Trash Compactor

A New Hope

Star Wars transcends genres. A New Hope is a fantasy film, an action movie, an adventure flick and all the while has it’s moment of horror – well, as much horror as you can get with a universal rating.

Yeah, sure, the trash compactor scene isn’t scary from the comfort of your sofa. It doesn’t have any evil clowns or zombies but walk a mile in Luke, Han, Leia and Chewie’s shoes and the trash compactor is definitely a horror story. And it certainly puts us on the edge of our sofas.

I remember watching Star Wars as a kid, terrified of the trash monster. The one-eyed eel like monstrosity that grabbed hold of Luke and damn near drowned him in the syrupy trash water. Han panics, scrambling to find where Luke had gone and for the first time, we see that Han truly cares about this moisture farmer turned galactic adventurer.

Is it because, at this point, he thinks he needs Luke at his side in order to get off of the Death Star? Possibly, but this is Han Solo – confident in his own talents. For me, this is the first sign that, try as he might to hide his good nature, Han has found a friend in Luke and is far from ready to lose him to a junk pile.

Luke returns to the surface as the creature inexplicably released him and checked out. This junk monster knew that it was time to get out of dodge, as the Empire had fired up the garbage masher and our heroes were – as Han put it – “about to get a lot thinner.”

Our human rebels are helpless. It was now up the C-3PO and R2-D2 to save the day – just as soon as Threepio fired up his comlink.

Mark Hamill’s line delivery is superb in the scene, and it really helps us buy into the scenario. He goes through so many emotions in just a few lines;

• “Threepio?!” – shock and elation at finally hearing the droids voice after having basically given up on him.
• “Will you shut up and listen to me” – annoyed at wittering. No one likes a witterer, especially before impending doom.
• “Shut down all the garbage mashers on the detention level” – panic, raw panic.
• “We’re alright, we’re alright, you did great” – relief, elation and every synonym in between.

This team of rebels are closer than ever, the droids have saved the day in what will be the first of many match winning performances and Star Wars has thrilled us with another well shot, well written scene.

It’s a pretty good picture, this Star Wars.