Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope Review
We’re a couple months out from getting the first Star Wars movie in seven years with The Mandalorian & Grogu. That means I’m going back through all of the past Star Wars movies and reviewing them. So today I’m going to be talking about the original film, Star Wars. How is this movie? How does it hold up nearly 50 years later? Let’s talk about it!
The Good
Right out of the gate, the thing I think is most important to talk about with this film is that it was a very refreshing watch. What I mean by that is after years of mediocre Disney Star Wars content on Disney+, going back and watching this film and seeing George Lucas’ vision for this film was very refreshing. Everything about this movie feels like something totally different from what Disney has been giving us with Star Wars over the last several years. Small little details from the sounds of blasters or ships flying feels different and more classical than what we’ve been getting recently. It reminded me that Star Wars is a great franchise, there’s a lot in this franchise to criticize, but when Star Wars hits it’s really good and it’s simply fantastic. George Lucas has a lot of problems as a director, we’ll talk about when we get to the prequels but what he crafted with A New Hope was something special and redefined popular culture for nearly 50 years now. There’s so many reasons why that I think nearly 50 years later A New Hope is still a great movie.
The first reason for that is that it helped define what a blockbuster was. Between this movie and Jaws, the term “blockbuster” emerged and became this word that everybody has used to describe big budgeted movies. Because these two movies were massive hits, they’re the examples that we use to describe big budgeted movies. Part of that is because this film moved at a pace that had never really been seen before. As I said earlier, I haven’t watched this movie in a number of years and I sort of forgot just how quickly this movie moves. We start off and C-3PO and R2-D2 are trying to get off the ship with Princess Leia trying to deliver a message while this is happening there’s Darth Vader and Stormtrooper boarding the ship. Right out of the gate, it starts fast paced with this exciting sequence that establishes the conflict, the characters, and the tone all so well. One thing that worked about this sequence is you reinterpreted that opening sequence after watching Andor and Rogue One and you know all of the stakes that went into getting those plans where they needed to be. From there we get a little bit of dialogue resetting things where Luke is introduced, there’s fights with the Sand people. We had Katina that introduces Han Solo so we got some comedy into the mix, that leads to a shoot out and then we’re on the Death Star for 20-30 minutes. Then we have our big final showdown with the Death Star being destroyed. It keeps up this pace from beginning to end and it doesn’t let you go. We’ll talk about this later on, but the film has a lot of character arcs and depth into the mix while also keeping this sense of fun and forward momentum.
The other thing it does so well is the world building and crafting out a world that you want to explore more of. I think some of the spinoffs that Disney has done haven’t been great or the best executed, but I was excited for them because it was more time exploring parts of the world that we’ve never seen before. So much of that goes back to this film and George Lucas crafting this world that’s massive in scale that has so much that you want to explore. Even characters like Darth Vader who shows up and is immediately so intimidating and threatening. Since he’s a scary guy with a weird choice, asthma, and a big scary costume you want to know more about him. We understand that there’s somebody above Vader and Tarkin, The Emperor that we learn more about as the trilogy and franchise goes along. When we meet Obi-Wan Kenobi there’s lines of dialogue hinting at the history and his backstory that lead to the fallout of the Jedi and Vader’s turn to the dark side. There is a lot of exposition in the movie but it’s all done for world building and making the audience invested in this world. When some movies do large amounts of exposition it can normally ruin a movie and make it feel overly long, that’s not the case with this film.
The other thing you have to talk about with this movie are the characters, specifically Luke Skywalker. What I love about Luke Skywalker is that he’s your very traditional hero. He’s given a classic hero's journey character arc of going from a farm boy on a boring planet to becoming the guy that saves the day by the end of the movie. Of course his arc is continued on throughout the trilogy. The Empire Strikes Back is more where Luke’s Jedi origin story happens which leads to him being a fully formed Jedi in Return of the Jedi and beyond. In a lot of ways I feel he’s the guy all other heroes are compared to. A character doesn’t need a super complex character arc to be great and interesting, sometimes the simplest ones are the best ones. The other one to talk about here is of course Han Solo, the role that launched Harrison Ford to stardom and I forgot that Han Solo is actually given a pretty great character arc in this film. He’s introduced and he’s this selfish guy that doesn't really want to help but is forced into helping and by the end delivers one of the best “here comes the Calvary” moments in cinematic history. You see (or hear) the dialogue between Luke and Han before the final battle and after the final battle and there’s so much change in there and you see Han’s growth and it’s a really powerful character arc. Of course, Darth Vader is one of cinema’s great villains as soon as he’s introduced and has this intimidating screen presence, voiced to perfection by the legendary James Earl Jones. Princess Leia is one of the best female movie characters of all time, she’s a strong character that’s a hero and fights back against people throughout the film. The chemistry between Carrie Fisher and Harrison Ford I think is fantastic.
As it is a Star Wars movie you have to talk about the score and like all of John Williams’ scores, this is fantastic. His run in the ‘70s with this film, Jaws, and Superman the Movie is one of the greatest film runs of all time. John Williams’ scores have the ability to just elevate everything and suck you into this world. The score starts in the opening seconds of the film when we get the title card followed up the opening crawl. It makes the film feel so grand and epic. He did that with this film as well as with Superman the Movie when it does the opening credits. Both movies’ scores and opening credits makes the film come alive in a way that no other composer is able to do on quite this level. Every scene has a score that pops and feels larger than life. The scene of Luke standing at the two suns and you get that music plays it just swells the emotions in such a big way.
Finally, one of the emotions that I had while and after watching this movie was that I just felt sad how much the movie industry has changed over the years. I talked about earlier that Star Wars isn’t in a good place, there’s a lot of problems with Star Wars and how Kathleen Kennedy and Disney is running it. But there’s been a lot of conversations recently about the lack of original movies and you watch this movie and realize that Star Wars was once an original idea and you watch this movie and realize just how much you miss original blockbusters and that the decades of the past were truly something special for cinema. Also watching this film I was happy because this is one of the greatest movies ever made.
The Bad
Given that I think this is one of the greatest movies ever made, I don’t have too many issues with this film. First up, given that the film is almost 50 years old and was made for $11 million which in 2025 is equal to about $55 million, there’s some effects that haven’t aged the best. The space battles while they are exciting and thrilling and for the time were groundbreaking, watching them in 2025 there’s elements that feel dated but that’s part of watching a movie that’s nearly 50 years old.
Also, while Luke Skywalker is a great character, Mark Hamill’s performance in this movie isn’t great. He’s not terrible in the movie but I feel like everybody else in the movie gives a much better performance and when the lead of your movie is the weak point, that’s a bit of a problem. George Lucas is infamous for not being an actor's director. People criticize Hayden Christensen in the prequels, especially Attack of the Clones. For whatever reason the performances by our Skywalkers in the Star Wars films aren’t great. There’s dialogue of Luke complaining with Uncle Owen when he’s introduced. That’s not great, it’s very whiny and it’s distracting. Especially when several scenes are him up against Harrison Ford, one of the most charismatic and biggest movie stars of the last 50 years.
Final Thoughts: A New Hope is of course one of the greatest blockbusters of all time that started a very successful franchise. Nearly 50 years later it holds up really well and has so much in there that’s become a part of the popular culture from the scenes, to the characters, the music, and so much more. Rewatching good Star Wars movies was so refreshing and reminded me why Star Wars is (or once was) a great franchise.
The Score: 9.3/10 (A)
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