I don't like this movie. I find it boring. Yes, I resent the central place it holds in the cultural imagination, but I don't think my antipathy is just contrarianism. […] I can understand why audiences in 1977 found it a breath of fresh air after a decade of movies like Straw Dogs and McCabe & Mrs. Miller, because unlike so many other big/iconic/franchise-spawning sci-fi/fantasy movies/TV shows — Planet of the Apes, Godzilla, Batman, Star Trek — this movie has no desire to comment on/interact with the world that produced it. Aside from the haircuts, there's nothing to place this movie in 1977. It's not just a pastiche of 1940s cliffhanger serials — it's a retreat into childhood.
George Lucas made the original Star Wars in thrall to [Frank Herbert's] Dune; his achievement was effectively to depoliticize his predecessor’s ideologically loaded form of space opera. What Star Wars added to the equation was, well, a new hope—one that hybridized Herbert’s despairing vision with the circumspect, all-American heroism of old Westerns and gee-whiz serials, cute anthropomorphic robots, and Han Solo as a walking one-liner dispenser.
— Adam Nayman (The Ringer)
Princess Leia is captured and held hostage by the evil Imperial forces in their effort to take over the galactic Empire. Venturesome Luke Skywalker and dashing captain Han Solo team together with the loveable robot duo R2-D2 and C-3PO to rescue the beautiful princess and restore peace and justice in the Empire.