STAR WARS

12.19.19

With the final Star Wars movie in The Skywalker Saga being right around the corner, let’s take a look back at where the franchise first began, 1977’s Star Wars! The film is written and directed by George Lucas, and stars Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, Peter Mayhew, Anthony Daniels, Kenny Baker, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, and James Earl Jones. Set a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, the evil Galactic Empire kidnaps Princess Leia, and it is up to Luke Skywalker to save her, getting himself involved in a bigger story than he could’ve ever imagined. 

I believe everything about this movie is honestly flawless. At the time when this movie came out, it exploded everywhere into pop culture, and essentially created the modern day blockbuster movie. It’s easy to remember pretty much every scene of the movie to this day, still holding up forty-two years after its release. Some iconic scenes include Luke staring at the twin suns on Tatooine, first meeting Han Solo at the Mos Eisley Cantina, the trash compactor scene, the trench run on the Death Star, Obi Wan giving Luke Anakin’s old lightsaber, and so much more. 

Luke Skywalker starts out the movie as an annoyed, immature, rude, but optimistic character who dreams of being thrusted into an adventure. Throughout the movie we see how his life is clearly changing, and while he loses people he does love and care for, he ultimately becomes the hero of the story, and starts his adventure that he has always dreamed of. 

While the movie obviously ended being a massive success, the production of the film was very challenging and had plenty of obstacles. For one, it seemed that no one during production didn’t have faith that the final product would be any good. George Lucas had to do many rewrites, props would constantly be broken, and there are actually fingerprint smudges on Darth Vader’s helmet throughout most of the movie. The film was saved during editing, as the editors had to rearrange the whole movie from start to finish, and take out scenes that didn’t flow with the narrative. 

This film will be forever timeless, and one of the true cinema classics. It’s now available to stream on Disney+ along with the other Star Wars movies. May the force be with you this holiday season! 

10/10