Review of Star Wars (1977) by Lenny R — 08 Jun 2017

Silly and derivative.

But ridiculously awesome.

It set the standard for pretty much every genre blockbuster that came after it - for better or worse. It's stuffed full of mythical themes, loveable characters, bizzare aliens, awesome spaceship dogfights, laser guns, liberal amounts of humour, action and drama. The chemistry between the leads is lightning-in-a-bottle stuff, and all are great individually as well.

Some of the dialogue's pretty clunky, but you kinda get used to that.

Empire may have surpassed it, but only because it had this as its launching pad. It was unencumbered by the need to establish the world, so was free to expand the story and characters. Considering what this movie has to do, and how little time it has to do it between dazzling set pieces, it's a great achievement.

It does show the odd crack, though, technically speaking. They were making do, inventing stuff as they went, rather than having existing effects technology at hand, as is the case nowadays. Lucas infamously attempted to 'fix' some of these issues with the 1997 special edition, succeeding in some places, failing in others, and making certain unnecessary amendments that only messed up the original film - Jabba, Greedo, etc. But if you look past those, it's still a spectacular piece of bubblegum cinema.