More Star Wars Reviews.
Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Cast: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, David Prowse, James Earl Jones
Runtime: 121 mins.
1977
It is physically, emotionally, and spiritually impossible for me to be objective about Star Wars. In fact, nobody can come to this movie without baggage anymore, whether it be I have seen this 50 times or I have been chastised my entire life for never having seen it. For my part, I cannot remember a time when the original trilogy was not already ground into the fibers of my being. Star Wars isn't my personal favorite or most beloved franchise, but it is one of the franchises that I dipped into over and over and over again as a child.
Coming at the film for the purposes of a review was a tricky exercise that involved a lot of hopping around trying to find the right angle of inquiry, rather than just letting the movie slide comfortably through familiar patterns already etched in my brain. To see Star Wars with fresh eyes is to force the perspective that this is a weird and cheesy sci-fi movie from the '70s, a movie that would have been good no matter what, but could easily have gone the way of The Last Starfighter: a cult classic with good and bad elements that never quite sparked a cultural brushfire. We are all living in the wake of the unparalleled Star Wars cultural brushfire, and peering beyond the flames is difficult.
