YMMV / A New Hope

Tropes that pertain to the 1977 movie:

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• Adorkable: Luke's naïveté and very 1970s shag hairstyle endeared him to the audience.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • People have noted that the Death Star gunner lingered on Yavin IV despite having a firing solution for some time. ("Stand by.... Stand by....") They believed that the gunner might have had an attack of conscience and was deliberately delaying in the off-chance that someone might stop him from destroying the Rebel base. This interpretation gave rise to the character Tenn Graneet in the Legends novel Death Star.
  • Before the release of the Prequel Trilogy, Uncle Owen was always portrayed as a grumpy, controlling man, determined to keep Luke on the farm as cheap labor, absolutely unconcerned with Luke's dreams of travel and adventure. After the Prequels, he's more likely to be portrayed as a grounded, normal man trying to protect his nephew from forces (or rather Forces) that would endanger him, and trying to give him a safe, quiet life on the farm.
    • Thanks to Obi-Wan Kenobi, he's now a devoted father who resents never having a chance to know his stepbrother and who is desperate to keep his son away from Anakin's life of adventure and romance, which got him killed as far as Owen knows.
    • Also from events in the series, maybe Owen and Beru assumed the worst, that the Imperial Troopers were sent to kill Luke, not to find the droids. So the couple put up another fight and a Heroic Sacrifice for Luke.
  • Vader is able to sense Obi-Wan's presence onboard the Death Star, but not his exact location (at least at first, since he eventually comes out right in Obi-Wan's path). Did Obi-Wan's Psychic Block Defense fail? Or did Obi-Wan deliberately let Vader sense him so as to draw him off from Luke and Leia?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: During Obi-Wan's lightsaber battle with Darth Vader, he calls him "Darth" as if that was his first name. This was the writers' intention at the time, but now that we know "Darth" is a title and not a given name, some viewers interpreted this as Obi-Wan calling him that sarcastically. After Obi-Wan Kenobi, it now has a more tragic meaning; Vader insists That Man Is Dead as he killed Anakin, but Obi-Wan either still can't bear to call him by his new name, or won't out of passive-aggressive spite, only acknowledging his title. Thanks to Guinness's wry delivery here, we have more layers of what Obi-Wan was really trying to say than we did forty years ago.
• And You Thought It Would Fail:
  • Multiple studios (including Universal Pictures, United Artists and Disney (who ironically purchased the rights over 3 decades later)) turned the film proposal down and most of the management of 20th Century Fox (which would later also be purchased by Disney) outside of Alan Ladd Jr. thought it would be a final embarrassment before Fox closed its doors. After the film exploded into the public consciousness, everyone else changed their tune saying this film was the kind of unorthodox creative dare that company founder, Darryl Zanuck, often won big with.
  • There were exceptions, such as Peter Cushing, who'd been in enough genre films that were also dismissed beforehand but proved successful, that he knew this would be a hit, if nothing else than with kids.
  • Eventually, it was averted when the largely finished film was screened for the marketing department: they were positively giddy. When the people responsible for selling the film are reacting that well, you can know they are confident that the public would respond well to their efforts.
  • As noted on the trivia page, Mark Hamill has a story about seeing the trailer to A New Hope in theaters: after the concluding narration "One billion years in the making, and it's coming to your galaxy this summer!" a wisecracking audience member heckled, "Yeah, and it's coming to late-night TV six weeks after that!" His prophecy, of course, turned out to be completely incorrect.
• Angst? What Angst?:
  • Luke gets over Owen's and Beru's deaths pretty easily, making his reaction to Obi-Wan's death rather unusual. Averted in the novelization, in which he weeps after discovering the carnage, and even his Heroic BSoD over Obi-Wan only lasts through part of one scene (also in the novelization Leia tells Han off for ignoring Obi-Wan's death by ordering Luke to the laser turret, only for Han to retort "The old man died to give us a chance to escape. You going to waste that, kid?"). The popular explanation is that Luke was swept up by the swift events of the story and couldn't process it all until after the Battle of Yavin when he could process it in private with his friends.
  • Princess Leia doesn't seem as bothered by the destruction of her home planet as you'd expect, or her Cold-Blooded Torture at the hands of Darth Vader. This gets explored in the 2015 Marvel Star Wars comics, in particular Star Wars: Princess Leia: Leia feels personally responsible for the destruction of her homeworld and her parents' deaths, but can't show it, especially with no surviving family or close friends to confide in (she just barely met Luke and Han). Meanwhile, the Rebel rank and file think she's a cold-blooded Ice Queen, while the leadership won't allow her out of their sight to put herself in any more danger.
  • In retrospect, Owen and Beru are a little too glib about Luke acting like, in Beru's opinion, his father. "He has too much of his father in him" should have been met with a look of horror, not a smile. This is because Luke's father wasn't intended to be Vader at this point - he really was just someone who followed the Call to Adventure by becoming a Jedi. In-universe, it can be explained that Owen and Beru almost certainly don't know that Anakin became Vader. Even Obi-Wan didn't learn it until ten years after leaving Anakin on Mustafar, and may never have told Owen and Beru.
• Award Snub:
  • Many fans see it losing the Academy Award for Best Picture to Annie Hall as this, and regard it as a case of the Academy looking down upon science fiction and fantasy films. Both are widely considered to be fantastic and influential movies though, and quite a few Star Wars fans even regard Annie Hall as the one film they were okay with losing to, given that it's about as different to the usual Oscar Bait films as A New Hope was.
  • Quite a few see Alec Guinness losing Best Supporting Actor to Jason Robards in Julia as this. Ironically Guinness came to hate the fame he gained purely for playing Obi-Wan Kenobi.
  • One of Harrison Ford's most popular and most endearing performances, and he failed to received a Best Supporting Oscar nod.
  • In a Meta sense, Star Wars marked the point where the highest-grossing movies stopped being nominated for top awards. Before Star Wars, at least 3 of the 5 Best Picture Nominees would have been top-five box office hits. After Star Wars, and continuing through the rest of the 20th century, top box office blockbusters were a bigger rarity in Best Picture nominations, specially those fitting in the action and adventure mold of Star Wars (biggest exceptions being Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. and The Fugitive). The 21st century had it even worse, with only The Lord of the Rings trilogy making it to Best Picture until the category was expanded to more than 5 movies - to the point a sci-fi epic, a sci-fi thriller and a cartoon managed to land nominations.
• Catharsis Factor: The destruction of the Death Star is immensely satisfying, considering they just murdered an entire planet. Even better, Tarkin refuses to evacuate despite being warned repeatedly and gets destroyed along with it. Though, the prisoners and personnel who had private reservations about the destruction of Alderaan do put a damper in this to some.
• Common Knowledge:
  • A borderline case: one of the complaints about the Jabba scene that was added in from the 1997 Special Edition onwards was that it was needless in light of the earlier Greedo scene, after the Jabba scene was deemed unusable. However, the originally-filmed scene with Jabba still has him asking Han why he killed Greedo: this is because the Greedo scene was intended to dovetail with the Jabba scene. After the Jabba scene was cut (as the idea to overlay stop-motion effects onto Jabba proved unfeasible), its necessary exposition was worked into the subtitles for Greedo's alien dialogue. So while it's true that the Greedo scene was altered to stand alone after Lucas realized the Jabba scene couldn't be included, both scenes were intended to be in the original film, as most deleted scenes are.
  • Similarly people cite Han's closing line in that scene "Jabba, you're a wonderful human being." as being an Orphaned Reference to Jabba originally being planned to be an human, and use it as evidence that the scene should've remained deleted. Except, Declan Mulholland was only ever intended to be a stand-in to give Harrison Ford and the modeling team a frame of refrence for Jabba’s movements, with Jabba always planned to be an alien creature. This means even when the scene was filmed back in 1976, Han was being a Deadpan Snarker with that line, rather than the continuity error fans treat it as.
  • There is a persistent belief among fans that Lucas broke a Director's Guild of America rule by not including opening credits for the film (believing that they would disrupt the excitement of the opening), but that the DGA did not consider him big enough to bother going after, as Star Wars was not expected to be anything more than an unremarkable B-movie, so they let it slide... until a then-much-more-famous Lucas did it again in The Empire Strikes Back, whereupon the DGA fined him $250,000, leading to him ultimately leaving the DGA altogether. In reality, Lucas did not break any rules by not including opening credits in A New Hope, and numerous other movies have - and had - foregone them as well without controversy (Citizen Kane and West Side Story (1961) are two of the more well known examples). However, the DGA did have a rule that stipulated that any film that included a credit in the film's opening (including a recognizable part of a name) had to also credit the director in the same sequence. Unfortunately for Lucas, he included a splash card after the 20th Century Fox logo for each movie that included the phrase, "A Lucasfilm Limited Production". Since "Lucasfilm" contained Lucas's name, that would trigger the DGA rule. It didn't apply to A New Hope, since Lucas was the director, but in Empire, Lucas opted to hand the director's chair over to Irvin Kirshner, resulting in the mandatory credit rule coming into effect. Since Kirshner wasn't credited and hadn't officially waived his right to be credited, Lucas got hit with the fine, resulting in him resigning the DGA out of annoyance at the ruling.
• Complete Monster: Grand Moff Tarkin is a ruthless Imperial officer, and one of the Emperor's top agents. While in command of the Death Star, he has Princess Leia tortured and, even after being provided with (what he assumed was) the information he wanted, forces her to witness the destruction of her homeworld of Alderaan, killing billions of innocent people despite having no need to do so.
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Obi-Wan cutting off a thug's arm is pretty horrific—until the other patrons return to their drinks seconds later, as if it's Tuesday.
  • The destruction of Alderaan. Having a highly populated planet blown up? Grade-A Moral Event Horizon. Ordering its destruction with the same casual tone like one asking a subordinate to take out the trash? Darkly funny.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Porkins is only on-screen for about a minute before being blown to smithereens, but is probably the most popular background character in the movie.
  • Wedge Antilles (one of the only surviving pilots of the Battle of Yavin) got a relatively minor amount of screen time, yet became popular enough to bring back in the rest of the series, helping lead the fight against the second Death Star in Return of the Jedi. He was also going to have a Face Death with Dignity scene at the start of The Force Awakens until Denis Lawson declined to return and it was given to a new character. He also got a more prominent role in Expanded Universe works, particularly in the ''Legends'' continuity.
  • Pretty much all of Red and Gold Squadrons. For a bunch of redshirts, they have pretty memorable lines, and are guaranteed to tug at your heartstrings when they die.
  • The Mos Eisley Cantina denizens. In the actual film they're basically set pieces instead of characters, but they did their job in the narrative—giving the viewer an impression of just how diverse and alien the galaxy is—so well that most of them have received extensive backstories in the Legends continuity. It also helps a large number of them were made by Rick Baker.
  • The Stormtrooper who hit his head on the bottom of a door on the Death Star.
• Fanon: Tarkin wears slippers. In the film, Grand Moff Tarkin is only ever filmed from the waist up, the reason being that Peter Cushing's costume shoes were too uncomfortable, and he insisted on wearing slippers instead. Fans have embraced the idea that Tarkin was somewhat lax when it came to uniform shoes, at least for himself, and no one ever commented on it.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Many fans ignore how Greedo was made to shoot first when he confronts Han Solo in the Special Editions, since the change contradicts Han's character (and it's difficult to see how he could've avoided a gunshot from that close).
• Fight Scene Failure: The lightsaber duel between Obi-Wan and Darth Vader is rather awkward to watch, even compared to the fights within the other films of the trilogy and especially those of the prequel and sequel trilogies. It was a result of the original lightsaber props being very heavy to hold, yet so fragile that they were constantly broken (the blades, instead of being plain rods whose visuals were entirely rotoscoped on during post-production like in later films, were actually rods spinning in place through motors in the hilts and covered in reflective material; this produced a glow on camera even before tweaking in post-production, but limited the amount of blade contact). In-story, it's handwaved as a combo of Obi-Wan's advanced age and being out of practice, and Vader knowing he didn't have to waste time going full throttle on Obi-Wan.
  • This hasn't stopped modern fan-made reimaginings, such as Scene 38 Remastered, which turns it into an epic, brutal battle.
• First Installment Wins: While many feel The Empire Strikes Back is better, the original Star Wars is widely considered the gamechanger in the film industry, kicking off The Blockbuster Age of Hollywood alongside Jaws. It is the most successful film in the series accounting for inflation, it had the biggest gross of the Special Edition releases, and Star Wars parodies usually take most of their inspiration from A New Hope. It also has the highest score of any of the Star Wars movies on Metacritic at 92, even beating out The Empire Strikes Back, which fans usually consider the best in the series. It won the most Oscars of any Star Wars film, winning 6, and the only time any of these movies got Best Picture and Best Director nominations. Likewise, both of Disney's Anthology films, Rogue One and Solo are in effect prequels to this film, separate from the actual prequels by Lucas, which still makes it the most important and constantly revisited film of the franchise, and the most influential.
• Genre Turning Point: This film really changed the film industry. It cemented the concept of the Summer Blockbuster, and was one of the first films to rely on special effects. It rejuvenated cinematic science fiction, which was previously the domain of cheap B-Movie exploitation flicks.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: When the film was first screened in Japan, Alan Ladd Jr. was beside himself with the audience watching in near-complete silence. However, his local contacts reassured him that it was a very encouraging sign since Japanese audiences often act that way watching a film they really liked. The big box office numbers in that country were enough to convince Ladd of that.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Beru comments that Luke is like his father lightheartedly, while Owen mutters he fears that. Less than a day later, they get killed on Vader's orders, and in the sequel Vader is revealed to be Luke's father and Owen's stepbrother (a development that hadn't been conceived when this film was written). Yeah, very poor choice of words.
  • The Ship Teases between Luke and Leia in this movie and the first half of The Empire Strikes Back get a whole lot Squickier after the Leia, I Am Your Brother plot twist in Return of the Jedi. This has made them infamous among fans.
  • Han's dismissive treatment of Obi-Wan would seem Hilarious in Hindsight since in The Force Awakens, he becomes The Mentor himself, until we see he dies from Mentor Occupational Hazard, too, at the hands of Obi-Wan's own namesake.
  • When she's brought to Grand Moff Tarkin, Leia humorously tells him, "I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash." In Return of the Jedi, Leia is enslaved by Jabba the Hutt, which involves being put on a literal leash. On the other hand, the film's further revelation that she's Vader's daughter actually makes it a bit amusing.
  • The infamous shot of a stormtrooper hitting his head on a door (when the troopers enter the station in which Artoo and 3PO are hiding), was pretty amusing for audiences, even receiving an audible "clunk" sound in the special edition. The actor ended up with severe head injuries for his trouble.
  • When Obi-wan first gives Anakin Skywalker's lightsaber to Luke, the two of them show a hilarious disregard for basic safety with the weapon, to the point where the scene's adaptation in LEGO Star Wars spoofed it by having Luke accidentally take C-3PO's head off. Decades later, Mark Hamill remarked that one of the ways he got into character to play Luke again in The Last Jedi was to imagine that Luke had a child accidentally kill themself playing with Luke's lightsaber.
  • Palpatine dissolving the Imperial Senate off-screen prior to the Death Star Conference scene. In the context of the film's original release, it's exposition meant to establish the astropolitical status quo and the Emperor's final consolidation of power with the Death Star's completion. But now with the Prequel Trilogy and interquel projects like Star Wars: The Bad Batch and Andor, that exposition takes on a much different and tragic context now that we've actually seen the Galactic Senate in action and the underlying corruption and institutional decay that Palpatine exploited to transform the Republic into a legalized autocracy.
  • Rogue One reveals that there are multiple settings for the Death Star's superlaser. So Tarkin could've ordered the station to merely peel off a large chunk of Alderaan's crust and put its people in a difficult bargaining situation, but no, he decides that the best way to "reward" Leia for the location of the Rebel base is to just obliterate the entire planet.
  • Also, Rogue One revealed that the knowledge of the long-mocked exhaust port that single-handedly led to the Death Star's destruction involved a lot of sweat and blood.
  • Vader shooting R2 in the trench battle has become this after the prequel trilogy shows that R2 had served both Anakin and Padmé throughout the Republic era (and had even served a similar role to Anakin during the Battle of Naboo that he was serving to Luke here). Sure, Vader likely didn't recognize R2 when he fired, but it still stings a lot more post-1999.
  • Early in the film, Owen and Beru are shown to be apprehensive about Luke wanting to join the Imperial Academy as a fighter pilot, trying to justify wanting to keep him on Tatooine by claiming there's still more work on the moisture farm to be done. As Obi-Wan Kenobi would reveal, several Inquisitors arrived on the planet 9 years ago in an attempt to hunt former Jedi, and one of them attempted to kill Luke in his childhood. Thus, Owen and Beru come across less like fantasy forbidding parents and more like Well-Intentioned Extremists who are terrified of Luke being exposed to the brutality of the Galactic Empire. On a similar note, their willingness to defend Luke against even an Inquisitor in that series suggests that the brutality of their deaths in this film may have been an escalation, and that some of those Stormtroopers probably had to be carried from the homestead.
  • In the late 70s, Han's casual misogyny to Leia and her casual racism toward Chewie could fly. Forty years later, you'd be far less likely to get "this walking carpet" or Han's constant dismissal. On the other hand, Star Wars still has a massive droid problem and there appears to be no solution in sight.
  • The studio demanded Carrie Fisher go to a fat camp and lose weight for the film. She spent years struggling with an eating disorder as a result.
  Fisher: They wanted me to lose a pound here and a pound here [[left cheek, right cheek]].
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • Luke and C-3PO's bond throughout this film and the OT becomes more heartwarming once it was revealed in The Phantom Menace that Threepio was originally built by Anakin, making Luke and Threepio, in a sense, brothers.
  • By the same token, Luke's loyalty to R2-D2, saying that he's not willing to trade him in for a new droid because of how much they've been through together. R2-D2 saved Luke's mother when she wasn't much younger than he was during this movie, and his father had just as much of a bond with him. On the flip, R2-D2 knows exactly who Luke is, having never had his memory wiped. Luke may as well be an honorary nephew R2 finally gets to hang out with.
  • Owen in this movie is cold towards Obi-Wan and tells Luke the man can't be trusted. In Attack of the Clones, a younger Owen is polite to Anakin, shy when introducing Beru, and happy about having a stepbrother. It brings his coldness towards Obi-Wan into a new light. Owen loved Anakin and wanted a healthy relationship with him, but due to Anakin being a Jedi, that would never happen. No wonder he's fiercely protective of Luke, the last remnant of a man he met under sad circumstances and never saw again.
  • In regards to Rogue One, none of the members that stole the plans of the Death Star manages to survive the events of the movie, but with Luke managing to destroy the Death Star, it's heartwarming to know that Jyn and her crew's deaths were not in vain.
  • Peter Cushing enjoyed his role as Grand Moff Tarkin so much he regretted the fact that Tarkin dies, because it meant that he couldn't come back in another Star Wars film. In Rogue One, Tarkin returned as a major figure, with Cushing recreated via digital technology, so he did come back after all—and despite that recreation being a bit creepy, people are willing to give that one a pass, because in a way, warts and all, Disney fulfilled Cushing's last wishes in doing so.
  • For nearly two decades, the identity and past of Luke's mother was a complete unknown. The prequel trilogy answered that question, but Revenge of the Sith in particular showed in deleted scenes that Padme was one of the founders of the rebellion. While A New Hope focuses on Luke taking his first steps in following in his father's footsteps, it also marks the start of his journey to finish what his mother began. Leia did the same before the movie even started.
  • Obi-Wan's Jumped at the Call reaction to Leia's distress call is even more heartwarming after it's revealed that this isn't the first time he's had to drop everything and leave Tatooine to rescue her. It also explains why Leia is so excited when she hears that "Ben" Kenobi has arrived to free her.
  • The many scenes of Han finding Obi-Wan (who Luke often referred to as "Ben") annoying becomes this come The Force Awakens, where we learn that he and Leia named their son Ben after him. Since Leia never personally interacts with Obi-Wan in A New Hope (though her excitement when Luke tells her that he brought "Ben Kenobi" indicates that she knew both of his names) we can take this as Han showing gratitude to Obi-Wan. After all, Han and the others not only would have died if not for his Heroic Sacrifice, but he never would have met the love of his life if not for him.
    • Obi-Wan Kenobi reveals that Leia actually knew Obi-Wan since she was a little girl when he was sent to rescue her after she was kidnapped by the Empire, and they grew close during that time. So Leia too had a very personal reason to name their son in Obi-Wan's honor.
  • The performance of Alec Guinness during his exposition of the backstory of the galaxy before The Empire came to be is great on its own, with Guinness successfully delivering an optimistic, then solemn description of Anakin Skywalker and the Clone Wars. With the prequel trilogy showing this in detail, it really matches what Obi-Wan says (with some liberties), and this scene is just as convincing if one watched the prequel trilogy first. This video edit makes effective use of prequel trilogy footage and music woven into Obi-Wan's monologue.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: See the franchise page.
• Ho Yay: Han and Luke have a bit of chemistry and they bond easily despite the circumstances. When Han prepares to leave before the dogfight, Luke begs him to stay and Han offers to let the kid come with him. He saw someone lose his family and mentor in one day and says that it's not Luke's fight to die for the rebellion. Then there's the scene in the climax where he pulls a Big Damn Heroes and saves Luke from Vader, cheering when he gets a bullseye on a wingman. Aww, Han does care.
• Insistent Terminology: Some old-school fans refuse to acknowledge that the movie has any title but Star Wars.
• It Was His Sled: Considering this is the first work of a now-juggernaut of a franchise, there are many moments meant to be reveals that became well-known to practically anyone who knows anything about the series:
  • Old Ben actually refers to Obi-Wan. The character's ubiquity combined with a meme connected to this reveal make this a given to anyone watching.
  • Luke's father was a Jedi Knight like Obi-Wan, as Luke is now known as a Jedi Knight before anything else.
  • Darth Vader "killed" Luke's father, since it is directly tied to perhaps the best-known twist of the past half-century.
  • Darth Vader kills Obi-Wan Kenobi, as the older version of Obi-Wan is probably better known as a Force Ghost than in his living form.
• Love to Hate: In addition to Darth Vader, we have Grand Moff Tarkin, who is delightful in how smarmy and odious he is.
• Memetic Loser:
  • Greedo, after George Lucas edited his scene so that he shoots but misses Han Solo at point-blank range. Even LEGO got in on the fun with a Funny Background Event in Revenge of the Brick wherein Greedo repeatedly fails to hit a dartboard positioned only a few inches away from him.
  • Porkins, the fat pilot who dies near-instantly in the Death Star assault. Those 20 seconds of screentime have given him a greater cinematic legacy than most film protagonists will ever get.
• Memetic Mutation: Has its own page.
• Mis-blamed:
  • Darth Vader did not destroy Alderaan. Tarkin did. It's questionable whether Vader could have even stopped it; Tarkin was ostensibly his superior. Even some long-term fans actually forget this.
  • The wingman who flies on Vader's left somehow manages to escape blame for his flub. Han Solo only shot one of Vader's wingmen - the other one simply overreacted to Han's surprise attack and crashed his TIE Fighter into Vader's of his own accord. This is easy to miss with how fast it happens.
• Moral Event Horizon: Has its own page shared with the rest of the franchise.
• Narm: Has its own page.
• Narm Charm:
  • The movie's dialogue is wooden and very corny, but it's also considered one of the most endearing aspects of the film, to the point where almost all of the film's lines are instantly quotable meme fodder. It's deliberately written that way, as Lucas was trying to revive/create the quintessential dopey old Saturday afternoon space serial. The film was even nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Only when the sequels come along does it start to become an actual problem, rather than a charm point.
  • "I'm Luke Skywalker, I'm here to rescue you!" is a contender for one of the corniest lines in 20th-century cinema, but it works because we have gotten to know Luke and we know that he unironically means it to the core of his being.
• Never Live It Down: Has its own page shared with the rest of the franchise.
• Older Than They Think:
  • Ben Kenobi memorably sensing that "millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced" through the Force is strikingly similar to Spock hearing "the death scream of a hundred Vulcan minds crying out" through Vulcan telepathy in the Star Trek episode "The Immunity Syndrome," which aired in 1968, nine years prior to Star Wars.
  • Contrary to popular belief, Rogue One did not make Leia's claim to be on a diplomatic mission any more ridiculous. Deleted scenes from this movie have Darth Vader pointing out that they saw her ship fly right through the middle of the battle mentioned in the opening crawl, just as Rogue One eventually depicted. The acting in the scene between them on Tantive IV was always intended to convey her telling Blatant Lies and him being annoyed about it.
  • During the Scene on the Death Star where Han and Chewie are chased by stormtroopers, most people believed that the trooper's "Close the blast doors!" line was one of the many changes made for the Special Edition in 1997. In Reality, versions of the film with this line existed as early as 1977. This was because two different sound mixes were created for the film, one in stereo and one in mono. The mono mix featured several additional/alternate lines of dialouge and sound effects that were not present in the stereo mix. "Close the blast doors!" was one of them. Another example of this is the scene where C-3PO explains how the Death Star's tractor beam works. The reason these were believed to have not been added until the Special Edition was that the mono mix was never released on home video, so most people who grew up with the films in the 80s and 90s were only familiar with the stereo mix, and watching the Special Edition was the first time they saw these changes.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • The first lightsaber battle on screen between Vader and Obi-Wan is fairly stilted and even dull compared to the ones in the films to come.
    Vader: Your powers are weak, old man.
  • Han Solo is such an iconic character that it's easy to forget how refreshing he was in the year of its release. Where Lucas had the idea of doing a Genre Throwback and modeled all the hero and villain characters on common genre archetypes and stories, Han Solo was more or less an average '70s guy transplanted to outer space, and his cynical, skeptical, rebellious insouciance was an Out-of-Genre Experience with all the Magic Knight, Princesses, and Cyborgs, making him the most relatable character for many of the adults, who were unfamiliar with the geeky science-fiction/fantasy stuff. Han Solo's climactic Big Damn Heroes where he Changed My Mind, Kid was intended by Lucas to get the part of the audience who wouldn't otherwise be invested in Star Wars on board with his concept. Once Star Wars became mainstream and people readily identify with the story, Han, while still popular, tends to stick out less and indeed newer fans who come from the prequels lampshade Han Solo's Arbitrary Skepticism about the Force given that he would have known the Old Republic as a small child and Chewbacca knew Yoda, when at that time it was intended to Lampshade how stuffy and silly all the mumbo-jumbo Force would be to many of its audience.
  • A common refrain from people old enough to have seen the film upon its initial release is that it's simply not possible for anyone born afterwards to properly appreciate how much it changed everything about both movies and movie fandoms - or even fandom, full stop. Mostly because it invented movie fandom. The very idea of taking B-Movie serials as seriously with as much money and love devoted to it, and playing the stories straight rather than parodying it (as many within the crew initially assumed to Lucas' constant chagrin), started a revolution in taste by making nerd ideas mainstream.
  • It's also easy to overlook these days that this is a distinctly dirty, grungy movie, with Lucas insisting on every location feeling as much as possible like a place where people actually lived and worked, in stark contrast to the spotless, shiny setting typical in earlier sci-fi. This Used Future aesthetic quickly caught on with just about everyone else working in the genre.
• Retroactive Recognition: Michael Bell provided the dubbed voices for Vanden Willard and Jan Dodonna years before he become known for playing various characters in The Transformers, G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, The Smurfs (1981), and Voltron, and decades before his role as Raziel in the Legacy of Kain video games.
• Signature Scene: At this point, one can say the entire film, but specific ones:
  • The very first shot after the titles is one of the most-iconic scenes in all of cinema: first Leia's ship races past the camera, and then Vader's Star Destroyer not only dominates the shot due to its initial size, but the way in which it just keeps passing and passing overhead demonstrates that these spaceships are huge, and not little zippy things (those come later). Lucas later commented that he always knew if he could make this shot work properly, the audience would be in the palm of his hand for the rest of the film.
  • Vader's entrance and confrontation with Leia, which is an Establishing Character Moment for both, she's sassy and unafraid of a huge cyborg clad in an intimidating costume, while Vader is authoritative, intimidating, and imperious.
  • Luke Skywalker staring at Tatooine's twin sunset, which is one of the most important recurring images in the entire series, especially with the Force Theme in that scene. It's deeply resonant to anyone who's ever looked to the horizon and wondered what might be out there, what adventures and rich life experiences might be waiting for them just past the line where the familiar ends and the unknown begins.
  • The Mos Eisley cantina, with Obi-Wan, Luke, and Han's first encounter as well as Greedo confronting Han. And the vast array of bizarre aliens, showing the diversity and strangeness of the galaxy far, far away.
  • The destruction of Alderaan with the Death Star's laser.
  • Vader's first force choke, when he finds the "lack of faith" of a fellow Imperial disturbing.
  • The entire Death Star infiltration sequence, where Luke and Han meet Leia, have a chase through the hallways, into a trash compactor, and barely escape with the skin of their teeth, mostly for how the action communicates the characters and banter between the three, making them instantly Fire-Forged Friends.
  • Obi-Wan and Darth Vader's duel.
  • The final Space Battle of Yavin, and the destruction of the Death Star. Especially the moment when Han saves Luke, and Luke successfully makes the shot.
• Special Effect Failure: Inevitable, considering the film was produced on such a low budget and nobody expected it to be such a hit, and Lucas and ILM were practically inventing whole new fields of special effects technology, though many of the effects are shockingly good in spite of this.
  • The scene where Luke wistfully watches the Binary Suns set was accomplished by compositing a sunset, Redsun, with a sunrise, Whitesun. Great scene, but Whitesun is visibly rising in the closeup on the two stars, which sets off all kinds of problems with Artistic License – Space if you think about it. Did nobody think to run that clip backwards so the stars would be moving the same direction?
  • The infamous "Han Shot First" scene in the remastered editions. The digital editing isn't so great at convincing you that Greedo shot first, and Han's attempted "dodging" in post-2004 editions is particularly bad. It doesn't even look so much like "dodging" as much as it does "Greedo misses at point blank range."
  • A failure first seen in the special editions was the use of a (very poor) CGI Jabba the Hutt in one previously deleted scene, not to mention a new (only slightly less poor) one in 2004. Even 25 years later, Hutts still prove an effects behemoth that digital effects artists have yet to overcome.
  • During the trench run just before the "Use the Force Luke" line, one scene of the TIE Fighters flying into the camera uses a really poorly matted shot. Curiously, this was not fixed in any of the Special Editions.
  • One failure that was fixed in the 1997 special editions and onward; in the shot just after Vader's "I have you now!" line, freeze-framing will reveal that the TIE Fighter to the right of Vader is completely absent for two frames.
  • The Stormtrooper rifles were made from fully-functional British Sterling submachine guns, and fired "Hollywood blanks" to provide smoke and muzzle flash. During the gunfight across the chasm in the Death Star (where Leia kisses Luke before swinging across) the sound of the blank cartridges is heard when Leia takes a few shots, instead of the usual sound effect dubbed in.
  • There are also a few scenes (at least in earlier versions) where cartridge casings are being visibly ejected from the "blaster carbines".
  • As with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, in the unedited theatrical cut a number of shots featuring TIE Fighters have a faint silhouette of each model's garbage matte.
  • The two shots in which the pilots enter the trench. It's pretty obvious that they're the same shot reused twice. But it's so awesome you probably won't care.
  • During Obi-Wan's duel with Darth Vader, there's a brief shot where Obi-Wan's lightsaber prop isn't reflecting the set lights properly, and you can see the prop for the metal tube it is. The blue glow was added in the 2004 DVD release; however, the white core was left out for some reason, and remained absent until the 2019 Disney+ release.
  • Likewise, Darth Vader's lightsaber is missing its red glow as the blast door closes after Luke shoots the control panel in the original version. There's also a bit where the glow is still visible after the door closes, as if the blade got caught in it.
  • During the film's production, there were attempts to use front projection effects for a handful of the landspeeder scenes where Luke and Threepio are looking for Artoo, but they ended up looking so terrible that they were left on the cutting room floor.
  • Just before the TIE Fighter attack on the falcon, there's two instances of the ship being hit back to back...except instead of being the usual "shaking the set" effect (where the set itself is mechanically shaken), they just "vibrate" the focus of the image back and forth in a very unconvincing manner, exactly the same way a Pan and Scan effect would be done.
  • Fixed in the Special Editions onward, but in one scene, the only way they could conceal the wheels of Luke's landspeeder was to smear Vaseline on the camera lens, resulting in a giant orange blob seen under the speeder that was jokingly referred to as "the force field." Not for nothing is this pretty much the only "Special Edition" change that almost everyone agrees was for the best.
  • The original Alderaan explosion looked embarrassingly bad. First off, they didn't even attempt to make it look like the planet was actually exploding; they just abruptly jump cut from the planet to a random explosion. Second, the explosion doesn't really seem to line up with where the planet was in the prior shot. Third, and most glaring of all, the explosion effect is very obviously slowed down; they didn't overcrank the camera for the scene, so suddenly the frame rate takes an obvious dip. And on top of that, they clearly weld two explosion shots together, making the whole thing an utter mess and an eyesore to look at...and to rub salt in the wound, the Death Star's explosion looks perfectly fine! Although the Special Edition gets laughed at a lot for adding the ring effect to every explosion, it is worth mentioning that the effect for Alderaan was the only massive explosion effect that was completely tossed out in favor of a totally new one across the whole trilogy, and it generally looks a whole lot better than the original.
  • As the heroes are entering the hall for the award ceremony at the end of the film, it's obvious there are only three rebel soldiers standing on each side above the stairs while the rest of them are a matte painting. The entrance itself also wobbles visibly over the actual footage. The Special Edition replaces the matte painting with actual actors composited in.
  • When making their escape from Tatooine, Han says that he knows some maneuvers that'll help lose the Star Destroyers. However, when the Imperial ship fires on the Millennium Falcon, Han is clearly just pulling away slightly rather than doing any actual evasive manuever.
  • The technical limitations at the time meant that they couldn't do a good lightsaber activation or deactivation, as the effect for the blade extending was done by having the actor turn the prop away from the camera; note that around half of them are offscreen, and a lightsaber blade is never seen extending at the same speed twice. The ones where Luke is training with Obi-Wan aboard the Millennium Falcon are particularly obvious cuts, given how Luke's pose noticeably changes between frames.
  • In some shots, David Prowse's eyes can be visible through the lenses of Darth Vader's mask.
  • In the Special Edition and following versions, extra bit characters (like stormtroopers) were composited in. Some of these are rather obvious, due to differences in lighting or perspective from the original.
  • Luke's reunion with Biggs before the Death Star run is restored in the Special Edition, albeit with a small cut to remove an older pilot's mention of how he met Luke's father as a kid, shortening his line to a simple "You'll do alright." While the cut is masked by a Rebel passing by in the foreground, what keeps it from being totally seamless is the droids in the background. Most blatantly, R2-D2's elevation into the X-Wing skips a few inches.
• Stoic Woobie: Leia. She is kidnapped, tortured, and Forced to Watch as her entire planet is destroyed, killing everyone she loved. Despite this, she doesn't shed a tear throughout the whole film. She even goes out of her way to comfort Luke, who's more upset at losing a mentor he barely knew than the deaths of the aunt and uncle who raised him.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: This is many fans' reaction to the Special Edition, particularly the Greedo Shot First scene. Tellingly, whereas many fans will now agree that the backlash to the Special Editions was in retrospect a bit overblown and would probably never even have been an issue had the theatrical versions still stayed in circulation, Greedo's shooting first is still the one change that seemingly everybody agrees was a bad idea.
• Unfortunate Character Design: Ponda Baba is supposed to be a walrus man, but his tusks' fleshy textures and not clearly looking like tusks end up making it look like he has a human butt for a mouth. Later Aqualish (Ponda's species) character designs would try to mitigate this (while staying recognizable) by giving clearly defined tusks with bone-like textures and/or have a discernable mouth behind them.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Take one look at the hairstyles and sideburns and you know that this film was made in The '70s. Add in the Asian-style mysticism and there's no doubt it's the 70s.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • This film completely revolutionized special effects for modern movies.
  • It revolutionized Sound Effects as well. Ben Burtt's work on the movies improved science fiction from "pew pew pew" noises to a fully mechanized, reverberating audio environment. His Special Achievement Oscar for Sound Effects Editing on A New Hope helped establish it as an annual award.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: This film got a U rating in the UK, despite shots of Luke's uncle and aunts' burning corpses and a close-up shot of Ponda Baba's severed arm in the Mos Eisley bar after Obi-Wan Kenobi chops it off with his lightsaber. Not to mention numerous on-screen deaths and an inferred genocide.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: The fact that Lucas acted shocked and disappointed that fans would actually prefer "Han shot first", and then went on to assert that the original version basically has Han shoot Greedo in cold blood. George's attitude has led to analogies being made to the "gun control" debate of today (not helped by the fact that despite Lucas's aforementioned statement, Greedo is clearly holding Han at gunpoint for the entire conversation and openly says he plans to kill him, making Han shooting first clear-cut self-defense, as one legal professor points out).
• Woolseyism:
  • In the Italian versions of the movie, the Death Star was called the Morte Nera, which means the "Black Death." It's a very fitting name, as like the Death Star, the Black Death also resulted in a large extermination of people.
    • In the French dub, the Death Star is now l'Étoile Noire (The Black/Dark Star).
  • Back in the day, in Latin America, R2-D2 was sometimes referred thanks to a mondegreen as "Arturito" (Little Arthur), because of the similar pronunciation with "Artoo-Deetoo", and it became quite popular.

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Tropes that pertain to the 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System game that was developed by Namco that is called A New Hope at the beginning:

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Of all the levels in the game, the third level is the most bizarre out of them all: It's a water level where there's a lot of strange structures underwater, such as the US Capitol Building. The level is never mentioned again in the game.
• Demonic Spiders: Because Luke is a One-Hit-Point Wonder, ranged enemies are especially dangerous because they can easily give you the slip before you can attack them.
• Memetic Mutation: Darth Vader becomes a scorpion. This gained momentum after The Angry Video Game Nerd did a review of Star Wars games.
• Older Than They Think: This game debuted changelings in the Star Wars universe, nearly fifteen years before Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones did.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: While for the most part, games based on this particular film have been pretty good, this one is a notable exception, which is infamous for the liberties it takes with the film — probably the most notorious is the fact that you fight Darth Vader about a half-dozen times in the game, and all but the last fight have him transforming into giant monsters halfway through^note (In reality, only the last fight is actually against Vader himself, with the previous ones all being against shape-shifting apprentices of his. Good luck understanding this if you aren't playing with a translated ROM however, especially seeing how this still bears no resemblance whatsoever to any of the films) — along with a punishing degree of Fake Difficulty, and the fact that most of the gameplay mechanics have been ripped off from, of all things, Alex Kidd in Miracle World.
• Scrappy Mechanic:
  • While the blaster is a nice power-up, it also cannot be switched out for the Lightsaber once it is picked up. To switch it out, the player must intentionally die.
  • You need 30 Force Crystals and input a button code to continue the game after a Game Over. If you input the code wrong, don't have the 30 crystals, or time it too slowly, you'll have to restart the game from the very beginning.
• That One Boss: The Vader fight on Yavin IV is by far the game's hardest: unlike the other encounter with the real deal, he has a Sword Beam projectile with his Lightsaber. You have to be very careful with fighting him because he can easily catch you off-guard and kill you instantly.
• That One Level:
  • The Death Star is a maze full of One-Hit Kill traps, Leap of Faith-style pits that there's no clear indication of whether it's the right path or not, and enemies with long-range projectiles.
  • Yavin IV is mostly a Platform Hell level. You could end up getting yourself killed in one vertical-scrolling area thanks to Ratchet Scrolling. The fact the aforementioned That One Boss resides there does not help things.
  • The Death Star Trench is infamously difficult. Not only is it a Timed Mission, you don't have a lot of leeway to make mistakes. Infinitely spawning TIE Fighters don't help things either. The time stopping power-ups alleviates this, but barely. If the timer reaches 0, however, then you're given a Non-Standard Game Over as the Death Star uses its weapon on Yavin IV. You must restart the game from the very beginning!

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Tropes that pertain to the 1991 Nintendo Entertainment System game by Beam Software / Lucas Film Games, also based on A New Hope:

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• Awesome Music: The game's soundtrack is one of the game's strongest points. The songs that play in the Death Star, Tatooine and the Gunning segments are well done by Marshall Parker.
• Breather Level: The X-Wing Gunner segment is easier than the Millennium Falcon because of the X-Wing's firepower is better.
• Demonic Spiders: Several enemies are extremely dangerous in their own regard:
  • Sand People and Tusken Raiders in the Tatooine caverns. They not only move quickly, but will do significant damage to Luke if he touches them.
  • Walkers in the Death Star not only have homing missiles as their attacks, but also move quickly and cannot be killed. Your best bet is to make a run for it when they lunge toward you.
  • TIE Fighters in the Death Star Trench section love to crash right into your ship and deal massive damage. While you can shoot them down, they'll immediately respawn.
• Genius Programming: The gunner segments are really well done: there are a lot of sprites on the screen at the same time and the game doesn't flicker or slow down immensely once.
• Goddamned Bats: Flying hornets in the Tatooine caves are not only tricky to hit, but also try to Zerg Rush you in an attempt to throw you off.
• Good Bad Bugs: In the Game Boy version, by flying in a specific spot in the Asteroid Belt section, you won't be harmed by the asteroids.
• Porting Disaster: The Game Boy port of Star Wars is noticeably inferior from the NES version. While the NES version is So Okay, It's Average, it does have its share of glitches and flaws. The controls in the Game Boy port are much more stiff and the game is more prone to slowdown. Another flaw is that it's much harder to tell whether leaps of faith are safe or not because of the system's smaller play screen. The soundtrack is also missing several songs from the original, such as the Death Star and the flying into space/miniboss theme, resulting in it playing one song from the Death Star level to the ending of the game.
• The Problem with Licensed Games: While usually not considered outright bad per se, is at best considered to occupy something of a midway spot between the Namco game and the widely-acclaimed Super Star Wars series. Most gamers seem to agree that it's a competent, but ultimately uninspired platform game that's hurt by occasionally wonky controls and overly punishing level design, especially in the Death Star stage. Besides the surprisingly good soundtrack and the good graphics, there's really not much else going for it.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Unlike the previous adaptation where only Luke is playable, Han and Princess Leia are playable. They do have a catch: They only have one life unlike Luke. In order to revive them, they must be revived by Obi-Wan Kenobi^note who must be recruited in the first place in order to use this feature, but he can only revive them a finite amount of times.
• So Okay, It's Average: There really isn't much to say about this video game adaptation of the 1977 movie. While it does follow the movie much more faithfully than the 1987 adaptation, the game in general doesn't have much else going for it.
• That One Level:
  • The Asteroid Belt area is difficult because you must dodge asteroids and have no way of fighting back. Depending on how many shield power-ups you picked up in Tatooine, the section could be nigh Unintentionally Unwinnable to just difficult.
  • The Death Star is still very punishing, and has its own set of leap of faith jumps. Unlike the 1987 game, the NES has Demonic Spiders in some parts of the Death Star which will kill Luke very easily if he isn't careful or if he doesn't have full health.
    • Special mention goes to the spikes everywhere in the escape sequence. You need to jump carefully, and thanks to the floaty physics, it's not uncommon to accidentally touch them.
  • The Death Star Trench segment is again a difficult level. Unlike the Namco version, you're given infinite time. However, the biggest threat is going too fast because you'll crash right into a wall and die, where there's a lot of them. It's very well possible to successfully launch a missile into the Death Star's reactor then immediately crash and die.

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