The great leap forward in model and matte technology was made almost ten years earlier for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it was George Lucas who saw that spaceships and laser swords could be utilized for escapist entertainment outside the science fiction genre.
Make no mistake. Star Wars was not science fiction. In form, it was far closer to a Western or a Japanese samurai film. It did not take place in the future, but “a long time ago.” (myth again.) This decision emphasized the element I most love about the look of the film, ironically called the used future. If spaceships and robots had always been portrayed as sleek and shiny, in a used future they would be grimy and tend to break down. In a used future no Death Star would be complete without a trash compactor.
This may be why the image most deeply embedded in my mind is that of two droids wandering lost through the desert. It was not pure fantasy that fired my imagination, but the ideas of fantasy and reality colliding. The key was that the desert was real and the droids were provided with engaging personalities. I’m not sure this makes sense, but to my eight-year-old eyes, Star Wars was the most realistic film I had ever seen.
Another quality that made Star Wars special was its willingness not to over explain its universe and allow mysteries to fester in young minds. After all we didn’t know from sequels. Why did Obi-One disappear when seemingly killed by Vader? What was under those Jawa hoodies? Who were all those creatures in the cantina? Finally, what exactly was this “force” all about? What a shame it would have been if they had thrown some pseudo-science term at us to explain why some were strong with it (but that’s a subject for another review.)
Something else Star Wars had was gravitas. We children did not know Alec Guinness’ formidable film history, but it was implied in his performance as the wise old Ben Kenobi. You can’t fake that. John William’s unforgettable score is another example. Simple science fiction used whirling synthesizers, but here nothing short of a full orchestral march will do.
We children knew innately how utterly cool Darth Vader was. We may not have recognized the influence of medieval and samurai armor, but we sensed its primal imagery, just as we sensed the wonder of a farm boy looking up to a sky with two suns.
1977
**** (out of 4)
Star Wars was not the first movie I ever saw. If memory serves (and it probably doesn’t) it was possibly Snow White & the Seven Dwarves, Charlotte’s Web, Benji, Snoopy Come Home or some similar children’s film. In any case I was too young to process them as anything more than instant gratification or appreciate them in any lasting way.
No, it was Star Wars that introduced me to the movies. My lifelong love of film is a direct result of George Lucas’ vision and, whatever cinematic sins he has committed since, I’m grateful for that. I was eight when I first saw Star Wars with my father. It was not during its initial 1977 run, but during the 1978 re-release that I saw it in full.
I had already been part of the marketing machine thanks to Kenner and its action figures and board games. Our family even has a silent film splice of the dog-fight sequence that was played on our old home projector for special occasions. By the time I saw Star Wars it was already part of my life as it was for my generation and the culture at large. It may be a nostalgic haze that brings me the conclusion that no movie event in my lifetime has ever reached the phenomenal heights of this one, but I doubt it.
I’m not going to pretend any of the following observations are original. Has any film ever had so much written about it? No, Star Wars is communal memory, but it’s also my memory and if I’m going to write about film, it has to start here.
That Star Wars has become communal memory was by design. George Lucas was famously a protégé of Joseph Campbell, an author and professor who specialized in the study of myths. Campbell’s book “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” put forward the notion that there are really only a small number of basic stories in the human memory and, over the span of time and culture, different generations have found new ways of retelling those stories. These basic myths are innate within us. How else to explain why so many similar tales are found among early peoples who could not have had contact with each other?
One basic myth is the hero’s quest. An innocent is faced with tragedy and seeks to persevere through the assistance of a wise mentor. After suffering defeat, he gathers the courage to defeat his enemies and achieve glory. Yes, this is the story of Luke Skywalker, but it is also the story of King Arthur and countless others. Lucas was unique in that he studied these concepts and sought to incorporate as many hardwired myths as possible in his saga.
What he added was the perspective that a film history background provided. He took the old Flash Gordon / Buck Rogers serials of the thirties with their simple heroics and cliffhangers and added a good does of Akira Kurosawa’s 1958 samurai classic, “The Hidden Fortress.” That film featured a Han Solo-ish samurai rescuing a princess with the help of two comic relief peasants not unlike our favorite droids. Any question of inspiration it literally swiped away as both films use the same swiping editing styles.
Another ingredient was, of course, the special effects. They may seem quaint by today’s standards, but they were revolutionary in 1977. Industrial Light & Magic, Lucas’ special effects team, made such advancements that they have remained ever since, the dominant leaders of their field in the movie industry. The great leap forward in model and matte technology was made almost ten years earlier for Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, but it was George Lucas who saw that spaceships and laser swords could be utilized for escapist entertainment outside the science fiction genre.
Make no mistake. Star Wars was not science fiction. In form, it was far closer to a Western or a Japanese samurai film. It did not take place in the future, but “a long time ago.” (myth again.) This decision emphasized the element I most love about the look of the film, ironically called the used future. If spaceships and robots had always been portrayed as sleek and shiny, in a used future they would be grimy and tend to break down. In a used future no Death Star would be complete without a trash compactor.
This may be why the image most deeply embedded in my mind is that of two droids wandering lost through the desert. It was not pure fantasy that fired my imagination, but the ideas of fantasy and reality colliding. The key was that the desert was real and the droids were provided with engaging personalities. I’m not sure this makes sense, but to my eight-year-old eyes, Star Wars was the most realistic film I had ever seen.
Another quality that made Star Wars special was its willingness not to over explain its universe and allow mysteries to fester in young minds. After all we didn’t know from sequels. Why did Obi-One disappear when seemingly killed by Vader? What was under those Jawa hoodies? Who were all those creatures in the cantina? Finally, what exactly was this “force” all about? What a shame it would have been if they had thrown some pseudo-science term at us to explain why some were strong with it (but that’s a subject for another review.)
Something else Star Wars had was gravitas. We children did not know Alec Guinness’ formidable film history, but it was implied in his performance as the wise old Ben Kenobi. You can’t fake that. John William’s unforgettable score is another example. Simple science fiction used whirling synthesizers, but here nothing short of a full orchestral march will do.
We children knew innately how utterly cool Darth Vader was. We may not have recognized the influence of medieval and samurai armor, but we sensed its primal imagery, just as we sensed the wonder of a farm boy looking up to a sky with two suns.
