listening to the soundtrack and again thinking about how Ep IV is the best SW film simply because it's an exceptional movie.
Dialogue tells you a lot about who people are (Leia, face to face with the scariest dude in the Empire, mouths off to him; Vader, told that the princess will die before telling him anything, basically says he's fine with it; Luke is excited to see people potentially more dangerous than sandpeople; Tarkin flat out admits that he's executing people for shock value; etc). The story starts with a bang, then steps back to do slower paced world building before you're really moving forward at top speed again.
I was thinking about how when he auditioned, Mark Hammill thought Luke was Han's young gee-whiz sidekick. But the movie doesn't downplay anyone other than making the droids McGuffins. Leia imprisoned is a heroine stalling her captors, rather than a princess to be rescued. Chewie establishes that he's badass in his own right early. Obi-Wan proves his competence tackling the tractor beam, and his voice in Luke's head fast-forwards Gandalf's death and resurrection, so he's not a throwaway character.
All of this really pushes the movie *as a movie*, even without all the other stuff (film-maker buoyed up by the stuff he thinks is cool; novelty of a lived in universe for sci fi; the way nothing else like it was out there in the mid 70s).
re: listening to the soundtrack and again thinking about how Ep IV is the best SW film simply because it's an exceptional movie.
@SkunkyLass I can see that. What started this off was talking about how Ep IV is really the only one of the series you really *need* to see, which got me thinking, why did it make such an impression on me?
listening to the soundtrack and again thinking about how Ep IV is the best SW film simply because it's an exceptional movie.
@Leucrotta i like many of the latter films, but sometimes I think that maybe I'd love Star Wars more if all we ever got was A New Hope. Just one miracle of a movie