My Star Wars Experience: Star Wars (1977)

 Hey everyone, as promised I'm back with my review of Star Wars from 1977. Again, this is going to be short and sweet, with only my personal thoughts and opinions on the movie. Plus I did all the history stuff in my previous post on the movie. Let's get into it.

A New Hope is probably my favourite Star Wars movie. I mean it works on its own, it works within the larger franchise, it just works. I think it's because when it was made, George Lucas just wanted to make an adventure film in the vein of the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers movie serials that kids and adults alike would enjoy. And it succeeded.

I remember the first time I saw this movie. It was on VHS in about late 1995 or early 1996. I was nine years old and the movie blew me away. I had been a Star Trek fan my whole life, and while the Star Trek movies were good, they were made with a TV show production mentality due to the fact that Paramount was so scared by how little Star Trek: The Motion Picture made at the box office that every subsequent Star Trek movie was produced with a more TV show budget mentality. So I'd never seen something like Star Wars before. So it blew my mind seeing the effects that the movie had, and this was me in the '90s, watching a movie that was made in the '70s. This was also a little over a year before The Special Edition came out too, so none of us had seen the updated special effects yet. 

While some of the special effects for the Special Edition, which haven't been updated through the Blu-ray and Disney+ eras, don't hold up quite as well, some have. For example, much of the CGI used for the Mos Eisley scenes don't hold up, but the updated effects for the Battle of Yavin at the end of the movie hold up extremely well. There are even some shots of the X-Wings and TIE Fighters that still look REALLY good for effects made in the '90s.

Storywise, the movie is simple, but in the '70s people were looking for an escape from the difficulties of life, and George Lucas was more than happy to give them such an escape. Things are different today, which is the reason I've taken on this monumental project of documenting every Star Wars thing I read and watch. I'm documenting the evolution of Star Wars as a franchise. 

That's going to be it for me for today. I'll be back next week for my next Star Wars review. Until then have a great weekend and I will talk to you all later. Take care.