Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope Review

The screenplay is the weakest thing here and it barely matters. What Lucas got right was texture: a galaxy that looks secondhand, with sand in the droids, carbon scoring on the Falcon and machinery that fails at inconvenient moments. That single aesthetic decision separated the film from every chrome-and-tinfoil predecessor. The motion-control rig built at Industrial Light and Magic let the camera fly with the ships instead of past them, and the trench run remains a lesson in escalation, cut by Marcia Lucas, Paul Hirsch and Richard Chew into a countdown the audience can follow shot by shot.

John Williams's score, recorded with a full symphony orchestra at a moment when that was considered archaic, supplies the emotional grammar the dialogue cannot. Harrison Ford's timing rescues lines that read as unplayable on the page, and Alec Guinness lends the mysticism a straight face it badly needs. Structurally it is a straight line with no reversals. As pure delivery of myth, it is close to flawless.