zombie84 said:
Somebody get Anchorhead in here.
Somebody get Anchorhead in here.
;-)
emfab,
That's a tough one to explain in a short post. Are you looking for any opinions or experiences specifically?
I'm 45. For my generation (I was 15 when Star Wars came out), there wasn't the entertainment stimuli that there is now. We didn't have video games, computer games, internet, cell phones, video iPods, DVD players hooked to our 50” plasmas with surround sound, or 200 channels of TV. We weren’t wired into the public conscience the way people are now. We had books, radio, prime-time TV (about 5 channels - that went off the air at midnight), and movies.
Our adventures, whatever they were, were all in our imagination. I don't have to tell you that sitting in the theater and seeing Star Wars for the first time was one hell of an experience. It was a very realistic representation of what, for many of us, our imaginations had always been – good guy goes off to rescue a beautiful princess and defeat the bad guys -and – it was in outer space, no less! There were space ships, laser swords, blasters, strange creatures from other galaxies, etc. Man, it had it all.
I felt a million miles from home during the film – when I went on that adventure. It was an adventure I went on every week that year. If you have a way to see the original trailer for Star Wars, you can get an idea of how different a film it really was – both from anything that had come before it, as well as from what Lucas wants it to be now. That original trailer is so foreign and distant that it’s almost creepy. That was no little kid movie. It was an outer space, science fiction adventure. And - as you are no doubt aware – it took the world by storm. It was all anyone talked about. Everyone wanted to be one of the characters because everyone identified with one of them. In popular culture, it was copied, as well as spoofed. 1977 felt like Star Wars. It also quite literally changed the way the world saw outer space movies. Both in how they were made and what people expected out of them.
It was unlike anything that had ever come before it. It was pure magic. Because of the naiveté and innocence of the world back then, it was easy for it to grab the public conscience in a way that just isn’t possible anymore – for anything. The world is no longer innocent and people are accustomed to having perfect realizations presented to them. Sensory overload is the word of the day now. You aren’t required to have an imagination, nor are you allowed to absorb a scene. Everything is spelled out and it all happens very quickly. Lucas himself has long since given in to it.
I’ve seen clips from Attack Of The Clones and I’m shocked at the amount of stuff happening on the screen at any given time. It’s a far cry from the long, solitary shots of Star Wars - 3PO walking through the desert alone with only the sound of his servos or Luke looking out at the sunset. We were allowed to feel isolated and far away. We were given time to feel emotions.
Even Empire and Return weren’t the same because we already had expectations. The public fascination, the emotional attachment - it won’t ever be duplicated again. It can’t be. There could only be one summer of Star Wars – just as there could only have been one The Beatles, or one Apollo space program. That’s something Lucas continues to learn the hard way.
I got my drivers license a few months later. My first car was a 1974, 6 cylinder Gremlin. It was used, had a few dents and scratches, and was sometimes hard to start. It was my speeder and those dents and scratches were caused by laser blasts during narrow escapes from bad guys and strange creatures. My imagination was alive and well. All that existed for us was a single film and it had to be seen in a movie theater. These days, kids get in their Elements or Four Runners and drive over to their friend’s house to watch the prequels in their theater room – that’s after they get on the internet to check for the latest downloadable fan edits. It’s an entirely different world now.
I can’t help you with the prequels as I’ve only seen the first one. It wasn’t magic. Not even close. It was just formula – and it was poorly executed formula at that. To me, even the pre-release hype felt like formula.
Like I said, if you have specific questions, let me know. Others on here can help you with the prequels.
Here's the original Star Wars trailer - An entirely different film and an entirely different emotional experience.
*Edit*
This is where I went to see Star Wars every week in 1977.
Even the theaters looked different back then. It was torn down years ago. After it was fenced off and the wrecking ball had been used on some of it, I drove by to look at it. I could see inside the theater & the slope of the seating area was visible. It was a weird feeling. Now the street isn't even there. The whole area was razed and turned into a commercial shopping & dining mega-development - unrecognizable from 1977.