What Should’ve Won That Could’ve Won: 1977

The Year: 1977
What the Nominees Were: Annie Hall, The Goodbye Girl, Julia, Star Wars, The Turning Point
Other Movies That Should Have Been Considered: How on earth did Close Encounters of the Third Kind not get a nomination??

What Did Win: Annie Hall
How It’s Aged: Look, what can I say here? It’s undeniable that Annie Hall is absolutely brilliant. Very funny (I quote it frequently), beautifully shot, and one of the best actress showcases of all time. But…

What Should’ve Won: Star Wars
How Hard Was the Decision: Choosing between Annie Hall and Star Wars is very hard, but choosing between the filmmakers is easy, so I’ll give it to Lucas. You might think that, after I passed over Jaws and Rocky, I just don’t think the Oscar should go to popular movies, but in this case the most popular choice was also the best. (I did consider Close Encounters, but c’mon, Star Wars is literally the most rewatchable movie of all time.)

Director: George Lucas
Writer: George Lucas
Stars: Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Peter Cushing, Alec Guinness

The Story: Luke Skywalker, a farmer on a distant planet, comes into possession of two droids with plans to blow up a planet-destroying weapon called the Death Star. Luke joins forces with a mystic hermit, a rogue pilot and a spunky princess to save the day.

Any Nominations or Wins: It lost Picture, Director, Supporting Actor for Guinness, and Original Screenplay, but it won just about all the technical awards: Art Direction, Costume Design, Editing, Score, Sound, Visual Effects and a special Scientific and Engineering Award.
Why It Didn’t Win: To this day, there are many who look down on the artistic merits of this movie, and they were legion in 1977. It was a box office phenomenon, but it just didn’t feel like an award-winner. Remember that even 2001 wasn’t nominated, because science fiction (or, in this case, science fantasy) wasn’t remotely considered to be a respectable genre.

Why It Should Have Won:

1. It’s almost impossible to grasp how good John Barry’s production design is. Why is this movie so cool and timeless, while Zardoz and Logan’s Run are so lame and dated? There’s just one blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment that shows us what could have been. Originally, Luke’s vehicle was just a normal car with decals on the hood, before they all decided they could do better. But the original car shows up in this one shot. Look at this car. This is what this movie could have been, if Lucas and Barry hadn’t been so visionary.
   
2. I have no patience for those who carp about the quality of the movie’s dialogue. In retrospect, Harrison Ford’s infamous on-set complaint (“George, you can type this shit, but you sure as hell can’t say it”) probably refers not to overly simplistic lines, as is generally implied when that quote is cited, but to all of the bizarre unexplained specifics that the actors were expected to casually sell to the audience (“Nerf-herder!”). Those specifics are the heart of great dialogue!
3. Probably the most brilliant moment in this movie is the opening title card. Let’s go back in time and change just one thing. What if, instead of “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” the opening crawl had started with the line: “It is the year 25,172!” Even if the rest of movie had stayed the same, I doubt it would have been as big of a success. That opening line is brilliant. It de-fangs the audience. It says, “Hold on there, buddy, this may look like science-fiction, with space ships and lasers and robots, but it’s not. It’s a fairy tale. So don’t expect a lot of time-travel paradoxes or super-computers. Instead, you should expect princesses and swords and magical mentors.” Lucas was managing our expectations. He was establishing a certain tone, before we in the audience could start making false genre assumptions that would have just left us frustrated.
   
4. If you want to hear more about this movie, go back and listen to all 48 episodes of “The Secrets of Story Podcast”, because James Kennedy and I ended up mentioning the movie in almost every episode, as an example of good writing. James’s theory of “The Holy Moment” (where he talks about how many movies end with a “let go and let God” sequence) owes a lot to this movie, and there are many episodes where we talk about how many movies have a “Snake in the Basement”, which this movie may be the ultimate example of.
   
5. Infamously, this movie has never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray, meaning that you have to go to Bit Torrent to watch it, which is (kind of) illegal, but there are no other options. If you decide to sail the pirate seas, you might as well go all the way and also download the documentary “Star Wars Begins” while you’re there, which is the best place to see all of the fascinating deleted scenes. As is so often the case, the scenes were deleted with good reason, but they also include much crucial information (such as why Luke wants to join the air force of an empire he hates).
   
6. As with 12 Angry Men, this movie is another great example of how heroes, no matter how morally pure they are, get what they want through tricks and traps. Luke uses a lot of indirect and manipulative dialogue, in an admirably crafty way. We think of Han as the slick one, but he’s actually transparent and plainspoken, while Luke is far more wily, and more likely to wrap Han around his finger. This culminates in the finale, when Luke finally convinces Han to totally betray his own self-interest by hitting him below the belt one last time: “Well, take care of yourself, Han... guess that's what you’re best at, isn’t it?” Han just can’t stay away after that. Obi Wan isn’t the only one who knows how to play mind tricks!
   
7. And finally, as I was writing this piece, the real hero of this movie, editor Marcia Lucas, died. Everybody hated the rough cut of the movie and she moved heaven and Earth to make it come to life, rewriting the movie on the fly. Lucas would not be the only director who relied heavily on the efforts of his first wife and, once they divorced, never matched the work he did with her.

Ah, 1977: This is what fashion looked like at the time, which makes it all the more amazing how timeless the movie looks.