Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope
| Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope | |
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| Directed by | George Lucas |
| Written by | George Lucas |
| Produced by | Gary Kurtz |
| Starring | Mark Hamill Harrison Ford Carrie Fisher Peter Cushing Alec Guinness |
| Music by | John Williams |
| Released | 1977.05.25 |
| Run time | 121 minutes |
| Budget | $11 million |
| Preceded by | Revenge of the Sith |
| Followed by | The Empire Strikes Back |
Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, first released simply as Star Wars, is a 1977 space adventure film written and directed by George Lucas. It was the first Star Wars film made and released, and it began the original trilogy. The story follows a farm boy named Luke Skywalker who is swept into a galaxy-wide war and discovers he can use a mysterious power called the Force.
Set nineteen years after the rise of the Galactic Empire, the film opens as the Empire finishes building the Death Star, a space station powerful enough to destroy an entire planet. When Princess Leia Organa of the Rebel Alliance hides the station's stolen plans inside a droid, Luke, the smuggler Han Solo, and the old Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi set out to rescue the captured princess and deliver the plans that could save the galaxy.
Made on a small budget but groundbreaking in its visual effects, A New Hope became one of the most successful and influential films ever made. It won several Academy Awards and turned Star Wars into a global phenomenon.
1 Plot✎
1.1 Capturing the princess✎
The galaxy is at war. The Rebel Alliance has stolen the plans to the Empire's secret weapon, the Death Star, and Princess Leia Organa is racing home with them hidden aboard her ship. Her ship is captured over the desert planet of Tatooine by the Sith Lord Darth Vader. Before she is taken prisoner, Leia hides the plans — along with a recorded plea for help — inside the astromech droid R2-D2. The droid and his companion C-3PO escape to the planet below.
1.2 Luke and Obi-Wan✎
On Tatooine, the droids are bought by moisture farmers — young Luke Skywalker and his uncle. While cleaning R2-D2, Luke glimpses part of Leia's message, which asks for someone named Obi-Wan Kenobi. When the droid slips away to find him, Luke follows and is rescued from desert raiders by an old hermit, Ben Kenobi, who reveals that he is Obi-Wan.
Obi-Wan tells Luke that he and Luke's father were once Jedi Knights, guardians of peace who used the Force, and he gives Luke his father's lightsaber. He explains that Darth Vader, his former pupil, turned to the dark side and killed Luke's father. Obi-Wan asks Luke to come with him to deliver the Death Star plans to the Rebellion, but Luke refuses — until he returns home to find that Imperial troops have killed his aunt and uncle while hunting the droids. With nothing left, Luke joins Obi-Wan.
1.3 The Millennium Falcon✎
In the spaceport of Mos Eisley, Obi-Wan and Luke hire Han Solo and his Wookiee partner Chewbacca to fly them to Leia's home planet, Alderaan, aboard the freighter Millennium Falcon. They blast their way past Imperial troops and escape Tatooine.
Aboard the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin tries to force Leia to reveal the Rebel base by threatening Alderaan. She gives a false location, but Tarkin destroys Alderaan anyway, wiping out billions of people. Far away, Obi-Wan feels the planet's destruction as a great disturbance in the Force.
1.4 Rescue aboard the Death Star✎
When the Falcon reaches Alderaan, it finds only rubble — and is caught in the Death Star's tractor beam and pulled inside. Hiding from the troops, the group sneaks aboard the station. Obi-Wan goes off alone to shut down the tractor beam so the ship can escape, while R2-D2 discovers that Princess Leia is being held prisoner and is about to be executed. Luke convinces Han and Chewbacca to help him rescue her.
The rescue quickly goes wrong, and the group is forced to escape down a garbage chute into a trash compactor — where the walls begin closing in. R2-D2 shuts the compactor down just in time. As they fight their way back to the ship, Obi-Wan meets Darth Vader, and the two old enemies duel with lightsabers. Seeing Luke watching, Obi-Wan lets Vader strike him down and vanishes, becoming one with the Force. His sacrifice lets the others flee aboard the Falcon. The Empire lets them go, secretly tracking the ship to find the hidden Rebel base.
1.5 The Battle of Yavin✎
The Falcon reaches the Rebel base on the moon Yavin 4, and the Death Star plans reveal a weakness: a small exhaust port that, if hit precisely, will trigger a chain reaction and destroy the entire station. The Rebels launch a desperate starfighter attack as the Death Star moves into position to obliterate their base.
One by one the Rebel pilots are shot down by Imperial fighters led by Darth Vader. Luke makes the final run down the trench. Just as Vader lines up to shoot him, Han Solo returns in the Millennium Falcon and scatters the Imperial fighters, knocking Vader's ship spinning into space. Guided by the voice of Obi-Wan and trusting the Force, Luke fires his torpedoes into the exhaust port. The Death Star explodes moments before it can fire. At a grand ceremony, Princess Leia awards medals to Luke and Han as heroes of the Rebellion.
2 Production✎
2.1 Origins✎
George Lucas began developing Star Wars in 1973, after his earlier film American Graffiti. He drew on a wide range of inspirations: the Flash Gordon adventure serials he loved as a child, the samurai films of Japanese director Akira Kurosawa, and writer Joseph Campbell's ideas about the hero's journey found in myths around the world. He also intended the story of a small band of rebels fighting a vast empire as a reflection on the Vietnam War.
Several studios rejected the project before 20th Century Fox agreed to make it, largely because executive Alan Ladd, Jr. believed in Lucas's talent. Lucas's completed script was far too long for one film, so he filmed only its first third and saved the rest for what became the rest of the trilogy. As part of his deal, Lucas kept the sequel and merchandising rights — a decision that would later make him enormously wealthy.
2.2 Filming and effects✎
Filming began in 1976 in the deserts of Tunisia, where rainstorms and broken props put the production behind schedule. Work continued at Elstree Studios near London, where much of the crew privately thought they were making a silly children's film; actor Harrison Ford famously complained that Lucas's dialogue was easier to type than to say. Lucas, exhausted and stressed, was eventually hospitalized for high blood pressure during the difficult shoot.
To create the film's space battles, Lucas founded a visual effects company called Industrial Light & Magic. Because Fox had shut down its own effects department, ILM had to invent much of its technology, including a computer-controlled camera system that could repeat the exact same movement around a model spaceship over and over. Lucas wanted a "used universe" where ships and machines looked old, dirty, and lived-in, instead of the clean, shiny look of earlier science fiction.
2.3 Sound and music✎
Sound designer Ben Burtt built the film's distinctive "organic" soundscape from real-world recordings: Chewbacca's voice came from bears, lions, and walruses, R2-D2's beeps from an electronic synthesizer blended with Burtt's own voice, and Darth Vader's breathing from a microphone placed inside a scuba mask. Lucas decided that David Prowse, the tall actor inside the Vader costume, did not have the right voice for the character, and cast James Earl Jones to dub the lines instead.
The orchestral score was composed by John Williams, whose bold main theme became one of the most recognizable pieces of film music ever written.
3 Release and legacy✎
Released on May 25, 1977, Star Wars became a runaway success, earning hundreds of millions of dollars and winning multiple Academy Awards. Friends Lucas screened an early version for were unimpressed — only director Steven Spielberg predicted a hit — but audiences embraced it completely.
The film was originally titled just Star Wars. The subtitle Episode IV – A New Hope was added at a re-release after the sequel established the saga's episode numbering. In 1989 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry in the program's very first year. It has been re-released many times, most famously as the 1997 Special Edition, which added new computer-generated effects.
4 Behind the scenes✎
Several elements changed dramatically during development. Luke Skywalker was at one point imagined as a 60-year-old general, and Han Solo as a green-skinned alien with gills. Chewbacca was inspired by Lucas's large dog Indiana, who liked to ride in the passenger seat of his car — the same dog who later lent his name to Indiana Jones.
