STAR WARS  (1977)  ****

Reviewed 5/18/99

With the impending arrival of the next Star Wars installment, The Phantom Menace, I saw the original again recently and decided to put down my thoughts on the film 22 years after its initial release.

Without doubt, among those Americans born after 1965, Star Wars is the most popular movie of all time. Star Wars also marked the end of a Golden Age of American filmmaking and helped to usher in the era of the Blockbuster. Mirroring Orson Welles' famous quote from The Third Man, the turmoil in the U.S. of the 1960s and 70s (the Vietnam War, Civil Rights movement, JFK assassination, and the Counterculture) brought about an unmatched period of inspired American filmmaking. Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Hal Ashby, Arthur Penn, Stanley Kubrick (even though he was in England), and Woody Allen all peaked during this time. George Lucas with Star Wars confirmed what Coppola had done with The Godfather and Spielberg with Jaws -- that a single film could amass astounding sums of money becoming an event in itself -- and Star Wars transcended them, becoming the ultimate merchandising machine. The trend carried throughout the 1980s and 90s as Hollywood budgets and marketing expenses exploded. Each movie had to be an event, omnipresent in all mediums. The studios maximized the number of merchandising tie-ins with their films. In this process to produce the biggest Hollywood blockbuster, these movies circumvented plot and character for pure spectacle, spectacle that supercedes thought. Thus, in the history of movies, Star Wars has been at once one of the most influential and one of the most derivative.  Of course Star Wars was only one of the many factors that contributed to this sea change in American cinema, but it contributed more than any other single film.

Aside from its cultural impact though, how good really is Star Wars as a movie? Well, Lucas' direction, while not astonishing, is efficient and the editing keeps a remarkable pace. Lucas' imagination was good enough that Star Wars has now supplied us with numerous iconic images -- the Star Destroyer of seemingly endless size that opens the movie, Luke Skywalker gazing upon Tatooine's twin sunset, the chase through the trenches of the Death Star. The movie also has a strong, disarming sense of humor.  On the other hand, the acting is barely passable and the dialogue is unredeemingly corny (Luke: "But I was going into Toshi Station to pick up some power converters"). I think, however, the real appeal of Star Wars comes from three things -- its creation of an incredibly detailed, expansive, and consistent fantasy world; its great special effects (at the time); and John Williams' sensational score.

Lucas displays a dazzling imagination in coming up with lightsabers, with jawas and their giant sandcrawlers, with Tusken Raiders and their banthas, with a robot that speaks in beeps and whistles; also the places with their colorful names -- Tatooine, Alderaan, Yavin -- and the spaceships -- the Millenium Falcon, Tie-Fighters, X-Wings. The intricacies of this imaginary universe are endless. No wonder it has spawned dozens of novels and comic books fleshing out thousands of years of Star Wars history. Of course, all this imagination is not limited to Lucas. The production design (headed by John Barry), the art direction, set decorators, and costume designers get equal credit.

The special effects further the sense of wonder and adds to our suspension of disbelief in this strange, yet familiar world. The F/X were eye-opening. Lucas, inspired by the incredible visuals of 2001: A Space Odyssey, went out and surpassed them. Space battles would never be the same.

Then there is John Williams' bombastic score. If ever a soundtrack enhanced a movie, this is it. With elements of Prokofiev, Stravinsky, and Copland, Williams created several themes, ala Wagner, and then proceeded to intertwine them. With a strong brass emphasis in the fanfares and lush use of strings in the more romantic themes, Williams sweeps the listener away, overwhelming thought. The last vestige of Brechtian reflexivity that this period of American cinema inherited from the Jean-Luc Godard dissipated with the aural and visual experience that is Star Wars (though it would return with a hip yet untantilizing postmodern vengeance in the 1990s).

George Lucas has said that Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress is the inspiration for Star Wars, but the tone of that film is very different and the two films' similarities are marginal. The most direct influence is Lucas' derivation of C-3P0 and R2-D2 from the bunglers in Fortress. Lucas was much more affected by mythical archetypes (he cites Joseph Campbell's writing as a source) and the Saturday matinee serials of his youth. Because Star Wars is so archetypal in its characters and structure, it is not difficult to find its parallels in other movies and in literature. Luke Skywalker's most apparent literary predecessor is Taran the Assistant Pig-Keeper in Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series (1964-1968). Taran is an orphaned farm boy who yearns for adventure and gets it. In the first of the five books, "The Book of Three," Taran befriends a princess in Eilonwy (Leia), a sidekick in Gurgi (R2-D2 and C-3P0), a companion in Fflewddur (Han Solo), and a mentor in Gwydion (Obi-Wan). And by the final book, "The High King," Taran becomes the prophetic (and royal) figure who conquers the behind-the-scenes villain of the series, the evil Lord Arawn (the Emperor).

For all of Star Wars' fame and partly because of it, Star Wars is also one of the most criticized films. One of Star Wars' most pointed and I believe legitimate criticisms, involves the destruction of Alderaan and the Death Star. The only reaction to Alderaan's destruction really is Obi-Wan's getting heartburn. The death of millions or perhaps billions, the destruction of an entire civilization, has no effect on Luke or Han. Star Wars is a film for children, and the form that Star Wars' infantilism takes is mass denial. Even given that the Death Star would have wiped out the entire rebel base, it seems disingenuous for the rebels to celebrate Luke Skywalker for having just killed thousands of people (to which Luke seems oblivious). Of course, the deaths in Star Wars are bloodless or invisible, hidden by explosions of light and fire. Furthermore, the dying enemies are the faceless stormtroopers (Lucas' appropriation from the Third Reich along with the end that gives a nod to Triumph of the Will). Before the video game revolution, Star Wars established the ideal vision of death in video games (at least until Doom came along).

Another of the unspoken aspects of Star Wars is that droids are essentially slaves. Though machines, C-3P0 (strangely gay) and R2-D2 are sentient, free-willed entities, yet there is never any concern in the movies that they should be liberated. Their secondary status is exemplified in that "their kind" are not allowed in the cantina or escape pods. The slavery aspect is emphasized even more in Return of the Jedi where one droid is branded in Jabba's palace. This aspect of Star Wars is merely decorative.

Clearly, Star Wars does not handle a reading of its subtext too well. Star Wars is the most famous film in escapist cinema, and for that it is both loved and hated, and both perspectives garner merit.