Review of Star Wars (1977) by Trevor P — 17 Nov 2016

The wonderfully epic opening menu crawl has become the most iconic way to start a movie, and for good reason: when pasted in front of the brilliant view of a galactic star field with a heroic musical anthem by John Williams, we feel more than just a part of this space serial, it appears as if this universe coexists with our own.

You don't always hear of a folklore told over and over in our modern day and age, but now the settings and extraterrestrial inhabitants, particularly the old wise mentor portrayed by Alec Guinness (The Bridge on the River Kwai, Lawrence of Arabia), evoke the calm feel of an old fable under a new identity in the limitless bounds of outer space. It is both a tribute to tales as old as time as well as a social critique on the fault of machines. A significant level of focus in this story is placed onto the droids, C-3PO and R2-D2, and how the strife of nuclear war affects their productivity, much like what America saw of the Cold War.

...Which makes this picture all the more spectacular: it compares and contrasts cultural reliance on faith versus technology in an innocent yet playful approach for children to not only understand, but commit their whole selves to. Teenagers will enjoy the richness of the main cast of players, including the underdog farm boy Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and the self-entitled smuggler Han Solo (Harrison Ford). Then finally, adults will enjoy Star Wars for its loving tribute to classic Hollywood genres of their time, including low-key westerns of the 1930s and big-scale epics of the 1950s.