While they reviewed slightly different versions, they both came to the conclusion that Star Wars is a great movie based on similar criteria. They judged Costar Wars’ on its ability to draw on classic styles and timeless stories to create something new and absolutely original. The main factor in both of their positive reviews is the skill of writer and director George Lucas to blend the old with the new. They were both impressed with his miraculously fresh configuration of many different themes from classic film and mythic origin into a cohesive and entertaining movie.
He has achieved a witty and exhilarating synthesis of themes and cliches from the Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comics and serials, plus such related but less expected sources as the western, the pirate melodrama, the aerial combat melodrama and the samurai epic. The movie’s irresistible stylistic charm derives from the fact that Lucas can draw upon a variety of action-movie sources with unfailing deftness and humor He is in superlative command of his own movie-nurtured fantasy life. Gary Arnold, Washington Post Staff Writer Mr..
Rottenest along the same lines as Mr.. Arnold, mentions that With plot line of Star Wars follows the mythic architecture outlined by Joseph Campbell in his study of myth, “The Hero with a Thousand Paces,” Which has influenced Mr.. Lucas. ‘ Another aspect, unique to Rotisserie’s review of the new Special Edition but not quite different from Arnold’s assessment, is the way in Which the movie celebrates the past and not the future. This aspect of јStar Wars’, Rottenest says, is what Decrease out in opposition to the high-budget, high-tech, special. Effect spectaculars that it (Star Wars) spawned. This is where, Rottenest says, that Star Wars’ gets its authenticity. The whimsical remarkableness is actually meant to be a sign of the heroes’ authenticity: what is older is more powerful… Technology, when it appears in Star Wars,’ is evil, ghastly, massive and brutish… “Advanced” invention is most evident in the space ships of the evil Empire. Edward Rottenest, Movie Critic, New York Times This “remarkableness” that Rottenest speaks of keeps the movie afloat by not sacrificing the story tort special effects.
The special effects complement the vie, but do not carry it, This is where Rottenest says that so many recent movies have failed. Arnold, unable to see into the future, was Linkable to evaluate the movie in this vagary He hadn’t the chance to see how badly Hollywood would try to imitate Star Wars’, thinking its appeal lay more in its Suspects and quick jolts, rather than from the mythic significance with Vichy they were injected. ‘ Hollywood never grasped fully the lesson taught by Star Wars’. Both Rottenest and Arnold believe that this lesson is what makes Instars Wars’ so great.
