Anyhow, after reading Anchorhead's story, I'm not so sure any longer that I was the ideal age.
Being as young as I was, I didn't already have formative years before Star Wars, which would have then been drastically altered after seeing the film. I imagine the "experience" was much more dramatic for a teen. Yeah, if I had been a teen I would have missed out on the joy of playing with the toys and re-living the movie moments over and over (remember, we couldn't watch the films over and over on home video). But Star Wars the film is much more important to me than any of the toys or even the other two movies. Sure, I had it good. But to be a teen in the summer of 1977....
But now to get to what I did experience. I clearly remember the time my sister and I saw a neighborhood teen wearing a red Star Wars shirt with a guy holding a light sword above his head with a woman draped at his feet. We both thought it looked unbelievably cool, but agreed there was no way that our parents would let us see that movie. A little a bit mature for us. But not long after we danced with glee as my dad announced, "Kids, we're going to see Star Wars!" It wasn't spoken as if by someone who must accompany his children to a "kids movie", but by a man who was genuinely excited himself about this movie that EVERYONE was talking about.
Yep, we went and saw it at the drive-in (which was a whole other adventure unto itself). Not an ideal setting for such a film, but at my age I honestly wouldn't have known the difference if I had seen it in a theater. It was the greatest thing I had ever seen.
A couple of things that stand out:
- In the late '70s early '80s, you could make a Star Wars reference and ANYONE would "get it". My dad would sometimes call my sister (Rebecca) "Chewbecca", and his friend Garth would be dubbed "Garth Vader". This is not a man who had/has any interest in Star Wars aside from it being a great/memorable film he saw when he was 36 years old.
- I was Darth Vader for three Halloweens in a row. Yeah, it was that crummy plastic suit with his picture on the chest -- not even his chest plate! My friend would go as Luke and we made our own light sabers with flashlights, long wires, and plastic food wrap. As was alluded to earlier, we used our imaginations back then. Those goofy vintage toy commercials where the kids use a styrofoam cup as the carbon freezing chamber? That's the sort of thing we did! Not everything was pre-determined for us. There were many playsets that weren't produced, so we created our own!
- Empire was an event too. I still remember sitting in the lunch room at school debating whether or not Darth was actually Luke's father. I firmly believed that Darth was trying to trick Luke. Of course, the psychic "conversation" they had as Luke was whisked away in the Falcon went over my head....
Fast forward many years.............
When the SE's came out in '97, my sister and I and our respective spouses went and saw them together and had a great time. We certainly didn't like all the changes -- Jabba looked lame, Greedo shooting first was deplorable, and some of the CGI add-ons were unnecessary. But it was okay 'cause it was all an excuse to see the Star Wars films in the theater once again. And we certainly didn't think these would REPLACE the original films. After all, they were called "Special Edition". Even the video release said as much. But then when that first SE set came out that didn't say "Special Edition" on it, my brother-in-law and I started to wonder exactly what was going on.
1999: I wasn't following the Episode I hype on the internet at all. About the only thing I saw was the trailer, and it did have me jazzed about the new SW movie. But the end product was a big-time disappointment. A few years later AOTC failed to meet even severely lowered expectations. My wife and I both agreed it was the worst film we have ever seen. She refused to go see ROTS. I went out of a sense of duty, but didn't see it until many weeks after it was released 'cause I was in no hurry. It was only when I realized that it might not last much longer in the theater that I made it to a show. Meh.
I don't know if I've actually helped you out, emfab, but it was fun to rehash some of these memories.