Reviewed, edited and approved by Editor-in-chief Daniel Sköld · Updated 25 October 2026
Contents
Somewhere in a loft near you there is probably a shoebox of slightly chewed action figures and a memory of standing in a queue that went right round the local Odeon. For a lot of us, Star Wars wasn’t a film so much as the moment we found out what cinema could do. You walked in a child and walked out holding an imaginary lightsaber, making the noise with your mouth all the way home on the bus.
So here’s the awkward question for a man of a certain age with a Disney+ login and a free evening: is the original 1977 film actually any good, or are we just nostalgic for being nine? I sat down to find out, armed with a cup of tea and the critical faculties of a grown adult. Those lasted about four minutes.
Premiere1977-05-25
GenreAdventure, Action, Science Fiction
CastMark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing
Directed byGeorge Lucas
Running time121 min
RatedU
Watch onDisney+
82%
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A farm boy, a princess and a very big space station
The set-up is beautifully simple. Princess Leia has been captured by the forces of the Empire, and a pair of bickering droids, R2-D2 and C-3PO, end up carrying her plea for help to a desert planet. There they fall into the hands of Luke Skywalker, a restless young man who looks at the twin suns of home and wants to be anywhere else. Before long he’s teamed up with an old hermit and a mercenary pilot with a smart mouth and a fast ship, and the rescue is on.
That’s as far as I’ll go. Yes, you’ve almost certainly seen it. But somebody’s grandchild hasn’t, and it would be a shame to ruin it for them.
Who’s in it and who made it
George Lucas wrote and directed it, and you can feel one man’s obsessions all over it: old Saturday morning serials, westerns, samurai films and dogfights from war films, all thrown into one pot. Mark Hamill plays Luke with real earnestness, Carrie Fisher makes Leia far more spiky and funny than the “rescue the princess” plot deserves, and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo is the template for every swaggering rogue since. Anthony Daniels gives C-3PO the twitchy anxiety of a butler who’s lost the keys.
Then there’s the British contingent. Alec Guinness brings proper gravitas as the old hermit, and Peter Cushing, an icon of Hammer horror, plays an Imperial commander so coldly that you half expect him to stake someone. Having two titans of British film in a space adventure gave it a weight that the usual B-movie sci-fi never had.
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What still works, and what creaks
Nearly all of it works. The pace is the big surprise. At 121 minutes it moves like a film half that length, with almost no flab, and the second half is a run of set pieces that modern blockbusters still borrow from. The worlds look lived in, dented and dusty rather than shiny, which is why it has aged so much better than most science fiction of its era. And John Williams’s score does half the emotional work before anyone says a word.
Star Wars isn’t great because we were young when we saw it. We were young, and it was great, and only one of those things has changed.
The niggles? Some of the dialogue is clunky, and Ford himself has never hidden how hard some of it was to say. A couple of the effects shots that Lucas later went back and fiddled with stick out more than the originals ever did. And if you’re watching with someone born this century, be ready for a sceptical eyebrow at the hairstyles. None of it matters much.
What the critics said
Most critics loved it when it came out, and the reviews in American newspapers were overwhelmingly positive. There were a few dissenters, mostly in magazines, who found the film all thrills and no substance. The most famous was Pauline Kael of The New Yorker, who called it “like getting a box of Cracker Jack which is all prizes”. She meant it as a complaint. Watching it now, it sounds more like praise.
Time has settled the argument. The film is one of the highest-rated titles on IMDb, it is routinely listed among the greatest films ever made, and almost every big-screen blockbuster since owes it something. Kael’s point that it is pure sugar is fair enough, but it’s very well-made sugar.
Where to watch it in the UK
Star Wars opened in American cinemas on 25 May 1977. British audiences had to wait several months, which only made the queues longer and the playground arguments louder. These days it’s much easier. The film streams on Disney+ in the UK, alongside the rest of the saga, and it’s included with a subscription so there’s nothing extra to pay. It carries a U certificate, so you can watch it with grandchildren and nobody has to fast-forward.
If you care about owning it, it’s also out on disc and to buy digitally. Be aware that the version now on sale and on streaming is Lucas’s revised edition rather than exactly the cut you saw in 1977, which some purists still haven’t forgiven.
Verdict
Nearly half a century on, Star Wars is still the gold standard for big, sincere, crowd-pleasing adventure: quick, funny, lovely to look at and over before you’ve had time to check your phone. Watch it if you were there the first time, and even more if you’ve got a child or grandchild who wasn’t. Five stars, and I’m not even pretending to be objective.
Ashley Isaacs picks what's worth your evening – film, TV, streaming, music and books for men 45 and over with limited evenings and too many subscriptions. Reviews of what's new on Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer and the rest, crime dramas worth a weekend, and classics worth a second look. What's worth watching, what isn't, and where to find it in the UK.
One of Midcent's writers. Spotted something? Write to ashley@midcent.uk.
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