Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

It has cardboard models and visual effects made on a shoestring, but this episode is far more impressive than episodes I and II, which are packed with digital effects. This is not nostalgia on my part, but the fact that Lucas has forgotten how to make a good film. If it's true that he wants to cut newly shot scenes with Natalie Portman into the original episodes (nothing against her otherwise), Lucas is done for good. That would be a crime against a legend. (04/13/2003)

Although it is not as strong as when I first saw "Star Wars," still it fits so beautifully. This is simply a masterpiece of sci-fi in the sense of how Lucas was able to create such a rich universe with this one film, not to mention the other movies. Right from the beginning, his intention is to immerse you in something big, and he succeeds. (03/22/2015)

To some extent, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg shared the ambition to revive old genres for the audiences of a new era. Whereas Spielberg turned those genres on their head (fascination with aliens instead of fear of them), however, Lucas strived to create new variations that would fill contemporary audiences with the same or even more intense wonder and fascination as the old works did for him when he was a boy. Lucas’s updating of old, naïve sci-fi adventure movies like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers resulted in a pure-blooded space opera in which extensive political wrangling is merely a backdrop for a fantastically heroic story set in space. The naïve tale of a young hero who ventures out into the world to rescue a princess stands primarily on the engagingly colourful world of a galaxy far, far away and adventurous escapades – in other words, the same elements with which Lucas’s influences fascinated their audiences. Compared to those earlier films’ naïve special effects, however, Star Wars prides itself on eliciting amazement with revolutionary tricks. That may be one of the reasons that, with the advent of CGI, Lucas painstakingly and repeatedly refined the original trilogy, which, however, nullified the image of Star Wars as a milestone in the historical development of special effects and cinematography. Much gratitude and appreciation thus go to Harmy’s Despecialized Edition, which allows us to again marvel at the original form of all three episodes and appreciate the tremendous leaps in development between the individual instalments. (10/11/2015)

A film that needs no reviews. As an introduction, it doesn't reach the dramatic heights of the following two episodes, and some elements are bound to feel a little dated, but it's still an exemplary definition of a legend in that fickle and demanding art called cinema. What's more, I feel that the more you watch it, the more the characters and the unique mythology grow on you, so maybe next time it will be worth five stars. (12/24/2015)

There are few films that I can say without exaggeration that I know by heart, including their soundtracks. This is one of them, and even though I know it so well that I just can't find anything new in it anymore, I still enjoy watching it. Again and again. It's a beautiful space fairytale (I wouldn't really use the term sci-fi - at least not until someone invents the lightsaber) with a great atmosphere, for everyone, big and small, with likable actors, revolutionary special effects, and a bombastic John Williams, without whom it would all be half-hearted at best. That's what films are for, to take the audience to fantastic places they will never get to themselves. (01/02/2016)