The Rewatchables
‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ (Part One) With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan
Tue, 06 May 2025
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, a trio of Ringer movie lovers Chris Ryan, Sean Fennessey, and Van Lathan use the force to get their galactic leader Bill Simmons to revisit one of the most iconic films of all time, George Lucas’s ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’ starring Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, and Carrie Fisher. In Part 1, the guys break down why they love the movie, how it got made, and the enormous impact it had on Hollywood at the time and to this day. Manager: Craig Horlbeck Video Producers: Ronak Nair, Jack Sanders Audio Producer: Craig Horlbeck Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: How did 'Star Wars: A New Hope' shape our childhoods?
Not bullying anyone.
I had a great time.
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. Here they come. Star Wars. How are you doing? An adventure unlike anything on your planet. It's an epic of heroes. And villains. And aliens from a thousand worlds. Star Wars. Rated PG.
All right, guys. First installment of the greatest trilogy ever. Peak of the 70s blockbuster era. Godfather, Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars. Return of popular cinema. The highest stakes ever in an actual movie because the entire galaxy is at stake, man. Yes. What jumps out first for you? Star Wars, 1977. I'm not doing this chapter for New Hope. Fuck that. This movie's called Star Wars.
I saw it in the theater. We called it Star Wars. Okay.
Okay. It's already begun. One of the single most important moments of my life is watching Star Wars with my father. It actually opened up my mind to an entire, realm of cinematic possibility. Being that deep in space, all of the lore that goes on around it, all the mystery. When you first see it, you're wondering what's happening, what's happening, what's happening.
How do you explain some of the things that are going on? It assumes that you understand both the natural hero's arc but also that you kind of get and understand the stakes of the world. It sets you up for, for me at least, to understand all of the nerd culture stuff and all of the science fiction stuff that I will go on to love for the rest of my life.
How old were you when you saw it? 70. Yeah.
Seven years old.
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Chapter 2: Why is 'Star Wars: A New Hope' considered groundbreaking?
Frank Herbert was pissed off about the fact that he thought the movie was too derivative.
Stole from Flash Gordon.
Stole from Flash Gordon.
Because that was what Lucas wanted to make. Wizard of Oz. I mean, look at the C-3PO and R2 and Chewie. It's beyond the stealing of Wizard of Oz. It just feels like they're... Kurosawa. Yeah, all that stuff is all... 2001. It's all synthesized into this perfect little package.
But also... a demonstration that even though we're telling the same stories that invoke the same emotions, it is how you tell them. It is the world that you put people in. It is the ideas and the concepts that you're able to create when you're telling these stories. You have a new, not a new form of government, but you have a new style, a new look.
You have the technology aspect of this, which was revolutionary in and of itself, right? You have all the things that you take to take a, that you need, should I say, to take a classic And making it into something that people have never seen. Can I ask you a question?
Because you obviously are watching the Star Wars stuff that comes out now with such a close eye. One of the things I thought was really interesting doing research about this was Lucas goes through all these different variations of the script. It's 250 pages at some point. He has the entire trilogy mapped out. When this stuff comes out, it's immediately like there are going to be 12 movies.
He's got 12 in his head. But when you watch the first one, when you watch A New Hope, the thing that blows your mind is that first 45 minutes, albeit maybe a little bit dull is not packed to the gills with information. There's not a ton of exposition about like, well, okay, there's the Senate and then they're doing this.
And then like, we're going to cut Palpatine and then we're going to cut to here. And these characters are going to meet just to talk about the fact that there's a vote coming up or that the clone wars were like this. It's just droids wandering around in the desert, which in a weird way becomes more immersive, right? Like you're like, what the fuck is this movie? What is going on?
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Chapter 3: What role did George Lucas's vision play in 'Star Wars' success?
Yeah, pretty smart. One of the all-time, I'm not stupid, you're stupid movies where it moves where in the moment, you think, oh, he sounds like a kid that's high on his own supply, doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. He's dumb. But either he knows something, Or he doesn't know something.
Either he is so blissfully ignorant that he goes, I'm going to do this because he doesn't understand how it can backfire. Or somewhere in the recesses of his brain, he goes, I know something about this lore and this mythology that everybody else doesn't get. And I'm willing to take less because we're talking about a half a million in 70s brand. It's a lot of cocaine.
Well, it's like Mark Cuban, right? Buying the Mavericks, super smart. Selling broadcast.com, buying the Mavericks with it, super smart. And then selling probably low to the Vegas family. It's like, you're still going to run the team. He's like, great. And then they cut him out. You're talking about when he sells to Disney, that's what this is?
No, it's just you can look like a genius with one decision. And then the next decision, you're like, what the fuck was that guy thinking? How did he not know? Can I read you some sour grapes quotes? Oh, is this from, uh, Pauline? It's a bunch of things. Siskel in 77 does the show with Ebert before it was called Siskel and Ebert. And, uh, Or at the movies. At the movies, yeah.
Yeah, it was called, what was it called? Sneak Previews or whatever? I think that was the first one, yeah. And he kind of scolded the movie and hoped that Hollywood would continue to cater to audiences who care about serious pictures.
This is a tough one because this is the same year as Saturday Night Fever, which is one of Siskel's favorite movies of all time. So he felt like movies like Saturday Night Fever were getting taken down a notch by Star Wars.
Then you have Scorsese. These are quotes from the Biskin book.
um where he basically says the success of star wars coupled with the failure of new york new york which was the scorsese movie couple of my raging cocaine habit right meant that the kind of movies scorsese made were being replaced by the kind of movies lucas and spielberg made scorsese said star wars was in spielberg was in we were finished well in the long run turned out to be horseshit right i listen he went on to become an incredibly prolific director that made movies that stand the test of time
a lot of different types of movies.
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