With the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens on Friday, December 18th, I thought I would take a look back at all of the previous movies from the beginning starting with the prequels and then the original trilogy. If you would like to read any of my previous reviews, click here. Try to ignore this, or not while watching the prequels. I’ll probably be treading through familiar territory with most people as well.
The Imperial Forces under orders from cruel Darth Vader (David Prowse, voice: James Earl Jones) hold Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) hostage, in their efforts to quell the rebellion against the Galactic Empire. Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi (Alec Guinness), and Han Solo (Harrison Ford), captain of the Millennium Falcon, work together with the companionable droid duo R2-D2 (Kenny Baker) and C-3PO (Anthony Daniels) to rescue the beautiful princess, help the Rebel Alliance, and restore freedom and justice to the Galaxy.
Now we’ll go back even further back in time for this one as it is the first of the original trilogy of films from the late 70s to early 80s. For those who don’t know the story (essentially those who probably weren’t alive), when Princess Leia (Fisher) is taken hostage by the evil Darth Vader (Prowse, voice: James Earl Jones), Luke Skywalker (Hamill) along with Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi (Guinness) must enlist the help of Han Solo (Ford) along with his Wookiee companion Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) to try to help the Rebel Alliance by rescuing her and bring freedom and justice to the galaxy. So as far as the three prequels went, they may have not been the best but I think they did a decent job at setting up this film. Very early on you can begin to see the difference between the more recent prequels and these films (or at least the first one), this could just be because of the difference in time and the lack of technology available at the time but I liked it better this way. I found the prequels to be very flashy with the action and the special effects but I much preferred the quieter moments which were few so I was happy that this film had more of those moments. Don’t get me wrong, the flashy stuff can be good at times but I felt like the prequels used this too much, almost trying too hard. I found the story in this film to be very compelling and easy to follow as it kept the number of uninteresting sub-plots to a minimum. What helped this were all of the performances from Hamill, Ford, Fisher, and Guinness. Hamill’s Luke was just so positive which was infectious but still had some naivety which came off as a little annoying. Ford’s Solo just exuded charisma and had great chemistry with everyone else. Fisher’s Leia was a bold, strong female character. Guinness. who was the best Obi-Wan in my opinion, was great and full of class. The special effects are what they are and they were good being primarily lightsabers and laser blasts. The music by John Williams is that of legend as it is excellent here as it seemed to complement the action on screen. Overall, this film was the first in the series (and also the first in the series) to put everything together performance-wise and story-wise. The opinion of the majority is of the prequels being inferior to the original trilogy and so far, I agree.
Score: 8/10
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The EIC of the coincidentally-named keithlovesmovies.com. A Canadian who prefers to get out of the cold and into the warmth of a movie theatre.