Star Wars: An Intergalactic Joyride Essay, Research Paper

Star Wars: An Intergalactic Joyride

“Star Wars” is the highest grossing movie of all time. It is also one of

my favorites. It was released in May 1977 and re-released in a restored and

enhanced Special Edition just last month. There are many different criteria that

can be used to describe ?Star Wars’ appeal. Gary Arnold and Edward Rothstein,

two movie critics who had the opportunity to review this great movie, explain

its appeal in very much the same way. There is a difference though. Arnold

reviewed the original ?Star Wars’ twenty years ago and Rothstein reviewed the

recent Special Edition. While they reviewed slightly different versions, they

both came to the conclusion that Star Wars is a great movie based on similar

criteria. They judged ?Star Wars’ on its ability to draw on classic styles and

timeless stories to create something new and absolutely original.

The main factor in both of their positive reviews is the skill of writer

and director George Lucas to blend the old with the new. They were both

impressed with his miraculously fresh configuration of many different themes

from classic film and mythic origin into a cohesive and entertaining movie. He

has achieved a witty and exhilarating synthesis of themes and cliches from the

Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comics and serials, plus such related but less

expected sources as the western, the pirate melodrama, the aerial combat

melodrama and the samurai epic. The movie’s irresistible stylistic charm

derives from the fact that Lucas can draw upon a variety of action-movie

sources with unfailing deftness and humor. He is in superlative command of his

own movie-nurtured fantasy life. Gary Arnold, Washington Post Staff Writer

Mr. Rothstein along the same lines as Mr. Arnold, mentions that ?the plot line

of Star Wars follows the mythic archetechture outlined by Joseph Campbell in his

study of myth, “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” which has influenced Mr.

Lucas.’

Another aspect, unique to Rothstein’s review of the new Special Edition but

not quite different from Arnold’s assessment, is the way in which the movie

celebrates the past and not the future. This aspect of ?Star Wars’, Rothstein

says, is what ?screams out in opposition to the high-budget, high-tech, special-

effect spectaculars that it (Star Wars) spawned.’ This is where, Rothstein says,

that ?Star Wars’ gets its authenticity. The whimsical ramshackleness is actually

meant to be a sign of the heroes’ authenticity: what is older is more powerful…

technology, when it appears in ?Star Wars,’ is evil, ghastly, massive and

brutish…”advanced” invention is most evident in the space ships of the evil

Empire. Edward Rothstein, Movie Critic, New York Times

This “ramshakleness” that Rothstein speaks of keeps the movie afloat by not

sacrificing the story for special effects. The special effects complement the

movie, but do not carry it. This is where Rothstein says that so many recent

movies have failed. Arnold, unable to see into the future, was unable to

evaluate the movie in this way. He hadn’t the chance to see how badly Hollywood

would try to imitate ?Star Wars’, thinking its appeal lay more in its ?effects

and quick jolts, rather than from the mythic significance with which they were

injected.’

Hollywood never grasped fully the lesson taught by ?Star Wars’. Both

Rothstein and Arnold believe that this lesson is what makes ?Star Wars’ so great.

They used the same criteria (the convincing story, admirable characters, and

the writer/director Lucas’s skill as a storyteller) to come to a positive review

of the movie. Arnold summed it up in his closing “Lucas’ use of old time

conventions and stories add to the movie in such a way as to create the unique

and fresh fantasy world that is ?Star Wars’.”

Works Cited:

Arnold, Gary. “Star Wars: A Spectacular Intergalactic Joyride.”

The Washington Post. 25 May 1977.

Rothstein, Edward. “‘Star Wars’ Salutes a Brave Old World.”

The New York Times. 31 January 1997.