The Science Fiction “Hardness” Chronicles Part One: Star Wars

So what makes it worth watching?

As much as George Lucas’ very uneven prequel trilogy has tarnished Star Wars’ reputation, the original trilogy, and in this case the original film, are both fantastic pieces of science fiction and fantastic films. While the science leans more toward fantasy than actual science, it is consistent throughout A New Hope (and The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.)

Lucas sets his rules and sticks to them; the Force lives around and through everything, space travel, blasters and lightsabers work in certain ways and only those certain ways, and the Death Star is a terrifying weapon of mass destruction on an unparalleled scale.

The planets are beautifully thought out and shot. Tatooine and the moon of Yavin IV both look and feel like different locations; while humans are present, they are far from the only species around, and what is shown of alien culture feels authentically different. The bar scene, in addition to giving the world that insufferably memorable background music, has seven or eight conversations going on between people of quite a few different species. They talk, they drink, they perform, they make the monumentally bad decision to threaten someone under the care of a Jedi. They have lives beyond scene, and when our famous heroes blast their way to freedom in the Millennium Falcon, they do not simply cease to exist.

From the bar’s patrons to the bizarrely robot-racist bartender to the person who buys Luke Skywalker’s speeder for a steal because it is an obsolete model, Tatooine reads as a living, breathing place, making the dubious science of it all easy to suspend disbelief of. The same goes for the Death Star and the rebel base. Improbable as a moon-sized planet-killing space station and anything shaped like an X-Wing might be, they are treated as being viable, working things in Star Wars’ galaxy. Tiny robots guide platoons of Storm Troopers through the Death Star, and the X-Wing technicians look and act like they know what they are doing. As with Tatooine, the unbelievable is treated with respect and an appropriate level of seriousness, and so becomes believable.

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