Bursting with excitement, and throwing in one wild chase, life-threatening dilemma, and dazzling effect after another, George Lucas's mythological popcorn movie is a two-hour roller-coaster ride that has passed into movie legend. Lucas packs a remarkable amount of story into 121 minutes; if the characters and dialogue sometimes lack depth, they have plenty of flash and boundless energy, and the film keeps just enough of its tongue in cheek to acknowledge an undercurrent of sly, low-key wit without snickering at either the characters or the audience. The story, for the tiny number of people not familiar with it, concerns a farmboy named Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) who discovers that the used robot recently purchased by his family plays back a message from one Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), begging for help from Obi-Wan Kenobi. Luke asks his father's friend Ben Kenobi (Alec Guinness) about this, and he discovers that Ben and Obi-Wan are one and the same. Kenobi tells Luke of the battle of the rebels against the ruling Empire and the spiritual energy called "The Force." Soon Luke, Kenobi, and a mercenary named Han Solo (Harrison Ford) join forces to rescue Princess Leia from the Empire's mammoth warship, the Death Star, controlled by evil genius Darth Vader (David Prowse, with the voice of James Earl Jones). In a decade in which cynicism was the order of the day in the film industry (and American culture), Star Wars dared to be hokey: with its wise old men, dashing young pilots, spunky but virtuous princesses, and bad guys who were either deliciously evil or downright slimy, the movie had the courage to take a truckload of Hollywood archetypes, present them with smarts, humor, and no apologies, and make them work for a new generation of filmgoers. The movie in this way forged a totally original amalgam of myth, marketing, and movie serials to become one of the biggest cultural phenomena in movie history. Commercially, Star Wars opened new vistas in merchandizing toys and other movie tie-ins, as it helped transform science fiction from a fringe market into one of Hollywood's dominant genres. George Lucas has frequently cited the influence of several films on Star Wars, particularly Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress and Yojimbo and John Ford's The Searchers, as well as the original Flash Gordon serials. After Star Wars became a success, Lucas announced his intention to turn the film into a series, originally totaling nine films (later pared back to six). Consequently, most reissue prints now feature the title Star Wars: Episode IV--A New Hope, with The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) serving as Episodes Five and Six in the serial, and Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) going back to the myth's beginnings.