From the Vaults: Star Wars at Thirty

Since The Empire Strikes Back turns thirty this year, let's hop into they Way Back Machine for 2007's celebration of A New Hope:

For some people, 1977 is a long, long time ago, and for all intents and purposes, to them, May 25^th might as well be a galaxy far, far away from the world they're used to. After all, there were no cellular phones, very few personal computers, and only the earliest inklings of the internet. What there was, however, was a film that would change the face of cinema; a film that took the name blockbuster away from Jaws and blew it out of this world. On May 25^th, 1977, Star Wars was unleashed on the world, and thirty years later, we're still living in its wake.

Star Wars did not arrive without precedent, of course; by the mid-1970's people were beginning to grapple with what Stanley Kubrick accomplished in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and science fiction was slowly taking hold of the Cineplex again. But it nearly didn't happen for Star Wars; when George Lucas, fresh off the unexpected success of American Graffiti, pitched his space epic, no studio was interested in it. A tentative 20^th Century Fox agreed to distribute it, but their flirtation with science fiction, The Planet of the Apes, had ended with both diminished reviews and box office in 1973's Battle for the Planet of the Apes. Little did they know that Lucas's space epic, a love letter to Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials would become a franchise spanning four decades and enter the collective consciousness moviegoers everywhere.

But first the movie had to be completed, and Lucas, his cast, and his crew faced a myriad of nearly disastrous events. Persistent windstorms interrupted shooting in Tunisia; Alec Guinness opposed being killed off until he could be convinced Obi-Wan Kenobi was more than a glorified cameo, British Film Union workers who refused to work during tea breaks, and a remote controlled robot that almost never worked. And yet somehow, despite it all, a cast of young American actors and seasoned British veterans brought a script full of technical jargon and spiritual mumbo jumbo and turned it into and exuberant slice of serial cinema.

A New Hope (there was no Episode IV until the re-release) may be corny, filled with lines like "Once I was the learner. Now I am the Master!" "Only a Master of Evil, Darth" and "I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board", but the cast delivers it without a trace of irony. Mark Hamill as young Luke Skywalker, amazed by everything around him; Harrison Ford, the rouge-ish Han Solo who can't be trusted, or can he? Carrie Fisher as the headstrong Princess Leia, who only needs someone to open her cell door; she'll take it from there. R2D2 and C3PO, the bickering droids that set the plot into motion, and Alec Guinness (genuine class indeed), an Obi-Wan Kenobi that makes that whole "force" business sound so mystical. Throw in James Earl Jones and David Prowse's combined talents as the nefarious Darth Vader, and why not add Peter Cushing as the delightfully slimy Grand Moff Tarkin to pilot the Death Star.

And of course, who can forget the creatures? What's a dashing rogue without his trusty sidekick? How about a seven foot sidekick covered with hair that communicates by growling? Chewbacca the Wookie should, by all rights, be the laughing stock of a film that talks seriously about light sabers, Death Stars, and diminutive creatures named Jawas that steal robots and sell them. Are you kidding me?

But Star Wars makes it work. Somehow, the combined efforts of the cast, Lucas, and the fledgling team of effects artists that would become Industrial Light and Magic, the film doesn't feel like cardboard sets and wobbly laser guns. Quite the opposite; Star Wars feels like dropping in on a world that's lived in, a world that's dirty and full of people trying to make their way. It doesn't hurt that Lucas borrowed liberally from the archetypes of just about every mythology out there, but what Star Wars does that science fiction and fantasy struggle with to this day is giving the audience an entry point without overwhelming them. Much of the film is spent in closed quarters with groups of four or five people, and the first half hour after the epic beginning (who can forget the first time they saw the Star Destroyer flying overhead. It kept going, and going, and going…) we spend exclusively with R2D2 and C3PO, who don't behave at all like Robby the Robot or any droid we're accustomed to; they bicker like we do, get lost, and find themselves in the hands of Luke Skywalker quite by accident.

And then there's the special effects work; as shows like Doctor Who and the Twilight Zone know, good writing and acting can be totally undone by a bad looking effect, so it's important that Lucas and ILM learned from Kubrick's example and keep things from looking fake. Some of the tricks they pulled to create the X-Wing attack on the Death Star were at the time unprecedented, at least to the degree of camera mobility and model work. And the aliens were lit in such a way that the seams weren't visible and no one looked like a rubber mask, even in the cantina sequence where masks were partially unfinished.

Star Wars worked because of that rare combination of intangibles, and because Lucas was a canny businessman. Cross promotion and marketing for films was nothing new in 1977, but the extent to which he took it was. Toys, games, books, records, drink glasses, merchandise tie-ins with major department stores and clothing lines. The deal with Kenner alone took awareness of the film to a new level, bringing anticipation for Star Wars to a fever pitch, and on May 25^th, 1977, the phenomenon came to the big screen. People went to see it, came out and got back in line. Kids, adults, their friends, their families, everyone went to see Star Wars over and over. Steven Spielberg's Jaws coined the term "blockbuster", but it had nothing on the adventures of Luke Skywalker.

Over the next thirty years, there would be five more Star Wars films, countless books, and no less than six small screen excursions into the galaxy far, far away. There is scarcely a person on Earth who doesn't know what a Jedi is, and hundreds of fan films, scripts, and blogs are produced every year. People may bicker about the relative merits of the two trilogies, the direction of their commercialization, or the future of Star Wars, but the truth is that without George Lucas, studios would be much less likely to invest money in films like Alien, The Lord of the Rings, The Terminator, Harry Potter, The Matrix, and any host of other science fiction and fantasy films being made today. Without the birth of ILM, Pixar wouldn't exist (it was sold to Disney in the early 90's), and it is unlikely that, without the success of Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and The Empire Strikes Back, Lucas and Spielberg would have carte blanche to make Raiders of the Lost Ark, taking the blockbuster to entirely new levels.

Directors like James Cameron and Peter Jackson have spoken of watching Star Wars and realizing the potential to make the kinds of films they always wanted to was possible. It seems like hyperbole, in particular because of the hotly contested reaction to Lucas's return to Star Wars, first with the special editions and then with the prequels, but Star Wars did make a considerable impact on the way movies are made and the way audiences watch them, for better or for worse.

Thirty years later, people like Kevin Smith still write about "the Trilogy" in their films, and no less than two movies are awaiting release that deal directly with the experience of seeing Star Wars, not to mention the temptation to compare the Pirates of the Caribbean films to the space "epics". As canny as Lucas is, it is difficult to fathom that even thirty years ago he could have predicted the impact his little movie would have on generations to come.

Still don't believe me? Watch The Simpsons, or Saturday Night Live. Even shows like Friends mentioned Star Wars. Star Wars pops up on news networks, ESPN, on the radio, and in print just about every day. It's everywhere, and there's no sign it won't be around in another thirty years.

Happy Birthday, Star Wars. You don't look a day over 29.

Thoughts from 2010: There are so many mitigating factors I could add to improve this essay: the licensing of Planet of the Apes Merchandise (paving the way for that Kenner license), the real impact of Jaws on summer entertainment, the many hands and voices other than George Lucas that deserve just as much credit for A New Hope, the list goes on and on. I don't have enough time to get into it, but understand that I realize this essay has a lot of holes in it that could be fixed, so don't rip me too badly in the comments.