I can’t mention how many times people are surprised when, in spite of my film buff credentials, I name Star Wars as my favourite movie (along with Lawrence of Arabia). I’ve encountered similar takes on Star Wars throughout my life. On the side of critical appreciation, we get Roger Ebert, who lists Star Wars as one of his Great Movies, yet treats it as great because of its childishness, innocence, and simplicity. In Biskind’s popular history, Lucas and Spielberg are the main filmmakers responsible for killing the artistic renaissance of the New Hollywood, as they ushered in the new commercial era. Biskind styles Lucas as a shoddy director but a savvy, if nerdy, entertainer. Peter Biskind, in his book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls (1998), offers a good example of this kind of negative take on Star Wars. The dialogue, acting, and camerawork are objects of common derision, and, as I will briefly argue, misunderstanding. Most writers on film consider Star Wars a significant movie, even if many think it might not be incredibly well made. Fan-based polling, such as Empire magazine’s, tend to favour The Empire Strikes Back, but they reward both the first two Star Wars movies highly. However, none of the more elite and prestigious Sight & Sound polls list Star Wars.
100 Movies, released in 1998, and up two to no. The AFI ranks Star Wars near the top (no. The phenomenal box office success of Star Wars in 1977 has acquired the status of movie legend. Nevertheless, an underappreciation of writer-director George Lucas’s formal and narrative craft persists. It is widely recognized as a movie classic. There is no disputing that the original Star Wars is one of the most beloved films of all time among moviegoers. The same could be said for much of the film. The simplicity and iconicity of the opening of Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope can obscure its remarkable formal achievement. The second shot reverses the viewer’s position to further align us with the fleeing rebels, who now race towards the camera. The Imperial Star Destroyer dominates the first shot, and it dominates the viewer, who is positioned below looking up. The small Rebel Alliance against the giant Galactic Empire, the latter the predator, the former the prey. While the opening title crawl has already given some details about the galaxy’s “period of civil war,” the actions of the spaceships and their relative sizes convey the stakes and dynamics of the conflict.
Although it is simple, involving only one camera movement and depicting a handful of objects, the shot conveys so much narrative and expository information, explaining the world and setting the tone for the movie to come. The gigantic spaceship’s presence expands across the whole width of the frame as it displays its long armoured underbelly, like some vast technological dragon.Įveryone knows this famous opening shot.
A much larger spaceship follows in pursuit overhead, shooting laser beams. A small starship, entering from the top right foreground, races downward across the frame, retreating into the background. Pan down to reveal two moons and a glowing planet. The pair recruit a cynical interstellar smuggler and his outsized alien copilot with an ancient freighter heavily modified for combat to help them reach Alderaan, but the planet is obliterated and now the foursome must rescue the young woman held prisoner by the Empire and lead an attack by the rebellion against the Death Star before it can annihilate all hope of restoring freedom to the galaxy.A field of stars.
While soldiers of the Empire search the nearby planet Tatooine, a series of incidents sweeps up a young desert farmer with dreams of being a fighter pilot in the rebellion, as he winds up with the Death Star plans and also the assistance of an elderly hermit who once served as a warrior of an ancient order whose chosen weapons were powerful energy swords known as light-sabers. The dissident Senator is captured, but the plans for the Death Star are nowhere to be found. But her spacecraft is attacked by a vast warship of the Empire and seized.
During a recent battle, technical schematics for a gigantic space station, code named the Death Star, have been unearthed by rebel spies, and a young woman who is a dissident member of the Imperial Senate, under the cover of a diplomatic mission to the planet Alderaan, is trying to smuggle these plans to the rebellion. It is a time of civil war, as solar systems have broken away from the Empire and are waging a war of rebellion. In a distant galaxy eons before the creation of the planet known as Earth, vast civilizations have evolved, and ruling the galaxy is an interstellar Empire created from the ruins of an Old Republic that held sway for generations.