Whether you decide to watch A New Hope first or instead opt for going the Star Wars movies in order chronologically, i.e. kick things off with The Phantom Menace, you’ll ultimately get to enjoy Carrie Fisher’s performance as Princess Leia Organa. It didn’t take long for the young royal from Alderaan to show how capable she is in the Original Trilogy’s first entry, as she gunned down a stormtrooper before being captured on the Tantive IV. And then, of course, who can forget when she took charge of her Death Star prison break? It was a move that costar Mark Hamill said made Luke Skywalker and Harrison Ford’s Han Solo look like “the Two Stooges.”
Hamill recalled shooting this scene in the very first Star Wars movie while speaking at FAN Expo Philadelphia (via TikTok user va.va.vera). He started off by saying he thought it was “effortless feminism” for Leia Organa to be more than just a “shrinking violet,” which was also demonstrated early on by her not being “intimidated” by Darth Vader “in the slightest.” The Luke Skywalker actor continued:
When we rescued her, she made chumps out of Luke and Han. 'You call this a rescue? Gimme that gun.' She made us look like, you know, the Two Stooges. And I thought 'That's effortless feminism because it's not apologetic, it's just showing a woman as formidable as any man that's on the screen.
On the off chance you need a refresher, and assuming you’d rather not just watch A New Hope with your Disney+ subscription before returning to this article, upon sneaking aboard the first Death Star, Luke and Han disguised themselves as stormtroopers and pretended to transport Chewbacca as their prisoner to the same detention level where Leia was being held. While they were able to eliminate guards in the area and free the princess from her cell, they soon found themselves boxed in by arriving reinforcements gunning for them. Rather than just wait to get killed, Leia took Luke’s blaster, shot open a nearby grate and had them all dive into one of the space station’s trash compactors.
Granted, the quartet soon found themselves having to contend with a freaky creature dragging Luke underwater and then nearly being crushed to death, but Leia nonetheless bailed them out of a big jam just moments after she’d escaped from imprisonment. And let’s not forget, not too long beforehand, she was subjected to an IT-0 interrogation droid, yet managed to resist its efforts to force her to disclose the location of the Rebellion’s main base. So taking all that into account, Mark Hamill saying that Leia made Luke and Han resemble two-thirds of The Three Stooges, one of the greatest comedy acts in the vaudeville era and the Golden Age of Hollywood, isn’t a stretch.
Leia continued to impress across The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, as well as the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy within the past decade. You can revisit those moments by watching those space opera movies on Disney+. If you’d rather look to the future, out guide of upcoming Star Wars movies and TV shows is available for perusal.
