By that time, of course, I had. And my experience the first time 20 years earlier was fantastic. I lived on Long Island, New York - - far, far away from the glorious Chinese Theater in Hollywood. But I saw the film on the biggest screen in Long Island ... which was the biggest screen I had seen in my young (16 year old) life.
I remember trying not to be impressed at first. Sure, word had been out for a couple of weeks that this movie ruled, and yes I had to wait four hours in line to see it. This alone was a first for me, but I remained cynical ... for oh, about 3 minutes. When the huge Stardestroyer passes overhead and you could hear the collective gasp of the huge audience ... I sat there thinking ' yeah, this looks cool 'cause its gigantic, but it's the same effect they used in Space 1999, and that title crawl was just ripped off from Buck Rogers.' A minute later, though, Darth Vader made his first appearance. The audience instinctively hissed at his arrival, reacting unabashedly with fun and involvement. And I started to glimpse the genius of this retro throwback of a movie done with a spectacular modern sensibility.
The Cantina scene was a comedy showstopper. The Millennium Falcon's escape from the Death Star brought down the house. And the climactic space battle with the forgone conclusion telegraphed in text at the beginning of the film had a thousand people cheering in exultant surprise.
I had two personal moments in the movie where I increasingly "got it," but I can't say that was true of the audience as a whole. What I can attest to is that the crowd loved it. Laughter and applause peppered the entire film. And the lines to get in just got longer and longer, the mania erupted on the world stage, while the only things to buy were some t-shirts, posters and the soundtrack album (I went through six copies). Despite the lack of consumer product, the initial exhuberance of the Star Wars phenomenon outshone anything that came along later with toys galore and Burger King tie-ins.
It changed the world.
(a little bit)
And I'm really glad I was there, old enough to appreciate what was going on, young enough to be swept away.
.