Star Wars: A New Hope

Essential, and the right place to start whatever the chronological order on this page offers. Everything about the opening twenty minutes assumes you know nothing: a war already in progress, a religion already extinct, a villain whose history is a rumour. The prequels answer every one of those questions, and answers arriving before the questions is the fastest way to flatten this film.

The thing that made it work in 1977 was texture. Science fiction on screen had been clean; this was rusty. Ships are dented, the droids are filthy, the cantina is a dive, and the Falcon breaks down constantly. The production bought that look with model work, miniature photography and a motion-control rig built for the film, and almost none of it has dated in the way the digital era's equivalents have.

The story is a deliberate composite of things Lucas liked, which he has never pretended otherwise about: a Kurosawa structure with the plot told from the point of view of two low-status characters, a Second World War bomber raid for the finale, and the serial cliffhangers of his childhood. It works because the borrowings are load-bearing rather than decorative.

Which version is a real problem here. Every release since 1997 is the Special Edition, with added creatures, a recut cantina scene and a changed Greedo confrontation, and the unaltered 1977 cut has never been released in high definition. The 2006 DVDs included a non-anamorphic transfer of the original and that remains the only official option. Most people will watch the Special Edition; it is worth knowing that is what it is.