Kyle’s Reviews > William Shakespeare's Star Wars: Verily, A New Hope > Status Update

Luke gets all Henry V-ish in delivering rousing speeches to his band of rebel brothers, and it actually increases tension in the final battle to hear about the loss of friends and allies. Hard to picture how exactly the spectacle would be staged, but those are the magical theatrics for a director's creative team to decide, and for the audiences to wonder at. Most likely teachers will soon put on such a play.

More sympathy for the stormtroopers manning the Death Star is on display in act four than seen in the laser battles from the original movie, and the image of Luke Skywalker soliloquizing with a trooper's helmet gives this Hamlet in Space more gravitas than most sci fi classics (that don't already have Shakespearean actors in the cast). Luke, Han and Leia start their quarrelsome friendship while fleeing Tarkin's grip.

Slowly starting to hit the big Shakespearean themes of fate, honour and responsibility, but the plot still runs a bit too linear - all this time with Owen and Beru when it is Obi-Wan's guilt-tinged conscious that moves the story along. Governor Tarkin emerges in this act as a duke of dark powers, similar to some of the best stage villains whose words were put to page, Darth Vader still remains like a stock character.

For a young person's first introduction to Shakespeare, it is amusing to see many of the lines that will be repeated in something like the original context. As a first encounter with Star Wars, on the other hand, mayhaps it will be the cause of consternation to try figuring out what is going on with the typical minimum of stage directions or explanation: how does one explain an iambic droid to the uninitiated reader?