This is part of a series of articles reviewing the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, as unveiled in 2007. Why am I doing this? Because the damned cinemas are closed and I have to review something.
(PG) ★★★★★
Director: George Lucas.
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, David Prowse, James Earl Jones, Peter Cushing, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker.
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| When you hit a really big swarm of bugs. |
The logo, the opening blast of the score, the scrawl, the shot of the Star Destroyer - within seconds, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (which I'm going to call Star Wars from here on in) is instantly distinctive and iconic. It's the most recognisable film on this list, even for people who haven't seen it. From the samurai-influenced grab of Darth Vader to the clean lines of the stormtroopers, from the rolling trash can of R2D2 to the cinnamon bun hairdo of Princess Leia, almost every single element of the film is etched into the collective unconscious.
Even the sound design is iconic - can you say that about any other movie? The ventilator rasp of Vader, the scream of a TIE Fighter, the ignition of a lightsaber, the beeps and whistles of R2D2 - the mere mention of these things conjures the sounds in your head. And none of these sounds existed prior to Star Wars (and the miraculous ingenuity of Ben Burrt).
Few films are ingrained in pop culture like Star Wars, partly because few films changed cinema like Star Wars. In 1975, Steven Spielberg's Jaws (I'll get to that one in a few months) set a new box office record as the highest grossing film of all time. Star Wars almost doubled that figure when it came out just two years later.
"Star Wars drove home the lessons of Jaws," wrote Peter Biskind in his potentially bullshit bestseller Easy Riders, Raging Bulls, "that kids and young adults would come back again and again to a movie without stars. But unlike Jaws, it showed that a phenomenally successful movie could be made from original material. It woke up the studios to the potential of merchandising, showed that the sale of books, t-shirts, and action figures could be a significant profit centre."
For better or worse, movie-making was a very different beast after Star Wars. Movies were greenlit on the strength of their likely toys sales - the term "toyetic" was said to be coined in 1977 in reference to Star Wars (or, more precisely, in an unfavourable comparison between Spielberg's Close Encounters Of The Third Kind and Star Wars). All of sudden, movies were making money beyond the box office or TV licensing. And while Star Wars was an original IP, its subsequent sequels helped cement the idea that follow-ups didn't have to be about diminishing returns. Studios took note of Star Wars in a big way and saw more dollar signs than they'd ever seen before.
But why Star Wars? Why was it the film that captured the zeitgeist? The answer is deeper than its ability to sell lunchboxes and action figures, but in a sense, it truly is about its ability to sell lunchboxes and action figures. Or, in other words, it appealed to kids. But more than that, Star Wars had enough action and adventure to appeal to teens, and it was put together well enough for grown-ups to, at the very least, not hate it.
According to Biskind's book, writer/director George Lucas claimed he "(wasn't) that interested in narrative - the dialogue doesn't have much meaning in any of my movies". He would prove this point on the prequels, but such a quote was selling himself short on Star Wars. The words coming out of the actor's mouths mightn't have meant much to Lucas, but his study of Joseph Campbell's work around the hero's journey and "monomyth" proved fruitful - he nailed Campbell's idea's around narrative so well that Star Wars is used as an example in screenwriting classes of how to apply Campbell's ideas.
By tapping into this millenium-old style of storytelling, Lucas gave Star Wars the innocent simplicity of a fairy tale or the similarly structured The Wizard Of Oz. "(Star Wars) is for 10- and 12-year-olds," Lucas said. "I wanted to make a kids' film that would... introduce a kind of basic morality."
But doing this in a sci-fi setting was a bold move. Sci-fi was a predominantly scoffed-at genre in 1977, and if it hadn't been for the massive success of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey less than a decade earlier, it's likely Star Wars would not have been made. Lucas wanted to tap into the "fantasy in the Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon tradition" - influences from his childhood that were out of favour (and that Star Wars would inadvertently revive). The TV shows and film serials that Rogers and Gordon spawned were dismissed for their campy styles and ropey effects, which often included spaceships on visible strings or aliens in dodgy-looking costumes.
As 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die puts it, "most people in the mid-1970s expected 'sci-fi' to mean wobbly Star Trek sets or effects on a par with Ed Wood's hubcap-on-a-string from Plan 9 From Outer Space (1959)".
Key to Lucas' success was not only the myth-like story, but taking the sci-fi setting seriously. To do this, he created Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) to make his effects. The new company moved slowly and failed at first, but eventually they adapted pre-existing technology to create new ways to make everything look real. The space battles, the robots, the lightsabers - Star Wars doesn't work without them, and they don't work without ILM. It's impossible to overstate how mindblowing that opening shot of the blockade runner and the Star Destroyer flying in from top of screen was to audience in 1977. They'd never seen anything like it before.
Lucas' reliance on effects, both practical and post, helped sell his universe as a real thing, but it was a make-or-break gamble. The ILM team throw everything at the screen to make it work - robotics, mattes, puppetry, miniatures, blue screen, hand-animated lasers, and computer graphics. There's an effect of some kind in almost every shot. Luckily Lucas had a bunch of talented unknown performers (and the venerable Guinness and Cushing) who would do their thing while Lucas worried about the effects.
Lucas gets too much credit for Star Wars - it's as if he did everything. Yes, it was his idea, and he wrote the screenplay and directed the film, but his story was more than likely saved in the edit (see the awesome video below) and the direction is solid but nothing special. Lucas wouldn't acknowledge it as much as he should have, but the real stars of Star Wars were the veritable magicians he had around, including ILM.
Those wizards included composer John Williams, sound designer Ben Burrt, concept designers Colin Cantwell and Ralph McQuarrie, production designers John Barry and Roger Christian, and an enthusiastic cast that were able to overcome Lucas' shortcomings as a director. These people did remarkable things to create Lucas' universe and the characters in it. And just look at who won Oscars for Star Wars - Williams, Burrt (who won a special achievement award), the sound team of Don MacDougall, Ray West, Bob Minkler and Derek Ball, costume designer John Mollo, the art direction team of John Barry, Norman Reynolds, Leslie Dilley, and Roger Christian, editors Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew, and the ILM team. Not George Lucas.
This notion that Lucas wasn't the auteur many thought he was is borne out by what he did next. He didn't direct or write The Empire Strikes Back or Return Of The Jedi (he gets a co-write credit on Jedi), instead overseeing them as executive producer. When he returned to the franchise as director and writer for the prequels, he churned out the worst films of the series. Arguably, everything that was "saved in the edit" for Star Wars was "left in the edit" for The Phantom Menace.
So when you get down to it, Star Wars is an amazing piece of cinema but not because of a single-minded auteur, which most people believe (and Lucas would have many people believe). It's one of those films where every member of the team is doing incredible things to push the limits of film-making possibility, from the sound team to the FX crew to the editors. Even the actors are great - it's impossible to imagine anyone else in those roles, as they imbue even the daftest of exposition with heart and character.
All of this creates a reality that is enveloping and encompassing, and Star Wars wouldn't have worked otherwise. Its script, hinting at Clone Wars and Kessel Runs and planets and creatures we never see, promises an endless universe, and we fully inhabit it for two miraculous hours. Shorn of its prequels, sequels and sidequels, and stripped of its mass-merchandising, it's a classically structured space opera that rolls from one incredible dilemma to the next, setting a new benchmark in adventure storytelling.
And finally, this:
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