Star Wars: All 9 Skywalker Saga films ranked from worst to best
By Scott Brown
2. A New Hope
The film that started it all, a film that had everything riding against, a film that only got made because the president of 20th Century Fox at the time, Alan Ladd Jr., liked Lucas’ previous film American Graffiti. Yet here we are, forty-two years later, recounting the best Star Wars films. That is all thanks to Star Wars, later given the subtitle A New Hope.
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This film takes influences from around several different genres, and around the world and makes them its own. From westerns to samurai to Flash Gordon, A New Hope takes those influences and reinvents them. Because of that, A New Hope manages to introduce its entire cast of characters in fun, familiar ways that still feel entirely different from all of its influences. The tropes are there, but they feel different because it subverts and allows the characters to build naturally out of the surrounding world. That’s the key to this film’s success; not the plot, but the characters. The characters, and the groundbreaking effects, are why this film stays in the public consciousness. Darth Vader, Han Solo, Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Chewbacca, R2-D2, C-3P0, each and every one of these characters are and will forever be in the public lexicon because of this film.
There are admittedly some wonky things present here, such as wooden acting and gaffes that would be ridiculed endlessly if made today, but that’s part of the charm of the film. Despite everything working against it, the Star Wars franchise is a juggernaut today, and it’s all thanks to the original film.