If you remember Saturday evening, then you remember that it was raining pretty hard. No worries, the wife and I went through our usual drive-in preparation process and got ready to go. While she ate her dinner, I kind of drifted away in my evil recliner. It is evil because it can cast a sleep spell on me at a moment’s notice.
The next thing I know, it is 2 a.m. and everyone has gone to bed. So, this week we will do a classic movie review and get back to the first-run drive-in reviews next week. Besides, I have been hankering to do this classic review for a while.

In order to properly review Star Wars Episode IV – A New Hope, you would had to have been there on opening night. It was May 1977 and the Lockport Mall was buzzing with this new movie that was supposed to change everything. Even the pet store across the mall from the theaters had a sign in the window that said “Jawas for sale.” All I could think was; “What’s a Jawa?”

The movie opens without credits, which right away was weird. George Lucas insisted that the credits come at the end of the movie, which the Screen Writer’s Guild and several other Hollywood institutions would not allow. That is what initially caused Lucas to break away from Hollywood and do things his own way.

That first scene was epic and will stay with me forever. This little space ship comes into view and is being shot at by something behind it. When the Imperial ship came into view and just kept going and going, every person in that audience was in awe. It was like riding a wild roller coaster for the first time and not having words to express what you were feeling. Even the sound was different because it seemed to be coming at us from all over the place. Seeing that opening scene for the first time in a theater on the opening day of Episode IV is a movie-going experience I will never forget.

The first three Star Wars movies were all innovative and groundbreaking for various reasons. I remember the big deal made about Return of the Jedi when it was announced that we would finally get to see light sabres in the daylight. Back then, it was a big deal.

For all of its shortcomings, the Star Wars franchise excels at getting us immediately involved in its world. We immediately believe that there are Jedi knights and we are instantly terrified of Darth Vader. One of the biggest mistakes Lucas made, in my opinion, was humanizing Darth Vader by making him anyone’s father. That did to Vader what The Osbournes reality show did for Ozzy Osbourne’s reputation as a prince of darkness. It shattered that illusion.

The special effects in A New Hope were, for the time, absolutely amazing. Everything from the land speeders to the Death Star looked so real. That is one of the reasons why so many kids my age instantly fell in love with Star Wars. We couldn’t see the wires holding up the ships and we couldn’t tell if the Death Star was a picture matted onto a star field background or a real space station. It all looked so real. To us, it was real.

The action in A New Hope was fast-paced and well-written. Everything followed a logical sequence and it was easy to follow the movie from one scene to the next. The space battles and the escape from the Death Star were so well done that it has the continuity of a good John Wayne western. We fell for A New Hope because the effects were spectacular and the story was just so well done. But then, there was the dialogue.

Even though I was but a punk-nosed little kid, I knew that the dialogue in A New Hope was awful. There were honestly moments when I was watching the film for the first time that I wanted the characters to stop talking and just go into another TIE fighter dog fight. I could never understand why George Lucas did not hire someone to help him with the dialogue. I always felt that better dialogue would have made the movie almost perfect. But, then again, bad dialogue is one of those charms of the first three Star Wars movies that made them almost irresistible.

When Star Wars came out, my family did not own a VCR or any other kind of home entertainment device. Despite that, I lost count after the 75th time I saw the film on its first run. After that, I followed it to the Transit Drive-in and could never get enough of it. I still can’t. As a Trekkie, I find it almost incomprehensible that Star Wars is such an alluring movie – but yet, it is.

Over the years, Lucas killed the magic by adding in digital effects and scenes he said he wanted in the original cut but could not include them. That is the one reason why I stayed a Trekkie and never fully devoted myself to Star Wars – George Lucas could never appreciate his own magic.

The original A New Hope could still stand up today against any science fiction movie being released. It is a classic and it was a turning point in the history of movie making. It is also a movie you must see whenever it plays at the drive-in.

Live long and prosper, Obi Wan.

Rating: 4 ½ out of 5

George N Root III is a movie fanatic and has been so his whole life. He publishes a weekly review and hopes to inspire others to check out at least one movie at the drive-in this summer.

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