Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

Don't expect radical revisions in this 20th anniversary reissue of George Lucas's spellbinding space opera. The sfx may now be unimpeachable, but none of the much heralded extra sequences fashioned from out-takes - the confrontation between Han Solo and Jabba the Hutt; Luke and his childhood friend, Biggs, bantering about the good old days - actually contributes anything meaningful in narrative terms. It's the minor tweaks which most impress. The computer-generated beasties scurrying around Mos Eisley's spaceport are triumphs of animation, and the dogfight scenes benefit immensely from more convincingly nuclear-looking explosions and the removal of unsightly matte lines. For the most part, you'd never guess the film was 20 years old. Only the innocence of its universe testifies to the sea change in film-making it provoked. The jaw-dropping wetness of Mark Hamill's Luke continues to astound, while Harrison Ford's amphetamine enema of a turn, which shifts the film into top gear after its rather too leisurely first act, merely confirms what we've always known: stars will out.