The Magic of Movies: A Star Wars Exegesis, Part Four

The cantina is a masterpiece of puppetry for making mood; it sure would be a shame if someone were to slap godawful CG all over it. I love how dank and smokey it is, and I love that there’s one guy who’s just a devil. There are so many great designs in this room alone; I’m pretty sure all of them get expanded upon in the EU – I know the dude that looks like a hammerhead shark crossed with a snail shows up in both Knights Of The Old Republic and Galaxy of Terror, a kids series essentially replicating the Goosebumps tone, if not its formula. It’s great that we meet Chewbacca before Han Solo, because a) it implies Chewie is the face of the two and b) he doesn’t stand out from this crowd despite being an anthropomorphic dog. Some guy picking a fight with the hero in a bar for no reason is a very standard trope, particularly in Westerns, and it’s pretty boss for this to end with the dude getting his arm chopped off; establishing Obi-Wan’s badass credentials, obviously. 

Negotiations between Han and Obi-Wan are great; Alec Guiness’s bemused indifference (“Should I have?”) is probably his most entertaining performance across three movies. This also has Han’s infamous boast about beating the Kessel Run within twelve parsecs, which is a unit of time, not distance. I understand there’s an EU explanation for this, but I accept that Lucas may not have known or cared what the hell he was talking about. Marsha Lucas cuts into close-ups pretty quick to convey the intimacy of the conversation.

Luke interrupts and arguably almost ruins the negotiations; I enjoy that Obi-Wan deliberately spills his desperation by offering considerably more than he was asked, and obviously it works. The interesting thing about Han is that reaction to him genuinely seems split across gender lines; male fans think him a badass, female fans think him a goofball – one Tumblr post refers to him as a tabletop game character who put all his points in Charisma but keeps rolling low, which is another way of saying Harrison Ford is charming enough to overcome the dorkiness of the writing. This is another consequence of the movie being written at a child’s level; Han is a young boy’s idea of a cool guy, petulant and cocky. A more sophisticated mind would recognise desperation means risk.

This leads us to the infamous Han and Greedo scene. There are two fundamental flaws with Lucas’s edit here to have Han shoot second. The first and less important is that Greedo literally has his gun pointed right at Han. Like, that’s the point – he’s got Han at point-blank range – so the effects team are forced to have the bolt come out at a weird angle. The second is that, in the original scene, Han is a badass who is not only quick on the draw but willing to fight dirty, because he’s a loveable rogue who flaunts expected rules of behaviour. Have Han shoot second and, uh, what’s the point of the moment? Sure, we establish that Han is taking the risky venture because he’s deep in debt and risking having his legs broke, but what’s the point of the violence then?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we get another plot-moving scene – I’m surprised how many short scenes like this there actually are in this movie. I want to draw attention to Peter Cushing as by far the best actor in the movie – not slumming it like Alec Guiness, presumably because he’s been in a million movies like this. I enjoy how rigid and thoughtful he is as Tarkin; he’s always calculating. I’m leaning towards Tarkin being the true main villain of Star Wars.

The scene of the stormtroopers searching house-to-house and not checking one because it’s, uh, locked is one of the sillier moments in the film – admittedly, it reflects the stormtroopers as Nazis (who were never known as the most competent strategists), but I suspect this is an unintentional reflection of Lucas being a bit sloppy. Most of the time, I’m willing to embrace the reality of the movie, but moments like this are where I simply accept the goofy mood of the thing.

Obi-Wan and Luke sell the speeder to pay for the trip; they’re followed by a guy in a goofy-looking mask. Believe it or not, that is actually a mask in-universe; it was correctly realised that scenes explaining this were unnecessary, so unfortunately we have an ugly effect in the movie. Luckily, it’s not that distracting and doesn’t really matter.

Apparently, there is a deleted scene that would fit in here in which Jabba appears and talks to Han. It would be entirely extraneous, require effects that were impossible in 1977 (and would look terrible done in CG from 1997), and would make Jabba look really stupid – both in the sense of looking not smart, and in the sense of making him funny rather than funny-scary as he is in Return Of The Jedi. Perhaps worst of all, it might lead to a myth that Jabba was originally human rather than simply using a human stand-in for Ford to react to. It’s really great that it was left on the cutting room floor, huh?

“What a piece of junk!” is one of my favourite famous lines from this film; the concept of something looking like crap but being extremely sophisticated is up there with Golden Eras and found families in terms of popular themes, and it’s one that I personally am a huge mark for. What is Star Wars, if not the ultimate ‘piece of junk’ made from the ugly flotsam of kitsch media stitched together with a powerful story engine?

The stormtrooper attack is a classic example of the infamous stormtrooper marksmanship. Han is a big, dumb, slow-moving target; they begin by opening fire as soon as they see him, and we see bolts flying all around him without ever hitting him. On the other hand, the footage of the ship taking off totally rules, because models are inherently cool; it overcomes the fact that the scene is mostly a deluge of technobabble said very quickly.

Tarkin and Leia start trading barbs as his way of warming up to destroying her home planet. One of the great strengths of this movie is pulling what Kurt Vonnegut referred to as “starting the story as close to the end as possible”; there is a lot of exposition, but most of it is scaffolding for the current emotion. Tarkin and Leia already have a strong history, and things are already in motion. Our imagination fills in those gaps very easily, understanding everyone is already in a desperate position. 

Tarkin blowing up Alderaan is a classic villain move; his quip to Vader that ‘she can be reasonable’ is such a queen bitch thing to say. I’m more inclined to think Tarkin the true villain of this movie; blowing up a planet is a great way to convey to a child that this is the villain ironically because they’re too young to understand how gruesome an act of mass murder it is. I think if the act had been more realistic and low-key, it would probably actually come off more tasteless to me as an adult. Blowing up a planet is a fairy tale level of evil, like turning boys into donkeys.

And needless to say, the effect itself is extremely cool.