Forty years ago, screens of cinemas around the world got full of action, science fiction and fantasy with the premier of the STAR WARS movie, the one that the world would later know as Star Wars, Episode IV: A New Hope. It told us a story that despite the fact of being extremely futuristic, his creator did not set it as happening in a distant future but in a long forgotten past in a galaxy far away from here.
This review intends to celebrate the 40 years of the beginning of one of the best trilogies of all time and present a personal point of view of why this first trilogy of films ; A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi is so beloved among the fans and why it couldn´t be matched by its prequel trilogy and it doesn´t seem as if it could be matched by its sequel whose first episode was released two years ago. That is also, why I must warn you that this text contains spoilers of the whole trilogy and small details of the other two, nevertheless, if you are like more or less the 95% of the people in what we call "civilized world" you have already seen this first trilogy and my little spoilers will not be a problem.
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STAR WARS; Episode 4: A New hope... ... told us the story of Luke Skywalker, a leading hero that in my opinion, was not even closely matched by Anakin Skywalker (his father) in the prequels that were released later and I don´t think judging for what we know so far that he could ever be matched by Rey (in the sequels to come) because of a simple fact: The three leading heroes: Luke, Anakin and Rey are desperate to find their path in life, but only Luke is desperate to follow the path of a hero. This is not something that is necessarily implied in the dialogues, but something we feel along the movies. Anakin and Rey are desperate to understand the world around them, and in this sense they are not different to most people nowadays, but Luke wants to know if something can be done to help. Yoda says that Luke is always looking " to the future, to the horizon", and even when he says it as a reprimand, this quote also implies that Luke thinks that the world can go better than it usually does in the present state of things.
Anakin was in theory the "Chosen One", Luke chose himself among two possible choices of redemption for the galaxy, even when he didn´t know at first that "there was another one". George Lucas has confirmed that Anakin was the Chosen One and that the prophesy is true, because as Darth Vader, Anakin destroyed the Sith that in that point were the Emperor and himself (in Return of the Jedi) , but IMO, that means that Anakin, or Darth Vader is only the Chosen One from a very technical point of view, as it was really Luke and the Rebellion who defeated them and if Darth hadn´t saved Luke from the Emperor, they would have nevertheless most probably perished with the destruction of the second Death Star, being most of the merit LUKE´S!
Now, besides being Luke a more likable hero that both of his counterparts (Anakin and Rey) and having given the main reasons to think why this is so in the last paragraph, I think that this first Star Wars trilogy did something that no other movie franchise has ever done, being the closest achievement that of the Matrix trilogy: It presents universal teachings and wisdom in a non-segregative format. Its teachings could well belong to Christianity, Buddhism, Shinto, Islam, Wicca or even some martial arts like Aikido or Karate and nevertheless these teachings are not necessarily linked to any of them; it was the first time that we saw a movie that tried to merge all the wisdom from different cultures and present a kind of "Universal Wisdom". And that is, in my opinion, more than the great visual effects, its amazing Light Sabers or its interesting characters why this movie and the next two conforming the first trilogy will always be so important ; because of its philosophical value: they gave us a story that tried to synthesize teachings from a lot of religions and cultures and present them in a simple and amusing way.
Thanks for reading.
IMDb Review written by David del Real.
Mexico City. México
December 15th, 2017.
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