[The survival chances of Star Wars] are slim. The film defeats serious consideration. No matter how one looks at it, George Lucas has not only made a movie which is mindless where it would be mind-boggling, he has made a movie which is totally inept.

Never mind special effects. If you've seen one plastic starship you've seen them all. As for midgets in cute-suits, who remembers the amputees in Soylent Green? Consider instead the laser-sword which Lucas painfully spends forty-five minutes defining as an elegantly human weapon, emblematic of the life-sustaining Force. Not only is there nothing elegant, much less exciting, in the light-sword fight between Lord Darth Vader … and Ben/Obi-Wan Kenobi …, but Luke Skywalker …, the Force's young receiver, never gets to use the thing at all. Lucas has painfully constructed a payoff which never arrives….

When it comes to extending the [science fiction] genre, Lucas hasn't...