Day 34: Star Wars (1977)

Movie #14 – Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977) - 121 min, cert U.

Luke Skywalker escapes from his dull life helping out on his stepfather’s farm, and goes with old man Ben Kenobi to join the rebellion against the powerful Galactic Empire. They find C-3PO and R2D2, a couple of robots, inside which are hidden the blueprints for an enormous space station which has the capacity to destroy the rebels for good. They escape from Luke’s home planet with the help of devil-may-care pilot, Han Solo, and his co-pilot Chewbacca, a seven-foot tall apeman. Along the way they battle the forces of the Empire and rescue a princess, before their final assault on dreaded Death Star.

I love this film, and I will always consider the best of the series. I saw it at the cinema as a young lad when it first came out, and I can’t help but see it through those same eyes today. It may be set in the world of science fiction, but it’s essentially no different to any swashbuckler set on the high seas. It’s an epic action/adventure movie, quite possibly the original epic action/adventure movie. In much the same way as yesterday’s Seven Samurai did, it broke the mould, and paved the way for countless films that came along later. It’s easy to forget, watching it now, just how different it was in 1977 to anything that had come before it.

I don’t want to go on about this film as because pretty much everyone has seen it. So I’ll give it 9/10, which puts it at number 6 in my top ten.

1.       The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)

2.       Pulp Fiction (1994)

3.       The Shawshank Redemption (1994)

4.       Schindler’s List (1993)

5.       Inception (2010)

6.       Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope (1977)

7.       The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

8.      12 Angry Men (1957)

9.       The Godfather (1972)

10.   The Dark Knight (2008)

Next up is Fight Club. I have it on DVD and I love it.