Star Wars - The Original Trilogy

The original Star Wars films, that began in 1977, were among my favourite films growing up and were highly influential on so many of us, as well as Hollywood. Drawing influences from samurai films, westerns and World War 2 action adventures from the decades before, the sci-fi fantasy was the perfect blend and became a huge success. Having finished Disney's latest trilogy and TV series, The Mandalorian, I wanted to now look back to where it all began for George Lucas and see how the original films hold-up today.

With what is now subtitled 'A New Hope', I was really excited to go back to an age of filmmaking before CGI and where filmmakers had to find creative solutions to tell their ambitious stories. Unfortunately I was stuck with the "updated" trilogy where Lucas made a number of controversial tweaks to the film from Han's shootout with Greedo to Mos Eisely's CGI infested streets that are ridiculous to say the least but looking past all that the core of the film still holds-up. Excusing the updated visuals, the original aspects of the film still look great to this day.

The story of a farmboy plucked from his humble environment and thrusted into a galactic conflict works perfectly because of its talented cast, a wisely paced screenplay and Lucas' focused direction. Behind the scenes, it sounded like this film could have been a disaster and it was problematic enough to want to make Lucas find another director for the sequel but on the surface is a simply told sci-fi adventure that moves from scene to scene soundly that will still delight fans, and attract newcomers.

The sequel, The Empire Strikes Back, from 1980 saw Lucas bring onboard veteran director Irvin Kershner take the series to new heights as he upped the ante; the scope was bigger and the danger higher while not forgetting the characters at the centre of it all. This was a personal favourite and thankfully age has not dulled this adventure. It's the pinnacle of what the series has aimed to achieve ever since and not even Lucas' digital updates dented this experience.

I've followed quite a few sequels on this blog and only a few really match-up to the original but this goes beyond that. Why? It's hard to summarise what so many others have said but I'll put it down to the stakes established at the beginning which creates a sense of tension that runs throughout, as we meet Yoda and Lando, until the iconic duel between Luke and Darth Vader where the film culminates. The perfect sequel, this is.

Return of the Jedi saw the end of the trilogy in 1983 following the dramatic reveal of Darth Vader's identity and Luke's attempt to save him from the Emperor. Directed by Richard Marquand, who died a few years later and hadn't made anything quite on this scale before, I think it's fair to say the third film sees a change in tone. I was worried going into this as I could recall not liking the dodgy CGI updates even when I was very young and they don't do the film any good to say the least. Nonetheless, ROTJ starts strong and I was back in this feeling excited to return to a film I hadn't seen in years but then we come to the Ewoks...

I was too young to be annoyed by them before but now I really can't stand this marketing ploy to create more toys. They take away valuable screen time (I never noticed Luke and Lando never exchange lines until now) and just bring the film to an irritable standstill. Thankfully, Han Solo shows some frustration to them but it's a shame this chunk of the film comes before the final act as the story gears-up to its conclusion. Everything else is a lot of fun to watch, even if the story ends a bit too abruptly for my liking, but of the three it's the one I'm less likely to return to.

And that was Star Wars in the best nutshell I could do without going too heavily into all of the details. Old fans will enjoy rewatching for the hidden references to the Star Wars lore and new fans shouldn't find this to have aged too badly to get into. I've really enjoyed coming back to this and even though it's not perfect, it's still a hell of a lot of fun to revisit that deserves the label of being a timeless classic.