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“Star Wars: A New Hope,” written and directed by George Lucas and released in 1977 is somehow a samurai-sci-fi, with a hint of cowboy and romance. The film stars Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker, a farm boy looking to get off the remote desert planet Tatooine. Luckily, a crashed escape pod from a ship attacked by the Empire, (the autocracy that rules the galaxy) brings a distress call for Skywalker to rescue a princess.
The film follows a story template called the monomyth, where a hero is given a call to action, makes friends, leaves his old world, and fights trials until a crisis. This template is followed almost to the point and even includes a sometimes excepted sub-section of the monomyth where Skywalker refuses the call to action before changing his mind.
On his travels, Skywalker meets an old man named Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), who becomes one of the allies, and teaches him to use a lightsaber (basically a laser sword). The samurai genre comes into play here, where there was an order of lightsaber wielding heroes called Jedi, with similar traits to samurai customs like heavy honor and an ethical code. Skywalker only begins to practice Jedi ways after the film neglects his training halfway through the movie.
If “Star Wars: A New Hope” was a standalone film, this wouldn’t make much sense since lightsabers become heavily incorporated into the world, but only by two side characters and only in later films. Instead, every other character used laser pistols, and the lightsabers have very little meaning without context from other “Star Wars” films. The movie doesn’t seem appropriate to how often it singles out lightsabers and makes them the center of attention.
The collection of attention went completely to Darth Vader (voiced by James Earl Jones and physically portrayed by David Prowse) even though he has only 12 minutes of screen time. Most of this time is one-minute sections spread across the film, making him feel more prominent.
Vader was portrayed to be the possible villain, but never had an actual confrontation with Skywalker, in fact, he only saw Vader once in the entire film. Both Vader and the absence in importance of lightsabers, made the film feel like it included many unnecessary scenes. Because of those unnecessary scenes, the film’s story feels short and possibly too simple.
Many scenes that over-explained lightsabers, or focused on Vader for long periods of time, felt like filler to the story. While they don’t contribute well to “A New Hope” on its own, when you consider other “Star Wars” films like “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Return of the Jedi,” where lightsabers and Vader are the focus of the trilogy, these scenes become powerful parts to the grand scheme for the series. Even though the series has a strong story, “A New Hope” does not.
While it’s lacking the elements of a powerful story itself, the film is still possibly the best sci-fi film ever. This is thanks to Lucas’s added details to the film, where most sci-fi’s include few aliens like “Dune” and “Star Trek,” “A New Hope” has over 30 different alien species in a single scene. It makes the world feel very diverse and keeps the watcher’s eyes glued to the screen.
Aliens like Greedo (Maria De Aragon), a bounty hunter after the smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford), is one of these. Even though Greedo appears for one scene, he still brings an outlaw aspect to the film, which was increased by the space port Mos Eisley. The port is filled with cowboy style smugglers equipped with laser pistols that make the film feel like a smorgasbord of genres.
With all things considered, the film has a very straightforward plot, but its attention to detail and compelling action makes it a wonderful movie for almost any audience. When Vader did appear he was fantastic, but that doesn’t mean the acting by others wasn’t better than most films. I would rate “Star Wars: A New Hope” a 4.5📼 out of 5.0📼 and suggest it to anyone and everyone thanks to its simplicity, detail, and variety of genres.
