Jeremy’s Tophunder №41: Star Wars: A New Hope

7 min readApr 29, 2020

I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again, I’ll say it a thousand times: I’m a sucker for world-building.

It’s so much fun to be thrown into a world that you’ve never seen before and just slowly start to piece the puzzle together about what matters and what doesn’t and who is important and why. Sure, Star Wars isn’t a world that I’ve never seen before, but I actually get a lot of enjoyment out of watching introductions to new universes and pretending as if I was a person experiencing it for the first time. It’s even more fun to watch Star Wars and pretend it’s 1977, and you’re seeing it with literally no context of what Star Wars even means.

There’s just something about watching A New Hope that makes me feel like a kid again. As soon as the crawl disappears, and the seemingly large Rebel ship screams past, only to be immediately dwarfed by the Star Destroyer, all of a sudden it’s 1995 again and I’m a kid being blown away by an out-of-body movie experience.

Before I start get carried away to the point that I need to be hosed down and laid to rest in a bed with a weighted blanket, let’s get the criticisms out of the way:

You really can’t watch the original 1977 Star Wars anymore, unless you somehow own them on VHS. They’ve otherwise been completely replaced by the 1997 and/or 2004 digital re-mastered versions. This is a blessing and a curse. Some of the changes are great — the images are sharper, the changes to the audio mixing improve a few scenes, and there are a number of subtle touch-ups to some visual effects that would probably look antiquated by today’s standards. On the other hand, there are some huge sweeping CGI shots that are just plain terrible. I mentioned this briefly when I talked about The Empire Strikes Back, but it’s even more noticeable in A New Hope. They’re pretty easy to spot — they’re the shots that look like they were spliced in from a Pixar movie.

It’s part of the love/hate relationship I have with George Lucas. Yes, he created this timeless classic, and he helped facilitate an explosion, not just of Star Wars and its expanded universe, but science fiction and fantasy in general. It’s entirely possible that series like Lord of the Rings, and the comic book universes from DC and Marvel never would have existed if not for Star Wars. On the other hand, when you consider Lucas’ entire body of work with the Star Wars franchise, you have to admit that most of it is just bad. He created, developed, and shepherded three iconic films in the 1970s and 80s, and then proceeded to (marginally) mess everything up over the subsequent 30 years. The 1997 and 2004 re-masters “fix” things that weren’t broken. The prequels all sucked. I don’t know how to describe it other than to say he drank his own Kool-Aid. He thought every idea he had was a good idea, because he was the one who had the idea. And it really caused problems.

Other than that, though, the only complaint I really have from the original Star Wars, the ones I remember renting every weekend, is how whiny Luke Skywalker is in his first few scenes. Obviously, it’s important to sell the idea that he’s unsatisfied working as a farmer with his uncle, but it’s kind of a drag to have your protagonist do little else but complain for the first 45 minutes of the movie. Luke doesn’t start to turn into an interesting character until Han Solo shows up, and suddenly there’s another alpha dog that he has to compete with. In fact, the scene where we meet Han for the first time actually might be my favorite scene of Luke’s in the entire series, even though he really only has two lines. You start to see some bravado and swagger, which he normally doesn’t put on display.

Over the years, I’ve started to realize that I don’t enjoy Star Wars movies nearly as much as I thought I did. I enjoy the idea of a Star Wars movie a lot more than I often enjoy the movie itself. But that’s not the case with A New Hope. It’s really a phenomenal movie that I can’t say enough good things about. I wish it were longer, to be honest. I wish I got more time with Han, more time with Darth Vader. The universe has so many interesting characters that to have a movie last only two hours seems almost a waste.

Harrison Ford is one of the most represented actors on my Tophunder list, with five movies, and he very easily could have twice that many — as many as 10 or 11 other Harrison Ford movies very nearly made the cut. I’m not sure if he’s my favorite actor of all time, but he’s certainly on the short list. There’s something about him — especially in his early days — that I can’t help but feel drawn to him. He’s effortlessly confident, jarringly handsome, and always the coolest guy in the room. I actually think Ford is underrated as a dramatic actor. He’s obviously been an A-List star, an action hero, and the premier box office draw of his generation, and while he tends to play similar characters in most of his movies, I don’t think he gets enough credit for the subtle differences that he’s able to bring. Compare Han Solo to Jack Ryan (in Patriot Games or Clear and Present Danger) to Richard Kimble in the first hour of The Fugitive. They actually aren’t all that similar. They just seem that way because they’re all Harrison Ford and they all have a few scenes where Action Hero Ford gets to come out of the box. I think it’s rather incredible that Ford has only been nominated for one Academy Award (for Witness, from 1985).

It feels weird to say, but my favorite scene from A New Hope is actually the final scene. And not the final battle at the Death Star, but the trophy room scene. For one, it’s my favorite piece of music in the original trilogy (and maybe my favorite piece of music in the whole series — Duel of the Fates gives the prequels some redeeming quality). For another, after a whole movie of running around in the desert and falling into trash compactors and everything else, it’s kind of the only scene where we get to see all of our main actors actually stand there and look like movie stars, all in the same room. Maybe it sounds stupid, but I can’t help but notice how damn good-looking all three of them are in that scene. I’m sure it sounds stupid, but it’s the only movie I can think of where a specific reason for liking a specific scene is how attractive the actors are in it.

Perhaps the most underrated part of Star Wars was how well they lucked out with the cast. None of the three stars were really established actors at that point. Carrie Fisher had appeared in only one movie, Mark Hamill had only appeared on TV, and Harrison Ford was the only one with a true Hollywood resume, appearing in a half-dozen movies, including American Graffiti and The Conversation, both Best Picture nominees. Even more incredible how young they all are — Ford would have been 33 or 34 during filming, Hamill would have been 25, and Fisher only 20. To me, it’s incredible to think about, because my first 146 viewings of Star Wars probably came before I turned 10, so anyone older than me just looked like a regular adult. That initial impression must have always stuck with me, because when I watch Star Wars now, I never think about the fact that I’m now noticeably older than two of the three actors were at the time.

One thing that I always notice now — Carrie Fisher (for whatever reason) attempts a British accent (kind of) in a few scenes. It’s most noticeable in the scene where the Death Star blows up Alderaan. It’s just weird and funny to me, because she clearly isn’t doing it during the opening scene and she’s not doing it after Luke and Han bust her out of the detention center, which are her two other scenes with the most lines. I’m not sure where it came from. I have to assume that the scene with Grand Moff Tarkin is the first scene that she filmed, and decided to try it out, only to give it up later. And trust me, this isn’t a criticism, I think it’s a bonus.

Even if Star Wars isn’t my favorite series of movies in 2020, it’s still had an absolutely incredible impact on my life. It represents a catalyst for a staggering number of interpersonal relationships I’ve had over the course of my life. My friends and I growing up bonded over our love for Star Wars, and now, I’m 31, and my friends and I still bicker about it endlessly. On this list, A New Hope serves as a stand-in for all of those countless hours I’ve spent watching, reading, and talking about Star Wars over the last 25 years. Even if I didn’t like the movies anymore, I can’t see how I could keep them off my list. Luckily, I still love them.

(For a refresher on the project, I introduced it in a Facebook Post on Day 1)

Here’s our progress on the list so far:

2. A Few Good Men

4. Dazed and Confused

6. The Fugitive

7. The Dark Knight

9. Saving Private Ryan

11. The Big Short

13. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring

15. Skyfall

17. Ocean’s 11

18. Air Force One