Movie Review: "Star Wars: A New Hope" (George Lucas, 1977)

BEFORE THE DARK TIMES by Bennett Campbell Ferguson

Above: Mark Hamill in Mr. Lucas’ movie.  Photo © Lucasfilm Ltd., 20^TH Century Fox, and Walt Disney Pictures

The original blockbuster or the infantilizing of pop culture?  Both of those monikers have been stamped on “A New Hope,” the inaugural installment of the indomitable “Star Wars” series (the film was released in 1977, though it takes place decades after 2005’s “Revenge of the Sith”).  Yet the truth is that “A New Hope” is more than that— it’s a scrappy adventure, a spiritual hero’s journey, a proudly bombastic epic, and a gallivanting emotional adventure that rockets, ever so forcefully, into deep space.

            “A New Hope” is set during wartime, as the heroes of the Rebel Alliance battle the tyrannical forces of the Galactic Empire.  Yet that conflict is seen not only through the haze of sci-fi firefights, but from afar by the young famer Luke Skywalker.  He’s played by Mark Hamill who, armed with unabashed sincerity and charmingly messy hair, grounds the movie.  The Rebels versus Empire blowouts, as gorgeously executed as they are (with marvelously realistic stop-motion spaceships twisting through the cosmos) can’t compare with the scene where Luke gazes at a sunset, longing for something more than the proverbial “simple life.”

            Be careful what you wish for.  At the behest of his cranky Uncle Owen (a moving Phil Brown), Luke takes custody of two robots, R2-D2 and C-3PO, to help with the farm chores.  They are, however, property of the Rebel Alliance, and as their presence lures the soldiers of the Empire into Luke’s sphere, he begins to realize that the time has passed to stand idle—he has to join the Rebels, to fight the Empire alongside them.

            “A New Hope” is a popcorn movie packed with hairbreadth escapes, gleeful one-liners (“Will someone get this walking carpet out of my way?” Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia blusters as she marches past Peter Mayhew’s hairy Chewbacca), and a climax where slender spaceships soar exhilaratingly through a tight-walled metal trench.  And yet, miraculously, writer-director George Lucas layers the movie with moments that gleam with emotion (like the late image of Luke, Leia, and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo bouncily walking together, their arms thrown over each other’s shoulders).

            For all its hope and beauty, the “Star Wars” saga ultimately turned out to be a grim tale of lost innocence.  But to watch “A New Hope” is to bask in the simplicity of Luke’s early years once more—in his first blush with adventure and the friendships that come to mean so much to him, even as he wades ever deeper into the treacherous ambiguity of war.