I was in the sweet spot at age 10 in Wilmette, Illinois north of Chicago when the ads started up.
My friend Scott Hoffman and I both said we wanted to see it but our respective mothers made us wait until school was out.
Then that was pretty much what we did all summer. We saw it at the Eden’s theater or down at Old Orchard. All Summer Long.
30 years of what it was that made me, for better or worse, a fanboy. From that moment on the subscription to Epic Magazine and The Dragon was only a matter of time.
I once tried to define for a 72 year old woman I worked with what impact Star Wars had on my cohort of young men (mostly). All she could was ‘It sounds like Elvis for my circle’. Which isn’t the worst analogy, I suppose.
30 years. 30 long years.
And I’d STILL go see another one if I could.
When I saw them:
Star Wars: Eden’s June '77
Empire: Skipped School. Old Town Plaza, Torrance, CA.
Jedi: Skipped School. Montgomery Village Theatre. Gaithersburg, MD.
Menace: Opening Night. Leesburg, VA.
Clones: Opening Afternoon. Reston Town Center. Reston, VA.
Sith: Opening Night. Premier Party. Santa Monica, CA.
I think it’s pretty damn cool that watching Star Wars is one of my earliest memories. If today is the anniversary, I was just about four when I saw it at a drive in theater. The droids walking through the desert absolutely freaked me out. You’d think the creatures in the cantina, or Darth Vader, or the trash compactor beast would have scared me, but no, it was that wide expanse of nothingness that terrorized me. I remember I looked out the back window at another showing that was at a different point in the movie to get through it.
I hadn’t heard a thing about Star Wars in the whole 7 years I was alive until my mother told me that they were bringing me and my cousin to see some dumb war movie instead of the new Benji movie that I wanted to see. I was pissed. Who the heck wanted to see a WAR movie?!?
Then the lights went down and it started and my whole life changed.
Really. I think it did at that point. Suddenly there were things like robots and computers and spaceships in my head. Anything sci-fi computery was of extreme interest. A year or two later I was going to after-school computer classes and still today, screwing around with computers takes up an awful lot of my day. And they PAY me for it!
I missed it, at least the first few months. I was 10, the perfect age, but I didn’t catch it until August or so. To be honest, I can’t recall where I was when I saw it for the first time.
I’d seen the tailer for Star Wars the previous January, when I went to see Network. I hadn’t been impressed – they didn’t choose the best scenes. The music wasn’t Williams’ score, but some brooding music that gave bad vibes. The “Star Wars” logo wasn’t the flashy yellow-outline on the cool connected letters, but blue pudgy characters. The poster just had the words of the title. It looked like a lot of the bad SF that had come out in the 1970s, only with better effects.
The day it opened was the day I took my very last undergraduate final exam, so we were in a mood to celebrate. My friend had a couple of movie passes, so we thought we’d use them to see the new flick. No dice. The guy at the ticket booth (wearing a “May the Force be With You” button that made no sense to us) said no passes were allowed for this film, so we turned away in disgust. There was a surprising line at the theater (since there hadn’t been intense advertising, I couldn’t see what all the fuss was about), but we decided to go wlsewhere. After looking around at the options, we changed our minds and tried to get in, even if we had to pay. But couldn’t.
The next day I came during the day. School was still in session, and people were working, so the theater was almost empty. I sat through the movie twice (you could still do that, back then). I was blown away. Despite the frequently stupid things, Lucas had done a better job of bringing to the screen a lot of science fiction imagery than any director since Kubrick’s 2001. After years of half-hearted movies that didn’t want to alienate audiences, play-it-safe franchises like “Planet of the Apes”, and stuff like “Logan’s Run”, here was something that looked like science fiction again, pulled off with conviction. The Spaceport. The Spaceport Bar. The Robots. Hyperspace. Two Moons on Tatooine. The souped-up binoculars with too many readouts to take in in one viewing.
One guy I knew saw it 39 times that summer. My professor/advisor took a visiting Russian scientist to see it. He was blown away. The paperback version sold out its first printing, and was rapidly reprinted many times (with pictures now). The comic book version’s first issue became a collector’s item, and was itself reprinted – unheard-of for a comic book. Everyone seemed to be taken by complete surprise by the huge success it had become. The movie played at th theater I saw it at for over a year.
I was very lucky in that I got to see the flick in the Jennifer Theater in DC. It was one of those theaters with the HUUUUUUUGE screens and state of the art sound systems. I was seven years old and so the opening shot of the space battle just blew me away and set the nerdy course of my life.
Just after Empire, I was talking to an elderly lady and she asked what I was reading. It was a book about filming TESB and when she asked what Star Wars was, my head spun about. The very concept that somone had not seen Star Wars was alien to me.
We were 12, my best friend Maria and I, so we were allowed to see it on our own. Can’t remember where we got the idea because word of mouth was building, but not in the stratosphere yet (and the commercials hadn’t even started). But our movie theater was absolutely packed.
Completely mesmerizing.
I can still see the teenaged boys, silhouetted in front of us, jumping to their feet and pumping their fists when the Death Star blew.
I stood in line to see it in Hollywood at the Egyptian (I think, it wasn’t the Mann’s Chinese theater). My friends and I were pretty stoked to see this, but figured it would suck (I was 22). With the opening credits, my excitement grew. The first scene of the little spaceship being pursued by the Imperial cruiser brought gasps and cheers from the audience. The Cruiser just kept going, and going, and going! When the massive engines appeared we broke into applause! “Now, this is what science fiction films should be!”, was all I kept thinking. Wonderful memories!
I was 10. My older brother was babysitting us but had a crush on a girl who worked at the theater. So he drags my younger brother and I down there at 9 am on a Saturday, gets us tickets and tells us not to move until he comes back. Words start running off the screen. Reading?! Since when is there reading in a movie? Then the screen filled up with a space ship and all was lost. Six hours later, after three viewings, he has to drag us out kicking and screaming. We wanted to stay there forever. I estimate that by the end of that summer, we’d seen Star Wars at least 50 times.
My mom took me to see it. I was 8 years old, and at the time I had managed to see a grand total of about 3 seconds of advertising for the movie, consisting of a shot of Han Solo running for cover in the Death Star. Based on that, I thought it was some kind of western, probably because of his attire. No WAY did I want to see a western. I should call my mom and thank her.
I know I saw it more than 10 times over that summer, but I can’t remember just how many.
Years later, it was the first movie show on SuperChannel, Canada’s first Pay-TV station! I tried convincing my parents to subscribe, based solely on that. They pointed out that I’d seen Star Wars at least 50 times. I still have no idea what that had to do with anything…
I was 22 and living in Anchorage. I think I saw Star Wars at least 15 times that summer at the Totem 8 theater out on Muldoon. Total fanboy until Jedi. Ever since then I have regarded Lucas as the epitome of Evil. Nothing has changed that opinion since.
Apparently I was 9 when it came out, saw it the first weekend at the old Cooper Continental. Even back before the attack of the multiplex, the Cooper was something special - the screen was so big it was curved, and sitting in the middle of the theater was almost like being there. I don’t remember knowing anything about it, and kind of wondering why Dad was making us stand in line all day for a movie. The Cooper also had this weird smell, the smell of a generation of popcorn that had seeped into the deep plush slightly reclined seats, I suppose. Occasionally I’ll get a whiff of a scent like that and it’ll take me back to the Star Wars premier.
I saw Star Wars 43 times at a little theater up the street. I also own every home release.
These are acceptable spelling for the robot’s names which do appear in some Fox/Lucasfilm press material. In fact, the credits at the end of the movie itself read:
See Threepio (C3PO) ANTHONY DANIELS
Artoo-Detoo (R2-D2) KENNY BAKER
I recall an anecdote by Mark Hamill on a VH1 special about Star Wars. He and his co-stars decided to see what the general public’s reactions would be to the trailers, so they went to the movies and this trailer played before the film. After the announcer said “It’s coming to your galaxy this summer,” one of the moviegoers sarcastically replied, “Yeah, and it’s coming to cable about a week after that!” Apparently, nobody knew what an amazing film it would become.
I was born too late to enjoy Star Wars for the very first time, but I went with my mother and grandmother to see the Special Edition in 1997. It’s too long ago to recall fully, but I seem to remember enjoying it a lot, as I’m sure many people did not only then, but in one of its other many re-releases- and especially the original release 30 years ago. The entire Star Wars franchise, though it has had its ups and downs, has always entertained me- and inspired me. In fact, I never use the word “try,” thanks to Yoda’s wise advice in The Empire Strikes Back: “Try not. Do or do not. There is no try.” Thanks for all the entertainment, Mr. Lucas. And may the Force be with all of you.
I was living in Dublin at the time. Back then, it was almost a year before movies that were released in the US came out in Ireland. My Mam and Dad brought my sister and I to see it. I was 6 or 7. It totally blew me away. Genuinely affected me to the point were Sci-Fi and fantasy actually competed with Gaelic Football for my attention. Good times.
I was six years old in 1977. I didn’t get to see it until the re-release in 1978 at a small-town theater that was, at one time, the only theater in four counties. It was an old movie-palace-type place that seated like 700 people. I actually ended up working at the theater when I was a teenager. My biggest memory of that first screening was when Biggs died during the Death Star run. I was crushed and terrified. When they did the re-release in 1997, I saw in a movie theater for the first time in years. When Biggs was shot down, I heard a little boy cry out somewhere in the theater.
When I was 3 years old in 1983, my household got our first VCR, and the first movie my parents rented for me was Star Wars. Apparently I didn’t enjoy it, but then my interest was resparked when there was a Star Wars themed episode of Muppet Babies a couple years later. Being able to relate the muppet characters back to the original Star Wars characters was what was going through my head on my second viewing.
When the special editions were released in 1997, I saw all three in the theater. I loved seeing them on the big screen, but hated the way they mucked with them, and I was first in line to download the laserdisc ports of the original trilogy to DVD. I actually saw Episode 1 four times in the first three days, but primarily because of my rapidly growing crush on Natalie Portman. Episode 2 I saw about a month after its release, and really more as a “well, we’re at the theater, what are we gonna see?” afterthought. And episode 3…I watched that in my living room from a leaked screener 3 days before it was even out. To this day I still think that Clone Wars was the best Star Wars production in the last 20 years.
I was 8 years old (going on 9) when I saw Star Wars in the summer of 1977.
I hadn’t seen any trailers for it, and had no idea what I was in for.
My mother had just divorced, and we were living at my grandparent’s house in Houston. One Saturday I was told that the whole family (aunts, uncles, grandparents, etc.) were going to see some movie called “Star Wars.”
I’d seen some preview a few weeks before about some stupid-looking Hollywood movie, and I immediately assumed that this was it. I figured it was something stupid about Hollywood stars fighting with each other.
I told my mother I didn’t want to go. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts. “You’ll love it!”, they told me. “It’s all about space ships and stuff!”