I was 7, and it was the first and only movie my dad ever took me to. I had not even heard of it until we got the theater. We were 20mins late so I missed the whole opening battle scene and came in when the droids were on the surface.
Regardless… that movie just blew me away! I didn’t get a chance to see it again until it came out on VHS, and I swear I spent a whole summer watching that movie every freakin night. As someone said above, it put whole new ideas into my head about computers, robots, and just tech stuff in general.
Say what you will about Lucas, but he impacted an entire generation of movie-goers in a very positive way. Hell of a way to make your mark in the world.
I was 12 and knew very little about the movie before seeing it. A friend had seen it already that summer and said I had to see it. I did - can’t even remember at what theater - and loved it. Loved it! Saw it maybe four or five times that summer. Bought the soundtrack, one of my first LPs ever, and loved that, too; listened to the opening theme and Cantina tune over and over and over again. Also read the Alan Dean Foster novelization (ghostwritten for Lucas) repeatedly. Ah, memories.
I still think it’s the best of the entire SW series, even better than “Empire Strikes Back.”
I was 12 years old, soon to turn 13 when I saw it in June of 77. We had a young scout master and he took our boy scout troop to see it. Some of the boys had seen it already and loved it.
The theater was full and I’c say at least a quarter of the audience had seen it already, so when the fanfare started up and the logo flashed on the screen there was a big cheer.
I was completely blown away. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen; Darth Vader’s costume, with the weird samurai-type helmet and mask, the pushbuttons on his chest and the black cape… the robots, the wizard, the weird aliens in the bar…Solo’s space ship in the hangar was so freaking cool, then Luke whines “What a Piece of Junk”, the whole audience burst out in laughter…
My father was a big sci-fi fan, read Asimov in the 50’s & 60s, took me to a rerelease of 2001 in 74 or 75. I talked about STAR WARS all the next week, so dad took me to see it again. I got the novelization, collected STAR WARS trading cards, EVERYTHING in my world was STAR WARS for the next couple of years. Dad was impressed by the movie too, but his wife (my step mom) never saw it, so never got it and decided she had to beat the fanboy out of me… I still hate that woman.
I was nine when it came out. A couple of weeks into its run, I saw a neighborhood kid wearing a Star Wars shirt – the one with Artoo and Threepio on it.
“Star Wars? What’s that?”, I asked.
He explained that it was a really really supercool movie that just came out and I had to go see it 'cause it was the coolest thing ever and I should go and ask my mom to please please please take me right now and hey could he come along too?
Saw it fourteen times at the Kennedy Mall theater over the next two years.
Needless to say, I wept during the 1999 re-release when the opening theme chords struck.
I could have written this post, except the part about the soundtrack–I had the Cantina theme on 45. I was nearly 13 when it came out and I used all of my babysitting money to watch it over and over again, and to buy the novelization and the 45. Later that summer, we drove cross-country on our family vacation, and I read the book so many times I could quote huge chunks of it from memory. What a fantastic summer that was.
Also written by Foster. It is good, although obviously contradicted by later SW canon. I haven’t read it in 20+ years, but I imagine that Luke and Leia’s relationship would come across as even more icky now, knowing that they’re actually siblings.
I was a real Foster fan for a long time. But I remember thinking how Foster must have been a little annoyed at L&L suddenly being siblings.
But I actually remember that story for the Imperial characters rather than the heroes.
One thing that is now coincidental is that near the end of the story C-3PO says that Vader got right past him because he knew all of 3POs passwords and codes. Well duh, he built you back on tatooine!
I’m sure it wasn’t the first movie I saw, but it’s the first one I have a distinct memory of. I was about 5, maybe 6 years old at the time, so this was '89-'90. It was being shown on TV one night and my dad decided that I needed to see it*. I think I may have gone to bed early so I could nap before it came on so I’d be well rested. I thought that Ben was the coolest guy going, but for some reason his line that Luke’s “lucky to be all in one piece” freaked me out.
*I just realized that there are only three movies my dad ever said I needed to see: SW, To Kill a Mockingbird and Schindler’s List
It’s my earliest memory and, since I was 23, that’s kinda sad.
Opening day, second matinee at the Yorktown. I was unemployed and my wife had the afternoon off. They handed out 2-1/4" diameter buttons that said, “May the force be with you.” I shrugged and put the button in my pocket. Scrolling backstory–yawn! Then the Imperial Star Destroyer started across the screen. And kept on coming!
So did Fox- they feared audiences would believe The Star Wars (as it was then called) would involve celebrities fighting. Was Battle of the Network Stars on back then? If so, I could see where they were coming from.
I wish I was a few years older (though I’m sure my parents wouldn’t!) so I’d remember seeing it when it first came out, but as I was a toddler, that’s a no-go. And I don’t know how old I was when I first saw it, except that I got an instant and ongoing crush on 30-ish Harrison Ford. Yowza.
The rerelease was way cool for me, since I’d never seen the movies in a theater. Silly “updating” or not, it was still way cool. And I admit to getting teary at the beginning of TPM because my dad had talked for years and years about the rumored nine-movie sequence…but he died in 1997. Oh well, the recent three were crap anyway. But he really, really wanted to see more Star Wars. sniffle
Now I know what I’m going to watch tonight since I have the house to myself!
I saw it when I was twenty and like to think of myself as sophisticated (heh). I remember thinking somewhere in the first 30 seconds of the movie, “Finally, what I’ve seen only in my mind’s eye is on the screen” (well, not that articulate). Like everyone else, I was mesmerized. I didn’t even care about the corny dialog.
I was nearly 13 when it came out and I used all of my babysitting money to watch it over and over again, and to buy the novelization and the 45. Later that summer, we drove cross-country on our family vacation, and I read the book so many times I could quote huge chunks of it from memory. What a fantastic summer that was.