It is a period of civil war. Rebel spaceships, striking from a hidden base, have won their first victory against the evil Galactic Empire.
During the battle, Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire's ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR, an armored space station with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
Pursued by the Empire's sinister agents, Princess Leia races home aboard her starship, custodian of the stolen plans that can save her people and restore freedom to the galaxy...
A New Hope, or more precisely, Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (originally released as and still simply called Star Wars by many fans) was the 1977 film that marked the first chapter of the Star Wars saga. It's the film that started it all, giving birth to one of the most beloved and long-lived franchises in the history of cinema—and entertainment in general. Though most people wouldn't have guessed that at the time...George Lucas had a lot of trouble getting a studio to back him up, and even 20th Century Fox would have dropped the film if not for the support of Alan Ladd Jr. The film also had a Troubled Production, both with the live action and the special effects, the latter because the newly formed Industrial Light and Magic had to spend the first several months just making the technology required to film the scenes Lucas wanted.This left Lucas exhausted after the film was finished, and he didn't direct another film for over 20 years *
though he supplied the overall concept for the original trilogy and served as Executive Producer, this is the only one of the three that he actually directed
. It seemed the film would suffer an even worse fate.Of course, we all know that didn't happen.The Star Wars movies are perhaps the most well-known science fiction/space opera films ever, but A New Hope in particular is the most famous among the six. With its box office gross adjusted for inflation, it is the second highest grossing movie ever, surpassed only by Gone with the Wind. So famous is the film, in fact, that this page isn't even going to bother summarizing the plot. In fact, that plot itself is in some ways irrelevant. It's all about how it's presented.
Amusing Alien: Greedo, whose only purpose was to be a punchline for Han.
Artistic License - Physics: "It's the ship that did the Kessel run in twelve parsecs." A parsec is a measurement of distance (3.262 light years), not time. Lucas claims that a major factor in hyperspace travel times is navigation; with a good enough navicomputer and a shrewd enough navigation sense, you can shave huge amounts of distance (and thus time) off a trip, and that's part of the reason why the Millenium Falcon is so fast. The EU elaborates on this, as it does everything else.
Ascetic Aesthetic: Averted with the Millennium Falcon, played straight with the Star Destroyers.
Ascended Extra: Just about every kriffing character gets his/her/its own story in later works.
Big Bad: In contrast to the other films, Grand Moff Tarkin is given this role as he is in charge of the Death Star and, notionally, Darth Vader. Palpatine doesn't show up in the Original Trilogy until Episode V.
Big "NO!": Luke watching Vader slice Obi-Wan in two.
Big Damn Heroes: Han Solo arriving just in time to save Luke from Vader and buy Luke the vital seconds needed to send the photon torpedos into the Death Star's thermal exhaust port.
Plus since it was improvised, either Harrison couldn't believe that was the best he could ad lib, or he felt Han would realize he was talking like an idiot.
Changed My Mind, Kid: Just when Vader is about to blast Luke down onto the Death Star surface, the Millennium Falcon makes a surprise intervention and blasts one of Vader's wingmen. Han returns after saying through the movie that he only cares about the prize at the end!
Commander Contrarian: General Tagge for the Empire ("Until this battle station is fully operational, we are vulnerable.") Unusually he's entirely right and the Empire would have been a lot better off listening to him.
Cover Identity Anomaly: When Han is impersonating a stormtrooper over the com, he can't come up with his operating number.
Covers Always Lie: Darth Vader's lightsaber has a hilt on the original cover and film poster.
There is also this◊ poster as well as a similar one showing a much more muscular Mark Hamil, a sexier Carrie Fischer, the implication that they are lovers, and Luke raising a lightsaber as if he used it in battle. As it stands, Luke only uses a lightsaber during a training scene and doesn't pick it up again until the next movie.
Deleted Scene: Loads were cut due to Lucas feeling they dragged the pace of the film (and it did get the film the best editing Academy Award). These include:
Luke fixing a moisture vaporator. He observed the space battle between the Star Destroyer and Leia's rebel ship.
Luke meeting his friends to tell them about the space battle, but no one but Biggs believed him. This scene happened between the droids escaping in the escape pod and Leia confronting Vader.
Biggs telling Luke he's defecting to the Rebellion. This happened between C-3PO catching sight of the Sandcrawler and R2 getting captured by Jawas.
Two deleted scenes — Han talking to Jabba the Hutt, and Luke meeting up with Biggs in the Rebel hangar — were restored in the Special Edition.
Demoted to Extra: Biggs Darklighter got this because his aforementioned scenes with Luke were deleted. In the first theatrical cut, he's just a nameless Redshirt with no indication of a prior history with Luke.
Department of Redundancy Department: In the special edition, some of the lines Han says to Jabba are the same as he said to Greedo. The reason for this is that when the Jabba scene was originally cut, a few of the lines (particularly "Even I get boarded sometimes! You think I had a choice?") were added to the Greedo one. However, by the time the special edition came around, Harrison Ford was too old to record different lines while he was reaching for the blaster.
Distressed Damsel: Princess Leia, but the trope is massively subverted for the genre George Lucas was drawing from. True, Leia doesn't try to escape herself, but that's because she's completely outnumbered and then imprisoned in a moon-sized battlestation. When an opportunity does arise, she seizes it with both hands and takes charge of matters once it's obvious her so-called rescuers don't have a clue what they're doing.
The film itself drew from many sources. The Hidden Fortress connection is well known. The Dune-Tatooine inspiration is pretty obvious. You can tell George Lucas must have seen at least Space Battleship Yamato episodes 26, 1, and 8, in that order, so we can probably pin his famous trip to Japan down to early 1975, when the series went into reruns. Isaac Asimov noticed some similarity to his Foundation series but didn't take it personally. As Wilson Mizner observed, stealing from everybody is just called "research."
Forced to Watch: Leia is forced to watch Alderaan's destruction.
From a Certain Point of View: Tarkin orders Leia to divulge the location of the Rebel Alliance's base. She does, saying that it's on Dantooine. When Imperial ships arrive at the planet they find out that there was a Rebel base there...it had just been abandoned. So Leia did divulge the location...just not the right one.
Han Solo also evidently doesn't believe in the Force either, but his tone seems to be relatively less contemptuous than Motti's, despite that the consequences to Solo for such contempt would clearly be milder. This may be typical of the times he lives in, as the Empire has done its best to suppress knowledge of the Force.
Luke: You don't believe in the Force, do you?
Han Solo: Kid, I've flown from one side of this galaxy to the other, and I've seen a lot of strange stuff, but I've never seen anything to make me believe that there's one all-powerful Force controlling everything. 'Cause no mystical energy field controls my destiny. It's all a lot of simple tricks and nonsense.
Homage: To Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress, with the droids being the focus for much of the film, and also to Yojimbo, with the scene of the two braggarts at the cantina. Lucas' heavy use of frame wipes is also indebted to Kurosawa. The heart-wrenching scene where Luke rushes to the farm, only to find it already raided and his relatives dead harkens to an equally distressing scene in The Searchers.
I Just Want to Be Special: A New Hope begins with Luke saying that he wants to leave home to join the Rebellion. It's bittersweet when he gets his wish.
I Lied: Tarkin threatens to destroy Alderaan unless Leia gives up the location of the Rebel base. When Leia tells him, he has Alderaan destroyed anyway. Of course, Leia lied about it being on Dantooine.
Although it did mean Lucas got full sequel and merchandising rights easily. He waived the money he would be paid as the director, and the studio believed they would just be losing less money thanks to that.
Knight, Knave and Squire: Luke Skywalker is the Squire, with Obi-Wan and Han Solo as the Knight and Knave respectively. A key point in Luke's character development is when he rejects Han's pragmatism, leading to Han second-guessing his own beliefs.
Let's Get Dangerous: At first, Obi Wan seems to be little more than a wizened old man, who may have once been a warrior of the Clone Wars, but is now, well, an old man who lives in a hovel. Then we get to the cantina scene, where said old man whips out a lightsaber, deflects blaster shots and lops a man's arm off. You can tell from the look on Luke's face, that's the moment when he starts to take the whole 'Jedi' thing seriously.
A Light in the Distance: C-3PO, lost on Tatooine, sees light glinting off a Jawa sandcrawler and concludes that he's saved.
Magic Versus Science: "Don't be too proud of this technological terror you constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of The Force."
The Merch: Famously, toy makers were caught with their pants down.
Mood Whiplash: Only applicable if you watch the films in chronological order: Revenge of the Sith is a dark tragedy in which an already-tainted hero turns evil, kills children and is mutilated by his former best friend while this film is a straight-up action adventure with wisecracking heroes. Going from the former to the latter is a bit jarring.
Motivational Kiss: Leia gives Luke a peck on the cheek "for luck" before he tries to swing over a precarious gap.
Neck Lift: Darth Vader to the captain of Princess Leia's ship while interrogating him, which leads to a Neck Snap when he refuses to cooperate.
Never My Fault: C-3PO while lost in the desert after refusing to take R2's route:
"That malfunctioning twerp! This is all his fault! He tricked me into going this way!"
Nothing Is Scarier: The dianoga in the trash compactor. We only see a couple tentacles and an eyestalk.
Obstacle Exposition: We have the briefing before the attack against the Death Star that clearly outlines their mission of hitting the exhaust port and everything that can possible stop them. This includes the need for tactical computers to make such a shot, and for good measure there was an unsuccessful attempt mid-way through the battle just so we know just how necessary a precise shot with the targeting computer is. Cue Luke turning off the targeting computer.
Off Model: The CGI Jabba from the Special Edition.
The Power of Legacy: Obi-Wan refrains from telling Luke about his father's true nature. Luke thinks of whoever his father is as a hero throughout this movie.
Uncle Owen led Luke to believe Anakin was a navigator on a spice freighter, neither painting him as hero or villain.
Precision F-Strike: During the following conversation between Han Solo and Obi-Wan Kenobi:
Han: Even if I could take off, I'd never get past the tractor beam.
Redemption Equals Death: In the EU, we learn that the head gunner for the superlaser was filled with remorse and desperately stalled for time at Yavin.
Retronym: When he made Star Wars, Lucas imagined that it would be Episode I in a series of films with the overall title The Adventures of Luke Skywalker. But while making The Empire Strikes Back (which was at first going to be Episode II of the series), he decided that he also wanted to do three prequel films. Since Luke obviously wouldn't be the hero of the prequels, Lucas needed a new name for the overall series. His solution? Star Wars, once just the chapter title of the first film, became the title of the entire saga. As a result, the subtitle A New Hope was retroactively tacked on to the first film, and it was now numbered Episode IV.
Smug Snake: While not as obvious an example as Jabba, (who in this installment is actually more along the lines of Affably Evil) Admiral Motti's "any attack made by the Rebels would be a useless gesture" remark comes across as fairly presumptuous in any context, but especially in light of what happened near the end of the movie. Also, his attitude towards Vader's belief in the Force is pretty much a DTRYOA of Hollywood atheism, of the Recycled IN SPACE! variety.
Vader: Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed. The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force.
Motti: Don't try to frighten us with your sorcerer's ways, lord Vader. Your sad devotion to that ancient religion has not helped you conjure up the stolen data tapes, or given you clairvoyance enough to find the rebels' hidden fort...
Vader Force-chokes Motti.
Vader: I find your lack of faith disturbing.
Spontaneous Crowd Formation: When Darth Vader and Obi-Wan face off, the Stormtroopers leave their posts guarding the Millennium Falcon to watch the duel. Luke's shouting at Obi-Wan's death snaps them out of it.
Strolling Through The Chaos: Artoo and Threepio walk across a corridor, with Imperial Stormtroopers and Rebel Guards shooting at each other from opposite ends, and somehow aren't hit once.
Supernatural Aid: Luke receiving the lightsaber from Obi-Wan is a textbook example.
Supporting Protagonist: The first third of the movie was through the eyes of the droids.
Truth in Television: High-density tape cartridge systems are still a cost-effective and reliable method of data storage, especially in archive systems where quick retrieval time is not too important.
Tempting Fate: Tarkin, when offered the opportunity to evacuate the Death Star:
Tarkin: "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
Luke: "Oh, yeah, well, I guess you're too small to run away on me if I take this off."
Terrifying Rescuer: Inverted, when Luke enters Leia's cell in a Stormtrooper uniform, she calmly starts some banter.
Throw It In: The Funny scene of Han trying to talk the Stormtroopers out of investigating the shootout they've just had. Depending on who you talk to, Harrison Ford forgot his lines, never read them at all, or just learned them shortly before shooting.
Weld The Lock: Luke shoots the control panel lock in order to keep the Stormtroopers from getting in. It turns out that the panel also controls the bridge. His makeshift lock doesn't hold for too long, either.
What Could Have Been: During initial drafts, Darth Vader's iconic suit would have been a spacesuit as he needed to board the Tantive IV through space. It ended up since rewritten to being a permanent life-support system.
The role of Obi-Wan Kenobi was originally written with Toshiro Mifune in mind. Depending on who you talk to, either 20th Century Fox wasn't keen on giving Mifune another whirl (although Mifune could speak English, all productions where he was speaking English ended up dubbing over his voice due to his thick Japanese accent) or Mifune wasn't available. Either way, the role went instead to Alec Guinness.
You Said You Would Let Them Go: Tarkin attempts to force Princess Leia into revealing the main Rebel Base by threatening to use the Death Star's superlaser on Alderaan as a demonstration of its power. She gives them the location (or so it seems). Unfortunately for her, Tarkin is not a man of his word.
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