Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

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)

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)

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)

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)

For me, this instalment of the Star Wars is the one I watched the most. I watched it over and over again as a child and I was always satisfied. The story was so unique that it filled my free time for many micro decades of time. And it will probably still entertain me for some time. The first, respectively the fourth episode, has a pretty simple story as it introduces the world and the characters in it. You either fall in love with it, or you should not even watch the other instalments. (05/11/2015)