Star Wars: The Original Trilogy Analysis/Review
Preface:
I was not born when any of the original trilogy came out. Therefor, I have zero nostalgia for them.
I (re)watched them in blu ray on a 4k TV.
I will reference Star Wars Rebels. There will be some spoilers, up to basically the latest episode of season 2, so beware!
How this is going to go is I’ll go through my likes/dislikes/conclusions of each episode and then the entire trilogy on a whole. Simple.
Here we go.
Episode IV: A New Hope
What started it all. Sure, it inspired and gave way to everything else, but does it really hold up? Yeah. It kind of does.
Likes:
- Well, it definitely throws us into the world of Star Wars without losing us. The title card is quite effective. Kind of hard to gauge how well it does this, with media saturation and the fact that I’m very familiar with it, but everything was properly explained.
- C-3PO/R2-D2. Classic comedic duo. The whole movie could have been of their antics and I think I would be okay with it.
- Obi-Wan. Alec Guinness. What can go wrong? Nothing. Maybe old for the role, in retrospect, but he does exude the wise-old man ethos that Obi-Wan needs. I’m not going to say that he did Obi-Wan better than Ewan McGregor or the reverse or anything like that. He did a great job.
- Han. Leia. Chewie. It’s all wonderful banter that is classic.
- Leia’s dedication to the rebellion. Seeing her a few years prior to ANH in Rebels does establish how she keeps on with it, knowing that she effectively grew up in the rebel-mind set and has the ‘need’ to do it.
- Special effects still look pretty good. Those practical effects.
- The added scenes (I was told they were, anyway), like transition shots, actually hold up well enough. I liked them.
- So many iconic moments and lines. I can’t/won’t list them all.
Dislikes:
- The pacing felt off…although it has a bunch of big events, it comes off a bit slow, which could be a result of exposition. I think the movie peaked with them in the Death Star and then went downhill.That entire sequence Blowing up the Death Star seemed a bit much. Luke’s arc was accelerated and Han felt a bit thrown in there.
- Luke. He feels, as a family member said, “like an amorphous blob.” He is young and squishy. Naive. Not fully formed as an individual heroic character. Like I couldn’t not like or dislike him, but I was left wanting. Like he could do all this stuff and basically be unfazed and not lose in the process? Obi-Wan took the hit with Vader for him, making ANH Luke-wins-at-life show (excluding having his family get slaughtered.)
- The lightsaber duel is rather…muted. Technology and all that. But it shows the most.
- The added stuff in the frames looks the worst. I think if it was blended better it’d be fine.
Conclusion:
Iconic start to an iconic trilogy. It has so many key moments in it and seeding for the future installments. It gets the job done and it is enjoyable. ANH is the introduction, so it isn’t going to be seamless or perfect. It has the job of exposition and set-up, which, as a writer, is hard. First books/movies are typically the most…jagged in that regard, with comparison to their successors. A New Hope isn’t an exception, but it manages to pull it off exceptionally well.
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
Probably my favorite movie out of the original three. By general consensus, this is typically the case. This is founded on facts.
Likes:
- The Hoth battle. Holds up pretty well. Not pretty well, great. AT-AT’s are so cool and over-the-top in the best of ways. How the rebels fought them was kind of amazing in the sheer simplicity of it all.
- Chewie carrying around a partially built C3-PO. That was hilarious. The comedy is solid in ESB.
- The Han/Leia banter. It gives me life. It’s fun to watch. Also, the iconic:
Leia: I love you.
Han: I know.
- The development of Luke. He becomes someone! He gets beaten up and down and experiences the fabled character development into a fully-formed ‘flawedish hero.’ He gets training from Yoda and gets shown how inexperienced he is and then he learns something. Through the movie, Luke becomes an engaging character that turns into the awesome Luke we all associate with him.
- Yoda training is pretty amusing. I could put more quotes here, but it’d be hard to choose which of the lines from those scenes to quote-out, so to speak.
- How much stuff is going on in it and how the movie keeps it all together. We have a big battle on Hoth. Luke training. Han/Leia/Chewie escaping and hiding out. Cloud City. Carbonite. Darth Vader vs. Luke. That reveal.
- It contains one of the most well known movie-lines in society and culture.
No, I am your father.
- It is visually and thematically interesting. The choices are not simple or expected. It is complex.
Dislikes:
- Creepy Yoda puppet. I prefer CGI!Yoda, to be honest. I appreciate the puppet and how it moves especially, as a hobbyist puppeteer, but it just…it’s a little off to look at.
- Being the second act, it was all development and no real resolution. Set-up for the third act. Kind of comes from the trilogy basically being a seven hour long story. But this is where all the defining, development moments come in so that finale makes us feel warm and fuzzy inside.
- At the time, we really have no idea where it is going. Like what is the point? But this is exciting too, so it kind of fits both a like and dislike.
Conclusion:
It’s great. What else can I say? It has a ton of iconic Star Wars moments and scenes and lines. ESB is enduring. I love it.
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
The end of the line of the Original Trilogy. Does it do it justice? Yeah. Skates to the finish after stumbling quite a bit, but it gets there.
Likes:
- Luke being rather ‘gray.’ Neither dark or light. He uses dark-side abilities and light-side abilities, channeling emotion and focus. Walking that line and rocking it. He really did seem wizened in this movie. He makes the right choices, out of principle, not dogma that doomed the Jedi.
- Lando doing epic Lando things. Seeing him be involved in the rebellion in Star Wars Rebels adds more basis for his full-on support/credibility as a rebel.
- The scenes with the rebellion felt nice. Expanded the ‘scope,’ so to speak. Admiral Ackbar goes without saying as being a classic moment.
- Han/Leia scenes. Their romance was believable and fun.
- The Darth Vader/Luke/Palpatine show down. It felt satisfying. Especially the funeral pyre scene. A fitting end to Vader and that relationship. It is one of the defining moments of the entire series. It is where Anakin fulfills his destiny and Luke proves himself.
Dislikes:
- Ewoks. Why. Their value is only as fighting fodder. Why not have the fighting forces being the rebels we are supposed to care about rather than demonic fur-balls. They look so cheesy, too. Weird bear-midgets. Creepy.
- Death Star II? Come on. At least make it a bit…different. There didn’t seem to be innovation in its design.
- Jabba the Hutt sequence is…nice, I suppose, but it feels strongly out of place. Like okay we just spent a bunch of time there to save Han/Leia/C-3PO. Now back to the war and fighting off Emperor Evil.
- Boba Fett going down with hardly a fight. I don’t understand. Why. He had hype and he failed to live up. Why include him if he is going to be defeated by a semi-blind Han? It doesn’t make any sense.
- It dragged on at points. The Ewok parts especially. Pacing was an issue. Like the run time felt a bit choppy in places. What was the focus? Palpatine vs. Luke vs. Vader and that ending, but why spend so much time with Jabba? Yea, to get Han back, but I feel like priorities needed to be established. Such as less Ewoks. Like the movie feels like two major set/scene pieces, Jabba the Hutt and the Death Star confrontation, with a huge gaping lull in the middle.
Conclusion:
Both flawed and spectacular. It has problems, but do they fully detract from the experience? Yes, but they sure did not sully the trilogy or the finale of it. It is overall a fitting end-note to the saga, even through it had glaring issues.
The Original Trilogy on a Whole
They aren’t perfect, but they are very good. They have affected popular culture so much. It’s hard to look at them as they are because their existence is so prevalent in society. Looking at each of them as their own entity is challenging because we already know the story. We know where it ends so we can accept the hitches in the journey. Even, I think, without this complete-minded focus, the story and power of it is like a steamroller, rolling down the obstacles in the path to get there and claim eternal recognition and fame. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t be where what it is.
Star Wars is timeless, through its faults and glory.
Thanks for reading.
My other reviews of the series:
