Subject: Retrospective: Star Wars (1977)

From: John Ulmer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 2003 19:49:09 -0000

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Star Wars - 5/5 Stars
Director: George Lucas
Starring: Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones and 
Alec Guinness
MPAA Classification: PG (violence, brief language)
Year: 1977

REVIEW BY JOHN ULMER

"Star Wars" is part of John Ulmer's Favorite Movies List, available to see 
at http://www.wiredonmovies.com/favorites.

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"I've got a bad feeling about this."
- Han Solo, Star Wars

There's no reason to have a bad feeling about "Star Wars." The film is as 
shallow as a donut hole and a pure masterpiece. Rarely have I seen a shallow 
motion picture also be a memorably exciting and visually dazzling one, also.

There's something more to "Star Wars" than just good visual effects, though. 
It is a fun movie, a playful movie, and it inhabits our memory. I've 
analyzed it many times before. I came to the realization that there is 
simply nothing there virtually. But was there ever anything filling up 
classics like "2001" or "Metropolis"? Well, maybe, but that's what seperates 
"Star Wars" - it's just fun. Fun with holes the size of the Grand Canyon.

To fully understand the significance of "Star Wars," you must understand the 
time. It was 1977, and audiences were still raving about the special effects 
witnessed in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey." When word came out 
that "Star Wars" director George Lucas was borrowing the ideas of an outer 
space saga from Kubrick, it appeared to waiting audiences at first ot be 
another rip-off. But something astonishing happened. Audiences were amazed 
to see that Lucas had actually improved upon Kubrick's space vision of the 
future. This was the first film to ever show a space-projected background 
move with the camera. This was the first film to see hyper-speed space 
fighters duking it out at lightspeed. "Star Wars" was the first of its kind. 
It wasn't as serious as "2001," it's not even necessarily a better film, 
it's just a different film, and no one and nobody expected that.

To go into the plot is pointless, as (a) it really makes no particular sense 
and (b) it is already known by everyone around the world. I will say that 
the actors involved in this film (Ford, Hamill, Fisher, Guinness, Jones, 
etc.) all did a great job. How often do you see such a great cast make you 
care about their characters? Harrison Ford steals the show as Han Solo, and 
the robot droids R2-D2 and C-3PO have chemistry (I never thought I'd say 
that about robots).

The film seems to be filled to the rim with nonsense spiritual dialogue 
about the Force - something that is all around us and joins our spirits 
together - but the dialogue is so cheesy it must be so awful on purpose. The 
actual story behind the film is a metaphorical study of the Bible. The Force 
is God and Darth Vader is Satan, and all the subplots going on are very 
reminiscent of spiritual warfare. "Star Wars" is an updated telling of the 
Bible, full of hyperspace battles and lightsaber fights.

The special effects in "Star Wars" were so revolutionary that George Lucas 
started his own special effects company named ILM, and the film itself 
inspired so many rip-offs over the year it is amazing. Everyone - everyone - 
knows this movie. Just like "Casablanca," "It's a Wonderful Life," and so on 
and so forth, this is a film everyone remembers, and probably always will. 
And those in the future who may forget about this motion picture...well...

May the Force be with them.

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X-Language: en
X-RT-ReviewID: 1188172
X-RT-TitleID: 1020005
X-RT-SourceID: 1382
X-RT-AuthorID: 6769
X-RT-RatingText: 5/5