A New Hope

A number of design elements in A New Hope illustrate the contrast between the Empire and the Rebel Alliance.

The Imperial forces exhibit an extreme degree of standardization.  Barring different heights, each stormtrooper or TIE pilot looks exactly like any other.  While the Rebel forces wear uniforms too, they're not so restrictive that the individual's identity is obscured.  (This difference between the two factions is shown most clearly in the battles that bookend the movie, the boarding of the Tantive IV and the Battle of Yavin.)

The construction of the Death Star is completed during the course of the movie, so it couldn't be any newer.  The equipment that the Rebels use, however, shows its age, especially the Y-wings.

The groups' respective headquarters also differ in that the Death Star is artificial and somewhat isolated in space while the Rebel base on Yavin IV is constructed primarily of stone (a natural material) and located in the midst of a jungle.

Even in their appearances, then, the Empire and the Rebel Alliance oppose each other.

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In the scene where Obi-Wan gives Anakin's lightsaber to Luke, he also briefly comments on the Jedi:  "For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the old Republic, before the dark times, before the Empire."  Luke de-activates the lightsaber at the end of Obi-Wan's remark, and in a small way, this extinguishing mirrors the Jedi's near extinction.

The Original Star Wars Trilogies

Here are some more general comments about the original Star Wars trilogies; in the coming weeks, I'll have posts about each movie individually (with the exception of A New Hope, for which I don't have any significant comments yet).

In "The Beginning: Making Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace" (at ~3:08), George Lucas comments on the parallelism between The Phantom Menace and A New Hope:  "with Anakin, you know, kind of duplicating the Luke Skywalker role, but you see the echo of where it all's gonna go:  instead of destroying the Death Star, he destroys the ship that controls the robots.  Again, it's like poetry, sort of; they rhyme.  Every stanza kind of rhymes with the last one."  This parallelism extends even to the grammatical structure of the titles.  The Phantom Menace parallels A New Hope ([article][adjective][noun]), and Revenge of the Sith parallels Return of the Jedi ([noun][preposition][article][noun]).  Attack of the Clones and The Empire Strikes Back are the exception here, but both titles describe a military conflict, so they're similar in a more general way.  There's also an echo between Attack of the Clones and The Empire Strikes Back in that both feature a scene where R2-D2 reconstructs C-3PO.

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Near the beginning of each movie in the original trilogy, there's a shot of a Star Destroyer overhead:

Visually, this illustrates the dominance that the Empire has over the galaxy.

A New Hope

This is the first in a series of posts about the references that the movies make to each other.  I'm going chronologically in terms of release date, and since A New Hope is the first movie, most of my notes are just elements that recur later.

1:04:34 - Luke:  "I have a very bad feeling about this."

1:05:26 - Death Star officer:  "Clear bay 327."

1:14:14 - Luke (trying to fool an Imperial officer after he asks where Luke and Han are taking Chewbacca):  "Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138."

1:15:07 - Han (to Luke):  "We gotta find out which cell this princess of yours is in.  Here it is:  2187."

1:21:27 - Han:  "I got a bad feeling about this."

1:28:33 - Wilhelm scream (stormtrooper)