A Thousand Stars: Episode IV, Part 1

[matril]

I will always be a little sad that I was too young to experience the first Star Wars film in the theater. I can only imagine how astonishing it was for audiences who associated sci-fi movies with hokey special effects or slow, ponderous scenes.

It's pure cinematic storytelling. After a brief opening crawl sets up the evil galactic empire versus a tiny band of rebels, we see the Rebel ship flit across the screen. Followed by this. And this. It just goes on and on.

It's more than setting up a small ship next to a big ship. The positioning of the camera, the steady relentless motion of the Star Destroyer, and the pounding thunderous soundtrack all combine to create an unforgettable shot. It's quite brilliant. Even as we're dropped into a vast, unfamiliar setting that will contain starships, robots, fabricated worlds and terminology, we have a solid line to follow as illustrated by the universal language of visual storytelling. Little underdog versus big bad guy. The narrative continues along that line through the entire film.

Next, more unmistakable imagery...

Comments

[krpalmer]

With a good idea of how your Episode IV coverage would start, I spent a little time myself pondering how its opening would have come across for those first audiences and what they would have compared it to. I once saw a comment from SF author Norman Spinrad that Star Trek reruns had provided the mental preparation to accept "starships in space" straight off, although Spinrad having written a Star Trek episode can get me thinking "of course he'd want to play up the earlier series..." I suppose, too, Star Trek's original TV special effects hadn't impressed me all that much when I did see them.

There's a short "video essay" about the storytelling clarity of this movie that also makes your point about the first shot setting up the "little versus big" theme.