Here's what critics thought about the original 'Star Wars' movie when it came out in 1977

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Lucasfilm screencap

As "The Force Awakens" hits theaters, rave reviews are pouring in for the latest installment in the "Star Wars" series.

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People's reactions are no doubt being colored by 38 years of "Star Wars" being an integral part of pop culture, and it might make you wonder: how did people react to the first movie in 1977, when it basically spawned an entire new genre of mainstream, blockbuster sci-fi films?

Keep reading to see reviews of 1977's "Star Wars" — later rechristened "Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope" — from The New Yorker, the LA Times, and more. 

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"Star Wars is magnificent you'll pant for more" - The Toronto Star

Han Solo

Yup, that was the headline. 

The review itself, by Clyde Gilmour, manages to perfectly distill the original trilogy's magic into a single paragraph:

Lucas himself says his new film is not really science-fiction but a live-action comic strip, "a shoot-em-up with ray guns." It distills the joys he cherished as a youngster while watching movies and TV shows and soaking up the adventures of Flash Gordon. There are touches of The Wizard of Oz in it, along with the Hardy Boys and Arthurian romances and a thousand half-forgotten westerns.

Of course, none of these characteristics would be found in the prequels that started hitting theaters in 1999, but reviewers now are saying that "The Force Awakens" retains the magic of the original trilogy.

Click here to read the full 1977 Toronto Star review. 

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"'Star Wars' hails the once and future space western" - Los Angeles Times

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Charles Champlin's L.A. Times review drew parallels between "Star Wars" and Georges Melies' films from the 1900s, and Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey," which came out in 1968. Like the Toronto Star's reviewer, Champlin also name-checked "The Wizard of Oz," which was apparently still looming incredibly large over pop culture after its 1939 debut.

Champlin also took some time to credit the technical crews with bringing "Star Wars" to life. All in all, it was a rave review that focused especially on the comic books and westerns Lucas loves.

"It is," Champlin concludes, "all in all, hard to think of a place or an age group that would not respond to the enthusiastic inventiveness with which Lucas has enshrined his early loves."

Click here to read the full 1977 L.A. Times review.

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"A Trip to a Far Galaxy That's Fun and Funny" - The New York Times

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Lucasfilm screencap

Here's another review, this time by Vincent Canby, that focuses on the feel-good, comedic side of "Star Wars."

And funnily enough, it uses Lucas's prior film, "American Graffiti," to introduce readers to the director. Imagine someone today saying, "You know, George Lucas — he directed 'American Graffiti.'" That would never happen!

This review, too, was a rave. Here's an excerpt:

"Star Wars," which opened yesterday at the Astor Plaza, Orpheum and other theaters, is the most elaborate, most expensive, most beautiful movie serial ever made. It's both an apotheosis of "Flash Gordon" serials and a witty critique that makes associations with a variety of literature that is nothing if not eclectic: "Quo Vadis?", "Buck Rogers," "Ivanhoe," "Superman," "The Wizard of Oz," "The Gospel According to St. Matthew," the legend of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table.

Canby does acknowledge that "A New Hope" is a teeny bit thin on plot, though:

The story of "Star Wars" could be written on the head of a pin and still leave room for the Bible. It is, rather, a breathless succession of escapes, pursuits, dangerous missions, unexpected encounters, with each one ending in some kind of defeat until the final one.

Click here to read the entire 1977 New York Times review.

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"Star Wars" - The Chicago Sun-Times

boba fett

Legendary film critic Roger Ebert reviewed "Star Wars" for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1977, and said it was one of the few films besides "Bonnie and Clyde" and "Taxi Driver" to give him an "out of body experience."

Ebert noted that the movie's special effects were spectacularly impressive, but said its success as a film all came down to story.

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. In "Star Wars," George Lucas takes this simple and powerful framework into outer space, and that is an inspired thing to do, because we no longer have maps on Earth that warn, "Here there be dragons." We can't fall off the edge of the map, as Columbus could, and we can't hope to find new continents of prehistoric monsters or lost tribes ruled by immortal goddesses. Not on Earth, anyway, but anything is possible in space, and Lucas goes right ahead and shows us very nearly everything. We get involved quickly, because the characters in "Star Wars" are so strongly and simply drawn and have so many small foibles and large, futile hopes for us to identify with.

Ebert's favorite scene was the cantina, which he referred to as "the bizarre saloon on the planet Tatooine," but noted "one weakness" — the final battle with the Death Star "is allowed to go on too long," he wrote.

Click here to read the ful 1977 Ebert Chicago Sun-Times review.

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"U.F.O. - Ultra Far Out" - NPR

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Tom Shales of NPR also couldn't help but draw a comparison between "Star Wars" and "The Wizard of Oz," and raved about the film to the extent that he needed to make up new words.

"It is unquestionably splendibulous," he said. "It's the kind of movie for which movies were invented. Star Wars is casually profound ... [and] a movie newcomer named Harrison Fordi s especially impressive."

Prescient, as Ford was definitely the breakout star of the original film, going on to become a bona fide A-lister.

Click here to listen to NPR's 1977 review.

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"STAR DUST" - New York Magazine

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YouTube/Star Wars

This was one of the most ruthless reviews of the original "Star Wars" movie.

Reviewer John Simon acknowledged that the movie was "an impeccable technical achievement," but that was about it. He went on to call it "boring," "dull," and "facile."

Here's perhaps the most eviscerating excerpt:

Strip "Star Wars" of its often striking images and its high-falutin scientific jargon, and you get a story, characters, and dialogue of overwhelming banality, without even a "future" cast to them: Human beings, anthropoids, or robots, you could probably find them all, more or less like that, in downtown Los Angeles today.

Simon even disses the Force. 

To its credit, New York Magazine isn't trying to hide the super-critical review. They even highlighted as part of its "Star Wars Countdown" yesterday.

To read the full 1977 New York Magazine review, click here.

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