Posted on 05/18/2007 10:32:23 AM PDT by fgoodwin
Skipped the last day of my high school senior year to catch the opening day at the Uptown Theater in DC.
30 years later and it is still the best day of my life.
I had just finished fourth grade, with really good grades, so my Dad took me to watch it on Opening Night...I have been hooked ever since.
I snuck into a drive-in theatre with my brother. It was the only time we got caught.
I saw it in 1977 at the North Park cinema, back when it was two screens in separate theaters. I remember the lines wrapping around the parking garages — but afterwards, I knew it was definitely worth the wait.
I must’ve seen it another 5-6 times in the next couple of weeks. I’ve never been so moved to repeat viewings of the same movie as I was Star Wars. Not even TESB or ROTJ, and certainly not any of the current incarnation.
I almost felt that way about Raiders of the Lost Ark, and even though I saw it several times, the “adventure” wasn’t quite the same.
So what theater did you see it in?
Saw it 11 times that summer. Only movie I’ve seen more than once in a theater.
It’s still the best.
Wow!!! That's where I saw it too, North Park Cinema in Dallas.
I saw it before it became popular. I was 16.
I thought it was good. However, the friend that I saw it with went absolutely ga-ga over it. He still talks about that first time.
North Park Cinema was awesome.
I’m glad they showed Star Wars in that theater. Now the multiplexes with their 32-inch screens hardly do justice to blockbusters like LOTR, H-P and other movies that deserve the big-screen treatment.
I think I remember a curtain actually pulling back before the opening fanfare, or was that another theater? I think Casa Linda in East Dallas also had a curtain in front of the screen.
Man, those were the days . . .
After a full day like that..its only down hill from there.
I remember my first time too. It was the best!
Yep, that’s just how it was.
Does anyone remember when “Episode IV: A New Hope” was added to the scroll at the beginning? I know it wasn’t there when I first saw the movie — Lucas later explained he had no idea how successful it would be, and wasn’t sure there would be more episodes. He added “Ep IV” only after Fox agreed to fund additional episodes.
I do remember seeing the “Ep IV” (sometime after 1977 but before 1980 when TESB came out), and being shocked, then hopeful, knowing that it meant more would be forthcoming, as well as confused that the series we were seeing started in the middle of the story.
I remember it all being kinda confusing at the time (there was no public internet in the late 70s to get the word out — it was all word-of-mouth and home-brewed fanzines).
I was born in 1975, so I was too young to get in on the first movie release. I did go see ESB when it came out (1980) and loved it. I’m not sure if I’d seen ANH at all yet, but at some time in the early 1980s they re-released it to theaters and I got my mom to take me. I was expecting ESB (i.e., Hoth, AT-ATs, asteroids, etc.) and was actually quite disappointed with the original. I appreciate it now, of course, but ESB is still the best in the series.
I agree that ESB is the best of all of them.
But you have to understand that in 1977, nothing like ANH had ever been seen before in theaters or anywhere else, outside of Lucas’ imagination.
2001 came close in its technical wizadry, but it lacked the swash-buckling fun and fantasy of ANH.
Of course, audiences now look at ANH and see how dated it is by modern standards, but it can’t be judged by modern standards. Without Lucas and “ANH”, I doubt if we’d have blockbusters like LOTR, for example.
I’m sure we would’ve gotten there eventually, as everything goes more and more digital, but its just hard to explain the impact and “wow” factor of Star Wars back in the pre-digital, pre-Internet culture.
And because SW changed things forever, I’m not sure we’ll ever see anything else have that kind of impact again.
Remember the hype for “The Matrix”? It was well done and all, but it wasn’t the ground-breaking trail-blazer that ANH was.
I’m glad I was there to see it first hand, because I doubt we will ever again see the like.
I remember feeling that “wow” factor when I saw “Jurassic Park” back in ‘93, due to its advances in CGI as applied to living creatures (as opposed to space ships).
JP set a new standard, but now we see even better CGI every day in commercials. I fear that some day, CGI will get so good, even real actors will become outmoded, and everything we see on screen will be CGI, making it no more original than a cartoon. (”Outland”, anyone?)
To be perfectly honest, the first time I saw “Star Wars” I have to admit I was somewhat disappointed. The previews were comparing it to “2001,...” with it’s special effects. So I was expecting something deep and profound like “2001”. What I got instead was something along the lines of “Buck Rogers in the 24th Century.”
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