Fellmans Movie Reviews

RED = SPOILERS:

An age old story. The powerful king. The young prince. A princess in danger. A kingdom in turmoil. Fiction writers have been milking this formula since you could put pen to paper. But what would happen if you added some magic powers and put them in space…? Well, you might just get the greatest story ever told. And that’s exactly what George Lucas did. He took a trope that everybody didn’t already know they knew and put it in a completely different setting. Added some lasers and elements of samurai to it, and you come up with “Star Wars”. The Shakespearean space saga with limitless potential because you can always add another planet…

What’s it about? Episode 4: A New Hope, the beginning of the original Star Wars trilogy, is about a young Luke Skywalker finding his way off the farm on Tatooine and learning the ways of the Force to become a Jedi like his father before him. He meets Obi-Wan Kenobi after being attacked by some Tuskan Raiders and eventually goes back to his house to find his aunt and uncle dead. They accidentally end up on the Death Star on their way to Alderaan, which had just recently been blown up. There, they find Princess Leia. And after sacrificing himself during a duel with Darth Vader, Obi-Wan helps the group escape the Death Star and make it back to the Rebel Alliance. The rebels find a weakness in the Death Star and manage to destroy the space station, saving the galaxy. 

What’s good? Star Wars takes the age-old trope of the young prince and the power-hungry king, mixes it with a splash of samurai, and puts it in space. There’s so many elements of great stories at the same time, it all comes together at once. The side characters, the motifs, the locations, the possibilities are literally endless. 

What’s bad? The timing was just off. It happened 30 years too early. If technology had been close to what it could have been when it was just coming out, imagine what the movies would have been. Sometimes things just don’t work out. The screen jumps when the lightsabers ignite and the doors open and close. The computers look like what “space-age” would have looked like in 1977 because it was 1977. There’s not really anything you can do about it. That’s just what happened in history… 

The effects? There are special edition dvds with added material like extra shots and CGI added monsters running around in the background and whatnot. The debate about Han shooting first started when they changed the movie to Han dodging Greedo and then shooting back. That wasn’t the way it originally happened. Han straight up murdered Greedo. That’s the way it was. But with the special edition, they made it look like Greedo shot first, and that started a debate. They didn’t need to do that.  

The acting? It was still the 70s, so people weren’t the greatest of actors back then. But everybody in the movie did a good job, I think. Except maybe Porkins. Porkins was selling it a little too much in the cockpit of his X-Wing. Most of the pilots were giving it a little too much, I think. But they were trying to act out an exploding spaceship. I mean, what can you do? 

Tarkin is the villain. Back when A New Hope came out, nobody knew who Darth Vader was. So, when Grand Moff Tarkin comes in with Vader walking behind him and starts leading the meeting and then commands Vader to release Admiral Motti from his Force Choke it absolutely looks like Tarkin is in control of Darth Vader. When in reality, Vader answers directly to the Emperor and the Emperor alone. He could’ve killed Admiral Motti with no repercussions whatsoever.  

Stormtroopers Suck. Clones were amazing at combat because they were directly created from Jango Fett and given combat training on Kamino. By the time A New Hope had come around, Stormtroopers were being recruited from all over the galaxy. Anybody who wanted to be a Stormtrooper, could. All you had to do was sign up. They were the most useless and easily replaceable stock unit that a gigantic military Empire could have… 

Obi-Wan went there to die. Obi-Wan had no intention of leaving the Death Star. He had already learned how to commune with Qui-Gon Jinn through the Force and was just watching over Luke until something like this happened because he knew he would be more powerful as a force ghost than as an old man. 

Chewy’s Medal. Chewy actually does get his medal, just not in the movie. It’s been a point of discontent for many years between Star Wars fans about Chewy not getting his medal. But according to some other sources, Chewy was awarded his medal after the Death Star was destroyed just like Han and Luke were. It’s just that Wookies don’t care about such things and he didn’t want to be in the ceremony. The medal that Maz Kanata gives Chewy at the end of The Rise of Skywalker belongs to Han Solo. Han had given it to her some time ago, and when she found out he had died, she figured Han would want Chewy to have it…

So, anyway, it’s old, it’s not the greatest of special effects, but it started the story of the greatest space saga in the history of cinema, and you should certainly see it. Star Wars Episode 4: A New Hope. And as always, May the Force Be With You…