Would have been more ... ironic if this was #77, but either way, it's The One that started it all.
I haven't seen the original Star Wars movie since 2015, and not on television. I remember being impressed by how cheesy but yet not totally outdated it looked. The consistency. Nothing really looks like it shouldn't belong. The wonder of practical effects.I fell in love the moment I saw Mos Eisley. Like, look at ALL of that!
Though this is (obviously) the edit with some weird shots of CG animals and the absolutely awful jerky-shoulder movement with Han vs. Greedo and a very strange looking Jabba.
I don't remember how C3-PO ended up on Leia's ship right now. Something must allude to that in some of the Disney-Era materials, I imagine. Though the book Leia: Princess of Alderaan matches up neatly to the beginning of this movie.
Also, one of the most iconic scenes in Star Wars now stars dead people 😔 Godspeed, Kenny Baker and Carrie Fisher.
I like how we're immediately thrown into something with maybe a minute's worth of text.
This shit would not fly today, even Valerian had a two minute sequence of meeting aliens that spelled everything out.
Seeing the Binary Sunset sequence on a TV screen was something beautiful to behold.
The production design just amazes me every time. Leia has this odd Faux-British accent for a few sentences that I had forgotten about. It's hard to listen to.
Looking at Harrison Ford's Han Solo, I can actually see how they picked Alden Eherenreich to be "young" Han Solo for the standalone film. I still have no interest in it.
It still feels like this movie is just one big rising action piece, even if it was 100% intended to be a standalone picture, but I'm okay with that. The only part that feels like a real culmination of the 'story mountain' or whatever is the Darkest Hour with Kenobi's death.
People lauded Luke's interpretation in The Last Jedi as being too grumpy and upset but he sniped a lot in this movie? He called Han out on his shit when he went to abandon the rebellion. He was never a uwuwuwu softboy or whatever it is that the kids say.
Truth be told, out of the three trios of Star Wars, the OT was always my least favorite. I didn't like Han, and Leia and Luke are okay, though rewatching this entire movie did improve them all a bit in my eyes.
The jury is still out on the Sequel Trio - I like the characters, but I gotta wait to see how it concludes, and The Last Jedi, for all the good it did with reminding these idiots that the Force is not and was never Skywalker-exclusive, mischaracterized Poe...a lot. Also Amilyn, but that's another rant for another review.
For all it's problems, I love the idea of the Prequel trilogy. Yes, Star Wars is about space fights and simplistic good vs. evil and not politics, and I have no problem with Star Wars politics being left to books or side material.
But I love young Obi-Wan, I love Anakin, and, as anyone I know will tell you, Padme Amidala is my favorite Star Wars character.
Back to A New Hope, the flying sequences when the Death Star is being attacked is miraculous. You know it's all a soundstage, but it's really.....cool. Believable. A lot of atmospheric noises and little to no score.
All in all, it's Star Wars. I like this movie more for what it started than what it is, but that doesn't mean I don't like a whole lot.
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