Anyone near a major market, which included nearly everyone in the Northeast, at least. I’m from New York and I saw them also. Plus, before VCRs, showing movies was a good way for independent stations to fill their schedules at low cost.
The same was true in the Midwest and, yes, all but the most dismal parts of Appalachia. The 1970s were not part of the Stone Age.
As for Star Wars, I saw it at 26, with a pretty extensive background in sf. I loved it. The people who saw previews at Cons loved it.
Two reasons. First, as has already been mentioned, it was the first movie to show us all the stuff Planet Stories and the pulps told us about. I count that more than the Flash Gordon references because the Flash Gordon serials couldn’t afford to show us anything very interesting, the good stuff was in our heads. The opening scroll took us back to the serials - the Star Destroyer showed us that we’d be getting a lot more. And the Cantina scene was the one right from a Leigh Brackett story.
Second, Star Wars was the first movie which worked which assumed we knew all this stuff. 2001 built from a background of von Braun and Willy Ley books to transcendence, but the original plan was to have a prolog where scientists talked about these topics - which Kubrick got rid of. It would have been awful. I think some of the statements are on the latest DVD. Even at that many of the big name critics in 1968 had no clue. By 1977 nearly everyone got it.
Star Trek also dumped us into the future without a lot of explanation, but they had hours and hours of show to build a universe. Star Wars did it in minutes.
You know what? I work hard, I pay my taxes, I’m a good father and a good husband. I’m not going to apologize for enjoying things that make me happy, even if I happen to be over 40.
Not to mention, stories of people fighting scary monsters have been popular, adult entertainment… pretty much forever. The Odyssey wasn’t written as a bronze-age Harry Potter.
Since we are talking 1977 and VCRs it was pretty darn close.
You might want to look at when those things came out and how much they cost and then come back and give us some idea of how many people you think had one when Star Wars came out.
Then get an idea of how many independent stations there were in 1977. Then estimate how many people were NOT getting an independent station. And even with that you are making the assumption than an independent station would be showing lots of big classic sci fi movies.
We’re not talking about seeing those movies just before Star Wars came out. I saw them all through the '60s. And they hardly specialized in sf movies - they showed so many, that the class sf films naturally showed up from time to time.
The Times was full of mini-movie reviews for movies shown on these stations during this time.
I had 2, later 3 UHF stations where I was. Houston. Star Trek reruns, late night movies (often sci-fi), and Sat aft movies ( also often sci-fi). My PBS station showed Doctor Who late weekday afts in serial format.
I didn’t have a VCR or cable until the early 80s, but that didn’t stop me from seeing loads of sci-fi. Simply had to time my watching to when the stuff aired.
What year were you born?
I don’t need to “look” to find out how much VCRs cost in 1977. I remember they were very expensive. I still knew people who had one. And there was never any shortage of “big classic sci-fi movies” on TV, whether the station was network or independent. Network affiliates could choose to do their own programming after prime time, and they often did.
I think it was something of a crap shoot as to what SF films you were able to see in the early 70s, depending on where you lived and what sort of programming your local stations did. There was certainly science fiction available, but I would say that for me it was not always easily available. I can remember scouring the TV Guide every week, looking for interesting SF or monster movies. They were there, but often you had to stay up past midnight to see them, and what you saw might well be a heavily spliced print that was interrupted every five minutes by commercials for local car dealerships. Where I lived, the theaters didn’t show movies that old, or at least I never knew about it if they did. So for me, at that time, it was often slim pickings, and you had to go actively looking for them, rather than just stumbling across them while you were watching other things.
On the whole, I think it’s a fair statement to say that science fiction wasn’t taken very seriously by the movie industry before Star Wars. Yes, there had been science fiction films for decades before that, many of them very good. But things like The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, or Destination Moon were still largely aberrations among the vast swath of cheap drive-in fare from studios like American International or Astor that constituted the bulk of the SF output. Science fiction as a whole was a reliable money-maker on the teen circuit, but only a few producers or directors seemed to consider it capable of achieving anything more than that. The few SF films of the 50s and 60s that were aimed at adults stand out precisely because they’re relatively rare.
Bill Warren, in Keep Watching the Skies, points out that MGM didn’t really consider Forbidden Planet anything particularly special. Its budget of just under $2,000,000, while lavish compared to other SF films of the period, was pretty low compared to other films being made at MGM that same year. Musicals like High Society and Invitation to the Dance, Westerns like Tribute to a Bad Man and The Last Hunt, and period dramas like Friendly Persuasion and Lust for Life had far bigger budgets, and were considered much more important.
I think it’s fair to say that this is one of the things that Star Wars did change. It showed the industry that science fiction could bring in huge audiences, far beyond what anyone had ever expected of the genre before. It made SF into a genre that you had to take seriously if you were running a studio.
Yes and Jaws was nominated for Best Picture in 1975. The Towering Inferno was nominated in 1974. Popular blockbusters were routinely nominated at the Academy Awards as a sop to the masses. In 1977 that would be Star Wars.
I haven’t a clue why we’re still discussing this film now. Sure it was innovative at the time and rewriting a Western as a sci fi flick was fun. The special effects were solid. So were the Towering Inferno’s. Han Solo was entertaining and funny. So I liked it when I saw it in the theater. The bar scene was great. Oh yeah, remember when they jumped to light speed?
The preceding transplants my POV from then to the present: in fact there were also a few Japanese influences in the film as noted upthread.
I’m guessing though that most of the fanbase never saw Star Wars in the original 1977 run. They saw it on TV as kids. That I think might be the core of its appeal: Star Wars and Empire were kids films that weren’t conceived as a kids film. So a lot of the Disney treacle and 4 year old moralizing were absent. In Japan authors will kill off the main character in kiddie series: Tezuka started to do this in 1960 manga, possibly earlier. In the US it’s a big deal to do that in a film ostensibly for adults. So Star Wars has had a lock on the Innocent Yet Not Puerile US market.
My point: it might be great now. It wasn’t great at the time, at least to the jaded. Or rather it was great like Towering Inferno was great. Though clever and innovative like Towering Inferno wasn’t. As for SF fans at the time, they were honestly too small an audience to matter much. That would change, partly due to Star Wars.
I’m sorry, your post comes across like some old curmudgeon, upset that someone likes something you don’t, and reaching for any reason to put down those that do. Like you’re trying too hard to pretend the movie is dismissible pap, and by extension, dismiss anyone that likes it.
For the fact that the movie IS beloved by a huge number of people, and that a new movie is coming out. You may have heard of it. I hear people are excited about seeing it.
There are a lot of us that did see it in the theater. And I was 17, not 5 in 1977. I can tell you there had never been a reaction to a movie before like there was for SW. It ran in the theaters for like a year. People - not just sci fi fans, but average Joes - were bragging about how many times they’d seen the movie.
This is the snobby comment - obviously, anyone that thought SW was great was not qualified to judge films. There were plenty of people that thought it was great at the time.
You should have used Jaws instead of Towering Inferno as your comparison. Jaws at least spawned sequels of questionable quality. The franchises are at least comparable for impact and box office numbers. How is that Towering Inferno sequel doing at the box office? And the Towering Inferno novels? TI toys?
The darn things came out pretty much when Star Wars did and cost the equivalent of $4000 today. You think most people had one by the time Star Wars came out? Something that cost that much and has just came out doesn’t flood the market that quickly.
IME they weren’t common till the mid 80’s give or take and depending on what you define as common.
It looks to me that the new Star Wars will be way better than eps 1-3.
This is true, and I almost pointed this out. I’m glad you did. It’s also true that the film was widely dismissed. And that furthermore, the blockbusterization of Hollywood was resented by a lot of folks. My personal take in 1977 was that it was a fun film. But I didn’t take it too seriously, thought that people who did were amusing, and in no way predicted that it would prop a fan base well beyond that of James Bond in 10-20 years.
What do you have against the Towering Inferno? It was nominated for an Oscar!!1! I don’t deny that Star Wars spun off a huge merchandising campaign. The Care Bears in Revenge had a particularly prominent role, with dubious artistic results. But hey. Toy$. Lucas was quite the businessman. (Not to hijack, but the Towering Inferno was itself a sequel, sort of. As I’m sure you recall, the genre was disaster flicks. Efforts included the Poseidon Adventure, Airport, Airport II, Airport… They all did quite well at the box office and even had a few toy spinoffs, IIRC. Airplane deserves a mention as well: it was probably the best of the set.)
Anyway, I repeat my argument. Star Wars is great because it’s a kiddie film that wasn’t conceived as a kiddie film. In the US adults read YA fiction. In Japan, comics aimed at kids are read by a wide age bracket. When kiddie art doesn’t suck, it gains a broad audience. Star Wars was originally rated G by the Motion Picture Association of America, before Lucas sent it back to be upgraded to PG. He wisely wanted to avoid the kiddie stigma. But there would be no stigma if that particular art form was taken more seriously to begin with.
Measure,
In what way(s) (besides the fluffy bears) was it a kid movie?
In what way(s) was it not conceived as a kid movie? There were killing important characters and no 4 year old moralizing. What do you mean by Disney treacle? Was there anything else?
I’m interested in the contrast between a work (in any medium) for kids and a work that isn’t conceived as being for kids.
I’m more than happy to stipulate that the Oscars are, generally speaking, completely stupid. I mentioned the Oscar nom not to argue that Star Wars must be good, but rather to argue that adults in 1977 liked Star Wars. I’d argue the same thing for Beauty and the Beast, which is undeniably aimed at children.
Walt Disney put a bullet in Bambi’s mother in 1942.
I think a big part of Star Wars’ success was Williams’ score.
He is also a reason Raiders of the Lost Ark did so well.
IMO, of course.
This. Life is too short to be serious all the time.
I think what made the original Star Wars great was that it was great escapist fantasy. Lucas made places like Tatooine, Hoth, Dagobah, Endor, Cloud City and the Death Stars feel like real tangible places. Unlike Star Trek, every character isn’t an astrophysicist space marine diplomat. This was a universe run by an Empire with space stations the size of a small moon which also had dipshit farm boys living in it’s backwaters. The ships and weapons and vehicles weren’t “magic” in the sense that you could reverse the positronic flow and blow up a moon. They were fantastic by modern standards, but they were also functional. Star Destroyers were just big battleship/carriers. The Millennium Falcon felt like the sort of hunk of junk someone like Han and Chewie would live/work in.
The themes aren’t particularly complex. The violence is relatively bloodless and for the most part death is limited to tertiary characters. It’s largely asexual (golden bikini not withstanding). Although it does have some dark moments. The series doesn’t really dwell on a lot of the consequences of those dark moments (Luke’s aunt and uncle are never mentioned again). Star Wars can best be described as a fairy tale in space.
Yes. In 1981, when my wife was pregnant, we rented a VCR from a video store in order to be able to watch movies. We finally bought one a few years later - and it was reasonably priced then, though of course not dirt cheap the way they got to be. This was also when all the video stores were independents, with the porn in a back room.
msmith put it better than I could have. Here’s another angle. Back in the 1970s Star Wars was known as a Western set in space. It was part of Lucas’ pitch to the suits. The Western was dead back then, and Lucas felt that it had left behind a vacuum of sorts. Here’s how he puts it: [INDENT][INDENT]“When I was in college, for two years I studied anthropology–that was basically all I did… “Myths, stories from other cultures. It seemed to me that there was no longer a lot of mythology in our society–the kind of stories we tell ourselves and our children, which is the way our heritage is passed down. Westerns used to provide that, but there weren’t Westerns anymore. I wanted to find a new form. So I looked around, and tried to figure out where myth comes from. It comes from the borders of society, from out there, from places of mystery–the wide Sargasso Sea. And I thought, Space. Because back then space was a source of great mystery. So I thought, O.K., let’s see what we can do with all those elements. I put them all into a bag, along with a little bit of ‘Flash Gordon’ and a few other things, and out fell ‘Star Wars.’ “ [/INDENT][/INDENT]
But later (after he had children of his own) Lucas realized that he had made a kid’s show. So he retconned the 1977 flick, making Han Solo shoot 2nd rather than first. In terms of character development that was a mistake. But Lucas didn’t want his cool guy role model to be a murderer. Similarly in attack of the clones, it’s an army of clones that are casually blasted away, rather than a bunch of Imperial Storm troopers, who presumably had (urk) people inside.
My cite is a New Yorker article published during the early 1997. Excerpts here. Article here.
He did, in the beginning of the feature. Still had a happy ending. But I really had the Disney of the 1970s in mind, after Walt had died but before Eisner had taken over. They were afraid of making their movies too racy and tended to go for zany comedy or cheap moralizing. They were adrift.
But when I learned that Lucas had sold the franchise (along with the rest of LucasFilm) to Disney in 2012, I thought it was a good fit. Disney knows merchandising and cross media fertilization. And they are competent storytellers now.