All of the best tales we remember from our childhoods had to do with heroes setting out to travel down roads filled with danger, and hoping to find treasure or heroism at the journey's end. The movie relies on the strength of pure narrative, in the most basic storytelling form known to man, the Journey. No, I think the key to "Star Wars" is more basic than that.
The effects are good, yes, but great effects have been used in such movies as " Silent Running" and " Logan's Run" without setting all-time box-office records. The movie works so well for several reasons, and they don't all have to do with the spectacular special effects. "Star Wars" taps the pulp fantasies buried in our memories, and because it's done so brilliantly, it reactivates old thrills, fears, and exhilarations we thought we'd abandoned when we read our last copy of Amazing Stories. The hardware is from " Flash Gordon" out of " 2001: A Space Odyssey," the chivalry is from Robin Hood, the heroes are from Westerns and the villains are a cross between Nazis and sorcerers. The golden robot, lion-faced space pilot, and insecure little computer on wheels must have been suggested by the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow in " The Wizard of Oz." The journey from one end of the galaxy to another is out of countless thousands of space operas. "Star Wars" is a fairy tale, a fantasy, a legend, finding its roots in some of our most popular fictions. Instead, there's entertainment so direct and simple that all of the complications of the modern movie seem to vaporize. But there's hardly any violence at all in "Star Wars" (and even then it's presented as essentially bloodless swashbuckling). Maybe movies that scare us find the most direct route to our imaginations. It's usually violence that draws me so deeply into a movie - violence ranging from the psychological torment of a Bergman character to the mindless crunch of a shark's jaws. What makes the "Star Wars" experience unique, though, is that it happens on such an innocent and often funny level. The movie's happening, and it's happening to me. My list of other out-of-the-body films is a short and odd one, ranging from the artistry of " Bonnie and Clyde" or " Cries and Whispers" to the slick commercialism of " Jaws" and the brutal strength of " Taxi Driver." On whatever level (sometimes I'm not at all sure) they engage me so immediately and powerfully that I lose my detachment, my analytical reserve.
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