I took our three year old son. He sat on my lap the whole time, so engrossed in the movie that he wet his pants (and consequently, mine)… He was well toilet-trained, he just wasn’t paying attention to anything but the screen. I think the movie warped his life towards role-playing games, fantasy and scifi, etc.
Then you know you’ve done a fine job, Dex.
I was fourteen when it first played in theaters. I thought it was amusing but hardly life-altering. My younger brothers loved it, of course. In those days I thought 2001: A Space Odyssey was the greatest thing I’d ever seen. I’d go see SW with my son if he wanted to see it, but I’d only be doing it for him (and I certainly wouldn’t tell him that).
[Bill Murray]
“Star Wars! Nothing but Star Wars!”
[/Bill Murray]
Much better than the film. 
I, unfortunately, was in the oven at the time, though I believe I saw the next two during their original releases (Return I recall, and my parents swear I was there for Empire as well).
Had to sit in on the re-releases in the late '90s. I got goose-bumps BAD!
I was nine. It was the big event for my older brother’s friend’s B-day party. But I was dragged along since my parents were helping with the party. I saw an ad for it in the paper when I I asked what we were seeing. I don’t remember much about it but it was not impressive. We got to the theater and there was a line around the block. I had never seen that happen before (and this theater had shown Jaws in previous summers). Fortunately, we had our tickets already and didn’t have to wait in line.
The score started. I was impressed with the sound. Then some text…not so impressed as I had been exposed to old Flahs Gordon serials at a younger age and had not been thrilled.
Then came the first ship…You know what happened next.
IT WOULD NOT END. The Imperial ship takes only a few seconds to come fully into screen. But that seemed like a lifetime.
Then there was the break-in fight on the Blockade runner, which impressed the heck out of me. Even more than the Imperial ship.
Y’see up until that time, movies that were war or ‘action’ were usually about 90 minutes of talking and then 30 minutes of action. Lots of build-up some final action. Here was a movie that started hard and fast with a battle scene. It calmed down after that, but it had pulled me in.
I think I cried when the Jawas ‘shot’ R2. The set-up was kinda creepy.
I was seven.
Not too long before, my father and brother had taken me with them to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I think the thought process went something like: Well, we want to see the movie, but we can’t just leave her here and there’s no one else to take care of her this afternoon. Besides, it’s sort of a space movie, isn’t it, and Cindy likes space things. She’ll like this. Let’s take her along!
I didn’t understand any of it and had nightmares for more than a solid week afterwards.
So Star Wars comes out and my aunt offers to take my sister and me to see it. The flodmother is very skeptical. Cindy got awful nightmares from the last science fiction movie someone took her to see, she points out. My aunt says this is different, it’s a kids’ movie, just like a live-action cartoon. So Mom says yes.
And I loved every second of it.
Rambling a bit here, I’ve noticed a lot of women around my age can trace their, ahem, development in terms of the first three Star Wars movies. When the original came out, we just liked it. When Empire was released, we had crushes on Luke Skywalker. And by the time we saw Jedi, we were divided over the Han vs. Lando issue, but we’d all totally outgrown Luke.
I was 22, and stationed at Ft. Lewis in Washington state. My folks were on vacation, and passing through, so stopped to see me.
I hadn’t really heard anything about Star Wars, except for one short trailer. But Dad, who had also been stationed at Ft. Lewis in the early 50’s, wanted to go see a movie, any movie, at an off base theater he remembered fondly. We were taken aback to see the long line, but did get tickets.
As others have mentioned, the opening shots of the ships flying overhead were just stunning. I loved that movie, and Dad was impressed in spite of himself.
I was 7, I’m gobsmacked how many of us are about the same age. (Or this thread jumped out a certain subset of Dopers.)
We never went to the movies when I was a kid. Back in the '50’s my parents met when Dad was a movie theater manager and my Mom sold tickets. Dad said seeing every movie made during those couple of years was enough to last a lifetime.
This is the only movie my Dad ever took me to see. Almost bring a tear to my eye.
The latter, I’d bet.
I was born in 1977. By the time I finally got to see the movie (on TV in 83 or 84) I was already a major freaking Star Wars fan. Action figures galore, the works. Actually getting to see it was mindblowing. I’m not sure how much I understood, but I knew I loved it. Still do.
Hehehe, the movie I never saw on the first release, cause I was stuck in the middle of nowhere. Literally!
I grew up in a town called Ridgecrest, California. If you look it up on a map, you will see that it is up in the middle of the Mojave Desert. It had two movie theaters (not counting the one on the next door Navy base), and only one was ever open at a time (they were owned by the same people and one was a drive-in). They didn’t get Star Wars until some time in late June, IIRC.
By which time I was doing a multi-week archaeology field school in Overton, Nevada. Look at the map again; this time I was stuck along the north shore of Lake Mead, out in the middle no where, with one theater that, while I was there, was playing such limelights as “The Slipper and the Rose” (Yes, we must be protocolicoricly correct… :rolleyes: ). Some of the people who were at the field school went in to Vegas to watch Star Wars, but at my age (16), I didn’t have a car and wasn’t able to spring for a hotel room to spend the night, so I played softball with the townpeople and missed out.
To make a long story short, by the time I was able to get to civilization, the movie was no longer showing. I had to wait until years later to see it; if I’m not mistaken I saw TESB without having first seen Star Wars.
There is NO movie in the 30 years since that has had the same response. Partly that’s because you now get a movie like that shown on a gazillion screens in a town (so you don’t HAVE to wait in lines blocks long to get tickets to the one or two showings on the one screen the town has!!). But mostly it’s because the movie took science fiction to a completely new level, one that, up to that point, had existed only in our minds.
Man that movie played in theaters FOR EVER.
I think I saw it at three different birthday parties, and two of them might have been for the same kid!
I was 21 at the time and, along with a few friends, was in line on opening day outside the Uptown Theater in Washington, DC. I remember a TV news crew interviewing the people on line as though they must be nuts to be waiting on line for a science fiction movie. There had been virtually no mainstream SF films since Kubrick’s 2001 nearly a decade earlier. Nobody expected this to be a very big deal.
We sat in the front row of the former Cinerama theater with its huge curved screen. The front row at the Uptown is a good 25 feet or so from the screen, and the left and right edges of the screen curve around behind you. So the screen completely fills your field of view. When that imperial battle cruiser flew overhead, it was the most amazing thing I had ever seen, more impressive than IMAX 3D when that came along 15 or so years later.
It was the greatest thing I had seen since 2001. Although I have no firm recollection, I must have gone back to see it at least a couple of times later that summer.
It’s hard to understand now the amazing impact it had on all of society, and how unexpected its success was. I don’t know what anyone else thinks, but I have never for a second believed that Lucas had intended it from the beginning as the middle of a set of three trilogies. I think its success caught Lucas as much by surprise as anyone else. The original film stands too well on its own as a complete story, IMHO.
I liked the next two films much less than the first. Empire Strikes Back was too obviously a middle film, and the fighting teddy bears of Return of the Jedi were just silly. And by that time, the Star Wars mania had really begun to build, and that was a turn off for me. SW jumped the shark at about the time people started making a big deal out of Boba Fett.
As far as I’m concerned, Eps 1-3 are the three worst films ever made. Plan 9 From Outer Space is Citizen Kane compared to any of them.
I think you’re thinking of the Uptown on Connecticut Ave., or maybe the MacArthur. IIRC, the Jennifer (now long gone) was a rather ordinary-sized theater on Wisconsin. Or maybe when you were seven, an ordinary screen seemed larger.
Actually, just about every time someone starts a “How old are you?” thread, most people check in in their late 30s.
This is a total aging Gen-X board. That’s why it’s so cool. 
I would bet a lot of money you saw it at the Roxy in downtown Tacoma.
You could be right either way. I remember that the screen was the big curving arc. And I know that I’ve seen flicks at The Jennifer. So Maybe I just conflated the two. But that massive screen and awesome sound system really sent the whole production over the top. But it was a theater in NW DC.
I was 10 years old in 1977 and I didn’t get to see it until 4th of July. My parents, my sister and I went to see it at the Lakeside Mall Cinema in Metairie. I remember leaving the theater talking to my dad about what would happen to Darth Vader since he was still alive at the end. When my 5th grade year started in the fall, I did nothing but draw the Death Star battle in all my notebooks. I think there will never be another “Star Wars” (the experience and phenomenon) just like there will never be another Beatles.
By the way, if I recall correctly, the full price of admission was $3.50 each.
Definitely the Uptown.
First (and last) time I ever saw guys walking through the theater offering loose joints. It was in NYC and I went to see the film twice in two days - a first for me.