I managed to get ahold of an HD rip from the original Laserdisc set over the weekend, and immediately commenced with my first non-Special Edition viewing in about fifteen years. In a roundabout way, Lucas's tweaks and reworkings in later versions of this film actually make the original effects more impressive as they stand. Of course, in the twenty-first century anyone with a large enough processor can film their own spaceship dogfight, but for ILM to have produced something during the mid '70s that still seems competitive today remains a truly gargantuan achievement. Even with the veneer of post-production and extra CGI stripped away, it's a miraculously good looking picture, intricately detailed and fully functional - a thorough realization of Lucas's vivid imagination. In many instances, the old school special effects that were replaced in later revisions and the subsequent prequels actually work to make the film more lifelike and tangible. Take Vader and company's infamous debut appearance, for instance: marching through soot and smoke after blasting a hole in Leia's overtaken cruiser, the boarding party seems more imposing and threatening with a thick haze still obscuring much of the screen. That would've been digitally omitted or altered in a modern LucasFilm release, to ill effect.

Naturally, though, there's more to this film than just effects work. While its story is fairly straightforward and restrained, especially compared to the increasingly tangled, coincidence-laden plots of its follow-ups, there's a certain infectious, youthful energy occupying the driver's seat. Despite its laughably scripted dialog and rough, amateurish editing, a giddy sense of adventure and delight makes the whole thing somehow, perhaps miraculously, come together and work as a brilliant, cohesive, thoroughly befuddling ball of wax.

As further sequels were anything but a given at its release, it's also the most self-inclusive film of the Star Wars sextology, with a clear progression for each member of its cast and a sound, rewarding genesis, apex and conclusion. This shouldn't still be so good, but it is, and I'll be watching it with my kids for decades to come.