Star Wars

A space adventure. There is an empire and a rebellion against it. Stolen plans are hidden inside a robot and the robot comes down on a desert planet. Luke lives on a farm. He buys the robot, finds the message inside it, and goes to an old man living out in the desert. From there the film is a journey. A port town, a smuggler, a ship, a station and finally an attack. What the narrative is interested in is not science but fable: the technology is never explained, the ships are worn and dirty, and the plot is taken directly from old adventure serials and from epic structure. The evil is gathered into a single image. A black figure, a mechanical breath and a walk that never changes. A separate company had to be founded for the visual effects, because no existing place could produce the shots. That company later became the centre of the industry. The first cut did not work. The editors started again; the aerial battle was recut using footage from real war documentaries as a model, and only then did the film find its pace. The studio did not believe in it. The director gave up his fee in exchange for sequel and merchandising rights, and that became one of the most profitable contracts in the history of cinema. It opened on a small number of screens and spread quickly because of the queues. It won six Academy Awards. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Alec Guinness and Peter Cushing are in the cast. The music is by John Williams. George Lucas wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who wants to see where the genre came from. Who it is not for: anyone looking for depth; the characters are simple and the dialogue is wooden in places.