'Star Wars' 40 years on....

(C) 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and Lucasfilm Ltd. Poster art by Tom Chantrell

Every once in a while I have what I think of as an out-of-the-body experience at a movie. When the ESP people use a phrase like that, they're referring to the sensation of the mind actually leaving the body and spiriting itself off to China or Peoria or a galaxy far, far away. When I use the phrase, I simply mean that my imagination has forgotten it is actually present in a movie theater and thinks it's up there on the screen. In a curious sense, the events in the movie seem real, and I seem to be a part of them. - Roger Ebert, in his 1977 review of Star Wars

Star Wars celebrated its 40th Anniversary yesterday. 

For those of us who were alive when George Lucas's groundbreaking space-fantasy epic set "a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" premiered, it's hard to remember what the 1970s were like before Star Wars. Because the film (which was renamed Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope in 1981) became such an integral part of pop culture in the U.S. and elsewhere, it seems as though the adventures of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia Organa, Han Solo, and the rest of the Rebel crew that challenged Lord Darth Vader and the Empire he represented have been with us like...forever.

Of course, this is not true, but considering that Lucasfilm Ltd., the company that Lucas founded in the early 1970s to allow him to create movies independently of the major studios, will release an eighth "Skywalker Saga" Episode (The Last Jedi) this December, it's easy to understand why fans of my generation can't conceive of a world without Star Wars. I certainly can't.

There are many reasons why the original 1977 film (which many fans, including Your Humble Correspondent still refer to by its original title) touched millions of moviegoers and made such a cultural huge impact that phrases from the dialogue became part of the American lexicon. By the end of the summer of 1977, if you heard people reciting lines such May the Force be with you or I have a bad feeling about this, you knew that they were quoting Star Wars. Images and sounds from Star Wars - including the famous Hildenbrand Brothers' poster art and John Williams' now-iconic theme - were everywhere.   

(C) 1977 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Poster art by Greg and Tim Hildenbrand
I have owned a copy - now framed - of this poster since 1980. 

Having lived through the tumultuous events of the 1960s and early 1970s (albeit from the limited perspective of a small child), I think that Star Wars was embraced by so many people, especially young people between the ages of nine and 30, as an escape from all the angst and social upheaval of the times. 

Consider this. At the same time that George Lucas was coming up with the basic elements of Star Wars (between, say, 1973 and 1976), this is what was going on in America and beyond:

• The Arab-Israeli conflict, which had been simmering for six years since Israel defeated the combined forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria during the 1967 Six Day War, erupted once again as the Yom Kippur War
• The Vietnam War was ending in disaster in Southeast Asia
• The Watergate scandal toppled a President - Richard Nixon - and widened the credibility gap between the U.S. government and the American people that began in the 1960s during the early stages of the conflict in Vietnam
• The effects of the Arab oil embargo on the American economy and the first "energy crisis"
• The lingering pain and sadness of the Kennedy-King assassinations

In short, America and most of the globe were in a deep funk. And because most art reflects the era in which it's created, many of the movies we watched back then featured anti-heroes and themes of disenchantment and disillusion.  (This explains, in part, why movies such as The Godfather and All the President's Men were - and still are - so popular and critically acclaimed. They reflected the cynicism and loss of belief in the American Dream that were prevalent in the 1970's.)

Then Lucas, whose first attempt at making a science fiction film - 1971's THX-1138 - reflected the current "zeitgeist" that the future would be bleak and humanity was doomed (a la Planet of the Apes, Soylent Green, The Omega Man, Logan's Run) had a different idea. Instead of coming up with a dark vision of things to come, why not give young audiences a modern myth that would lift their spirits?

As the writer-director would later write in 1976 in promotional materials for Star Wars:

I've always loved adventure films. After I finished American Graffiti, I came to realize that since the demise of the western, there hasn't been much in the mythological fantasy genre available to the film audience. So, instead of making "isn't-it-terrible-what's-happening-to-mankind" movies, which is how I began, I decided that I'd fill that gap. I'd make a film so rooted in imagination that the grimness of of everyday life would not follow the audience into the theater. In other words, for two hours, they could forget.

As most film buffs and savvy Star Wars fans know, Lucas borrowed and adapted elements from various genres (World War II films, Westerns, 1930s swashbucklers such as Captain Blood and The Adventures of Robin Hood, and samurai epics, including Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress). He also studied the works of his mentor, Joseph Campbell, and populated Star Wars with recognizable archetypes:

• The young hero who leaves home to go off on a great quest (Luke Skywalker)
• The powerful and dangerous antagonist (Darth Vader)
• The evil overlord (Imperial Governor/Grand Moff Tarkin)
• The cynical-but-charming rogue with the heart of gold (Han Solo)
• The wise old mentor who helps the hero in his journey (Obi-Wan Kenobi)
• The damsel in distress (Princess Leia), though in this version of the myth, the damsel may be in distress, but she's no shrinking violet
• The seemingly insignificant sidekicks (R2-D2 and C-3PO) who go along on the adventure and prove to be essential characters

By blending these characters into a story structure borrowed from the serial films of the 1930's and '40's with state-of-the-art special effects and a 19th Century-style symphonic score by John Williams, Lucas concocted the most popular space-opera of the times - Star Wars. 

As the late Roger Ebert wrote in his 1997 review for the 20th Anniversary Special Edition re-release:

George Lucas' space epic has colonized our imaginations, and it is hard to stand back and see it simply as a motion picture, because it has so completely become part of our memories. It's as goofy as a children's tale, as shallow as an old Saturday afternoon serial, as corny as Kansas in August--and a masterpiece. Those who analyze its philosophy do so, I imagine, with a smile in their minds. May the Force be with them.

...........

It's possible, however, that as we grow older we retain within the tastes of our earlier selves. How else to explain how much fun “Star Wars'' is, even for those who think they don't care for science fiction? It's a good-hearted film in every single frame, and shining through is the gift of a man who knew how to link state of the art technology with a deceptively simple, really very powerful, story. It was not by accident that George Lucas worked with Joseph Campbell, an expert on the world's basic myths, in fashioning a screenplay that owes much to man's oldest stories. 

Of course, when I first watched Star Wars in October of 1977, I wasn't consciously aware of all the subtext beneath the gee-whiz visuals, the exciting battles between the evil Empire and the heroic Rebels, or even the thrilling music by Maestro Williams. All I knew is that while I was in that theater, munching on pricey concession stand popcorn and sharing the adventures of Luke Skywalker with hundreds of other moviegoers, I wasn't thinking about the drudgery of housekeeping chores, the routine of going to my middle school (or, as we used to say back then, junior high) or the pain of not having a girlfriend. I was caught up in Lucas's galaxy far, far away, and I was enjoying every minute of it!

The Earth has circled the Sun 40 times since Star Wars premiered on May 25, 1977. Events both large and small have changed our world in ways that not even Lucas could have imagined. The geopolitical scene of the 1970's - dominated as it was by the rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union - has been swept away. In its place, a disorderly world full of domestic intranquility, multiple threats, and a plethora of high anxieties has emerged. We may live in a digitally-connected global village, but, paradoxically, we are an increasingly divided and garrulous humanity.

The movies, too, have changed over the past four decades, thanks in no small part to the success of Star Wars. Gone, or nearly so, are the "small and personal" auteur films of early Steven Spielberg (The Sugarland Express), Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver), and even George Lucas himself (American Graffiti). Now, studios seek to make "tentpole" blockbusters based on comic book superheroes and young adult book series that are parts of franchises.  

As Roger Ebert noted in his rave review of Star Wars - Episode IV: A New Hope's Special Edition in 1997, "Star Wars effectively brought to an end the golden era of early-1970s personal filmmaking and focused the industry on big-budget special-effects blockbusters, blasting off a trend we are still living through. But you can't blame it for what it did, you can only observe how well it did it. In one way or another all the big studios have been trying to make another Star Wars ever since (pictures like Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park and Independence Day are its heirs). It located Hollywood's center of gravity at the intellectual and emotional level of a bright teenager."

In the 40 years since I watched Star Wars for the first time, I've grown from a callow but somewhat "bright teenager" to a middle aged man who may or may not be brighter or even wiser. I've seen a lot of movies since 1977, and some - Casablanca, Schindler's List, The Best Years of Our Lives, The Silence of the Lambs, and L.A. Confidential - are as good as or even better than Lucas's 1970s homage to the Saturday matinee serials he saw on TV as a boy growing up in Modesto, California in the late 1940s and early 1950s. 

There are better films than Star Wars, but it's my favorite movie of all time. If I am told that I'm going to go on an all-expenses trip around the world cruise but that I can only choose one title to take along and play on my portable Blu-ray player, you know which one I'd pick.

It would be that movie about "a boy, a girl, and a universe." 

Sources: 

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/star-wars-1977

Lucas, George, Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker, New York; Del Rey Books, 1976

http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-star-wars-episode-iv-a-new-hope-1977