Any particularly cool, bad, or unusual memories of when you first (or later) saw STAR WARS? Share them here.
I was 11 when I saw the first one. Nobody in my family wanted to see it but my grandmother had recently said something about not having seen a movie in 20 years to my father (her son). I couldn’t stand Grandmother and nostalgia hasn’t done anything to soften the view: she was generally an evil nasty sociopath who could have kicked Vader’s biomechanical ass so long as she was allowed to use her garden hoe against his light saber, but in retrospect the experience was kind of neat: I’m probably one of the few people who saw STAR WARS with somebody born in the 19th century.
The odd thing: she loved it. She complained about the popcorn prices the entire time (the $1 per box was exorbitant), but she actually kept up with the action and even talked about it on the 40 mile ride home to our farm. “That princess was just beautiful in the final scene…” and “that man in black was just pure evil… you see how he just picked that man up by the throat and tossed him? I seen a man do that one time to a whitetrash boy worked for him…” and “those robots were inter’stin’, won’t be long for we have such as those I reckon…”. (Grandmother had been a science teacher and had literally been laughed at and complained about in the 1950s for saying man would walk on the moon in her lifetime.)
I’ve memories associated with the others as well, but I’ll let somebody else share. (I wonder out of curiosity what the earliest year a viewer of STAR WARS was born in [awkward sentence, but you know what I mean]- Grandmother was born in 1898 which would have to put her in the oldest quartile anyway.)
And one more: it was while watching RETURN OF THE JEDI that I had the conception epiphany:
-an enormous egg is suspended in space
-it is being attacked by infinitely tinier little Xs and Ys
-one will be able to get it’s “load” inside the egg
-this will set off a chain of reactions and release of energy that will spell the birth of a new order
“Luke, at that speed, will you be able to pull out in time?”
Star Wars was the first movie I ever saw in the theatre by myself. (At least, for several of the repeat viewings.) My folks would go for the regular movie night and I’d watch Star Wars again while they checked out something else.
I remember after the first time I saw Empire Strikes Back I was so jazzed up that I ran back to the car, leaving my family in the dust. Of course, the car was locked up tight, but I still had both feet firmly in the Star Wars universe – so I, uh… tried to use The Force to lift the little knobbie up and unlock the door.
It still doesn’t work, dammit. Sassafrassacrassa low midichlorian count. Worse’n a narrow urethra, I’ll tell you whut.
Well, Sampiro, your G’ma has mine beat by about 5 years, but I don’t recall as her ever having seen any of the Star Wars.
Interestingly enough, my G’ma worked for the Douglas Aircraft Co. during WW II, and when I was building the model of the Millenium Falcon, she peeked over my shoulder and immediately identified the gun turrets from her experience as a “Rosie” w/o ever having seen the ship or the movies before.
I was six when the first STAR WARS came to my sleepy little Southern town. My younger brother had been born a year earlier, and my step-father took me to see it in an effort to bond with me. Now… my Uncle Bernie had been taking me to scary/horror movies for years… every weekend my days were filled either fishing with my grandaddy or going to matinees with my uncle and watching stuff like PLANET OF THE APES double features, KING KONG and MIGHTY JOE YOUNG and GODZILLA movies.
But see, my uncle had a way of calming me down with his hand on my shoulder or quietly explaining things to me when things got too intense and so i could sit through an entire movie with him. My stepdad had no such empathy – as I recall, he let me sit two seats away from him and let me get engrossed in the movie all by myself. So he wasn’t paying attention that there were lots of things visually creeping me the hell out.
When the beady-eyed Jawas showed up.
When Luke fended off the Sand People.
When Obi-Wan chopped off the guy’s arm in Mos Eisley.
When Han shot Greedo.
When Chewbacca turned up.
When Luke found his aunt and uncle’s bodies.
And on and on… through the trash compactor scene and the laser gun fights and Vader choking that one guy… I think I said something about wanting to go home and my stepdad sorta shushed and ignored me.
When Vader tested the Death Star and blew up Alderaan I was a mess, and when Vader chopped Obi-Wan in half with the light saber I was screaming. My last memory of Star Wars until EMPIRE came out was me, bawling my head off, the whole theatre staring at me, on my stepdad’s shoulder as he angrily took me out of the theatre and drove me home.
Isaw Star Wars when it came out, in 1977, in a theater in Seattle, Washington. I was in my last three months of Army service, stationed at Ft. Lewis. I don’t remember any hype for the movie, but I did know there were very long lines. MUltiplexes weren’t really big yet, although they were certainly around, but this was in an old, downtown one screen theater. My parents actually went with me. They were on a vacation trip, and came through Washington on their motorcycle. Dad wanted to go to a movie as much as I did, because in the early 50’s he’d been stationed at Ft. Lewis and had attended shows at this same theater. So we all went to see Star Wars. Even at the age of twently two I was blown away, that first scene of the fleeing ship, with the bigger one chasing it was amazing.
It was, I’m sure, the only time Dad saw Star Wars, but he was happy to revisit a scene from his past.
While this is certainly connected to an entertainment form, Cafe Society is presently beset by STAR WARS threads. And I’m ruling that a “remember when…” more properly belongs in MPSIMS. Hence, the move.
I was 12, it was at the little Laurel Theatre in San Carlos, California - first day it was in the theater - I don’t remember how we knew or why we were excited about it. I went with a buddy - we were dropped off. First Star Wars, by the way.
I was simply blown away - it consumed me. After the movie, my buddy Dave and I - both “very good” studious kids who would never do a thing wrong (at the time, anyway) - didn’t think twice: we called our parents, told 'em we were going to the other kid’s house, hid in the bathrooms and snuck back in for the next show. I would NEVER have considered doing that before - and get in trouble? Are you crazy? But this time? Never crossed our minds NOT to do it.
After that, for Empire and Jedi, I just dropped whatever I was doing and saw the movies at their first showing at the local theater.
Cut to: about 3 years ago. My then-4 1/2-year-old-son Jake is ready. On a sick day for him, I set up Star Wars. He is completely entranced. Then I put in Empire. He is scared of some parts, but still consumed and has to watch. When Vader unloads the infamous “I am your father!” line, Jake completely. freaks. out. He got SO excited and had to run around telling everybody he saw what happened. It was so cute to see him so wrapped up in it.
I was 7, and my Mom decided to take me and my cousin, who was visiting, to a movie. When I heard we were going to a dumb war movie instead of the new Benji movie, I was VERY upset.
Until, that is, the movie started. I’d never even dreamed of anything like it. I give “Star Wars” the credit for starting my early obsession with computers and anything spacey, which grew into my career.
Star Wars was the first movie that I ever went to more than once during its first run. I ended up seeing it about 20 times, I think. I attended more than half of those showings stoned and sat front row center in the theatre to enhance the awesomeness of the experience.
Ah the summer of Star Wars… I was 9 and dragged to see it by my older brother. I went on to see it every weekend for the rest of the summer. A few years later, one of the teachers at my high school bought the Beta tape (for $75!) and showed it all day long on the last day of school. I didn’t even go to lunch that day.
I was 15 when *Return of the Jedi * was opening. All my friends and I got my 16 year old cousin to drive us and we stood in line for 6 hours. It was great. Weird thing: my father had a nasty fall off the hayshed that morning. After going with him to the local hospital and learning he’d broken his leg, I went with my friends anyway. Came home at midnight to an empty house. Eventually my mom called and said Dad was in intensive care in the Big Hospital in Montgomery with double collapsed lungs. Yep, I ran off with my friends while my father nearly died. At least I had my priorities straight.
God, this makes me feel old.
The original Star Wars opened on the night of the day of my very last undergraduate exam, so we decided to celebrate. A friend had free passes to the Charles Street Cinema (where SW was having its Boston premiere), so we went there. But they weren’t honoring passes, so we left. Later we thought we’d try to see it anyway, but by thenn it was sold out.
This was the night SW opened – it had some cool bottom-of-the-page ads in the papers and a good writeup in Time, but nobody knew at the time how big it was gonna get. The original trailer I’d seen in January was pretty bleak – they managed to choose scenes that didn’t convey the excitement of the film. They didn’t have Barry’s music, but had a brooding theme over it, and they didn’t even yet have the eye-catching yellow outline Star Wars logo.
I went to see it in a nearly-deserted theather the next afternoon. As soon as I heard the full 20th Century Fox fanfare (as opposed to the clipped version they’d been using) I knew that here was someone who paid attention to detail, and I knew it was gonna be good. I sat through it twice.
My advisor took a visiting Russian professor to it. He loved it.
I was 24 when the film came out. I’d been a science fiction reader for years and despaired of seeing any decent SF films. But the first scene of the giant spaceship going over my head (I liked to sit near the very front row in those days) was immensely impressive, and I loved the film from that point on. It was one of the first time we really saw good SF adventure on screen.
In retrospect, the film was a great one, but it led to a lot of very bad trends in filmmaking, and pretty much killed off the serious Hollywood film.