A New Hope/YMMV

And You Thought It Would Fail: Multiple studios turned the film proposal down and most of the management of Twentieth Century Fox outside of Alan Ladd Jr. thought it would be a final embarrassment before Fox closed its doors. After the film exploded into the public consciousness, everyone else changed their tune saying this film was the kind of unorthodox creative dare that company founder, Daryl Zanuck, often won big with.
Angst? What Angst?: Princess Leia. "We have no time for sorrows, commander."
- Luke gets over Owen and Beru's death pretty easily.
Award Snub: It losing Best Picture to Annie Hall.
Big Bad: Even though Palpatine is the villain of the saga in general, Tarkin is, for all intents and purposes, the villain of this one in particular.
Complete Monster: Tarkin, naturally. He casually orders the destruction of Alderaan as if he was asking one of his men to take out the trash.
- In the EU, it's revealed that he once dealt with a protest over high taxes by landing a troop transport on it, killing thousands.
Executive Meddling: Lucas revealed in an interview that the reason why Greedo shoots first in the re-made version was to prevent a PG-13 rating, which didn't exist in 1977.
Harsher in Hindsight:

Aunt Beru: He's just not a farmer, Owen. He has too much of his father in him.

Uncle Owen: That's what I'm afraid of.

- Not only did Luke's father become Darth Vader, but we later see in Attack of the Clones that, the same day Owen met Anakin, Anakin killed a whole tribe of Tusken Raiders out of anger. Evidently he's afraid Luke will do something like that. And in the Expanded Universe, Luke becomes Palpatine's apprentice for a while.
- After watching the prequels, seeing Vader so callously shoot R2 with a TIE Fighter blast makes him seem all the more cruel. He might not have known it was R2 or even aiming for him but it still jerks a tear.
- Also, Darth Vader, later revealed to be the father of Luke Skywalker, had Luke's Uncle and Aunt murdered by stormtroopers, meaning he had his (step)brother killed. Several years later, with The Lion King, Simba's father ends up killed by his uncle. The connection between the two? Both Vader and Mufasa (Simba's father) were portrayed by James Earl Jones.
- Garven Dreis, aka Red Leader, was shot down by Darth Vader in the last moments of the film. A New Hope also proved to be the last acting role that Drew Henley, the actor who played Dreis, would partake in, retiring shortly thereafter due to being diagnosed with Manic Depression.
  - Also, Deris being shot down by Darth Vader is even more harsh after the revelation that he and Vader (then known as Anakin Skywalker) were originally comrades.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Obi Wan's line that the blaster marks are too precise for Sand People and must be from Stormtroopers gets funnier as the series goes on. We see (Justified and not) stormtroopers miss nearly everything they shoot for, while the Tuskens are able to hit pod racers moving at hundreds of MPH in The Phantom Menace.
- Given what we later discover about Vader's policy on employee mistakes in the next movie, Admiral Motti comes off as exceptionally stupid for picking a fight with Vader, especially by mocking the religion the Emperor holds to. This is even lampshaded by Grand Moff Tarkin in the Death Star Technical Manual, where he expressed that if Motti didn't keep his opinions to himself regarding the Force, he won't last long under Palpatine's Empire.
Memetic Mutation: "These are not the droids you're looking for."
- "I have you now!"
- "Use the Force, Luke."
Misblamed: Vader did not destroy Alderaan. Tarkin did. Some fans actually forget this.
- So did Leia, apparently.
Offstage Villainy: The Empire as a whole. They do some pretty evil things with that Death Star, but we never hear much of how they affect the rest of the Galaxy. A deleted scene between Luke and Biggs explores this somewhat.
Special Effects Failure: The infamous "Han Shot First" scene is a victim of this in the remastered editions. The digital editing isn't so great at convincing you that Greedo shot first, and Han's attempted "dodging" is particularly bad.
- It doesn't even look so much like "dodging" as much as it does "Greedo misses at point blank range."
- The stormtrooper rifles were made from fully-functional British Sterling submachine guns, and fired "Hollywood blanks" to provide smoke and muzzle flash. During the gunfight across the chasm in the Death Star (where Leia kisses Luke before swinging across) the sound of the blank cartridges is heard when Leia takes a few shots, instead of the usual sound effect dubbed in.
- In many scenes involving Lightsabers, there's always bound to be errors. These were fixed in the special editions.
  - As was a matte painting of a hallway and most of the optical lines around the ships.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks: This is some fans' reaction to the Special Edition, particularly the above-mentioned Greedo Shot First scene. However, it restores the scene with Jabba and a scene with Luke and Biggs, so it's not all bad.
Win the Crowd: For many, it was the first Star Destroyer shot.
Woolseyism/Bilingual Bonus: In the Italian versions of the movie, the Death Star was called the Morte Nera, which means the "Black Death." It's a very fitting name, as like the Death Star, the Black Death also resulted in a large extermination of people in Europe.