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A Long Time Ago... - Share Your Star Wars Story

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I'm sure there's been a thread like this before, but I wanted to create a place where we can share our first times seeing Star Wars and how it affected our lives.

I'll start off in the next post.

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 (Edited)

My story begins like few others here, I'm sure. My first experience with Star Wars was actually in utero.

You see, I was born in 1983, just a few months after Return of the Jedi was released. My mother was already a Star Wars fan from her youth, so she stood in line 3 months pregnant with me to see Return of the Jedi on opening day. You can see, I had no chance of a normal life.

I grew up watching Star Wars. A New Hope was one of the few movies my parent's had on Videodisc and their first movies on VHS were Empire and Jedi (at $50 a piece!). There was never a time I can remember when I had not seen Star Wars. I quickly inherited my mother's already impressive Star Wars collection, which grew more with each passing year. One of my earliest memories is actually my fourth birthday party, when I had Star Wars decorations and a Darth Vader cake (whose black frosting made my best friend ill).

Some of my favorite childhood memories involve recreating the battle of Hoth with my figures whenever it snowed. I didn't have the Hoth Luke for the longest time, so I used to use the random Hoth Rebel trooper as Luke, who I would have Hoth Han stick in the Taun-Taun belly while the Scout Walker and Wampa chased them.

I grew in and out of fads for years (Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Batman), but Star Wars was always there in the background. The problem is that I had grown up with the movies so I had never truly seen them. I got the THX "Faces" VHS set for my birthday in 1995. It was then that I followed the movies and was blown away by them for the first time. The drama, the humor, I got it all for the first time watching that set.

Then the Special Editions came to theaters. I finally got to see the movies in theaters for the first time. While waiting in the lobby in between showings of ANH:SE on opening day, my friend and I were interviewed by a local radio reporter, who was way too excited about me having never seen Star Wars in theaters. During the movie, I was impressed with how much they had added to the sides of the frame, and only later did I realize that most of that had always been there, I was just missing it thanks to Pan & Scan. I bought the widescreen version of the SE set as soon as it came out.

Soon I found out about the prequels and got really excited for them, getting excited about feeling what it must have been like to see a brand-new Star Wars movie for the first time in theaters. I got excited about the first two movies, watched them several times in theaters, then realized how lackluster they really were, got tired of them, then got excited for the next one. The 2004 DVDs got me excited again about the original trilogy. However I did want the OUT on DVD, which drew me to this site years ago to sign the petition.

I always had a feeling that my love of Star Wars would find me a wife. I figured that if I could find a girl who liked Star Wars, everything else would work out just fine. One day during my senior year in college, I was sitting outside of one of my classes when I noticed this girl. I had talked to her a year before (on the set of a sci-fi movie my college made, but that's a completely different story), so I decided I might talk to her again. She had her Apple iBook open and was watching something. I leaned over to see what it was and was completely blown away. She was watching the bonus features from her own copy of the 2004 DVD (fullscreen, but she still had her own copy). I struck up a conversation with her telling her that I could show her the bloopers easter egg on that disc. Strangely, I couldn't get it to work on her iBook, but we made plans to try to show her the easter egg using another DVD player. And that's how our relationship began.

So not only did Star Wars affect my pre-natal development and childhood, it also helped me find a wife.


Here are some pictures my mom found from my youth, along with some more recent pictures:



And that's my story!

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I like the story of finding your girlfriend. Very romantic. ;)

Your mom is also nice for putting that much work into a cake.


My Star Wars story is very simple. I saw it on TV a long time ago when it was first put on broadcast television. I was blown away and thought the movie was spectacular. Over the years I then had a copy that was taped off the old Disney channel (without commercials) that I watched well over a hundred times before I switched to watching it via the last, big VHS release of the trilogy in its original form (1995 I think). It is one great film and one that will affect the way I see all art and entertainment for the rest of my life.

Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi were a bit more complex in the sense that I hadn't seen them in detail or cared about them as much. I think I had a hazy notion that Darth Vader was Luke's father before properly watching Empire, but if I had I must not have actually registered that information considering the fact of how shocked and dramatically moved as I was. (Darth Vader was a very cool villain but also very evil and you can really understand Luke's pain.) Then Return of the Jedi with its sensational battles, gorgeous music (best of the trilogy in my mind), and incredibly meaningful, moral victory by Luke actually made it my favorite for a while (before realizing some of the movie's small faults).

That's it for me.

"Now all Lucas has to do is make a cgi version of himself.  It will be better than the original and fit his original vision." - skyjedi2005

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my star wars story is a very... lets just say backwards story.

i never saw star wars until the revenge of the sith came out. i know, i know. how did i live before that?! well i saw that in theatres in a big group. i didnt want to go but my friends went so i was like sure lets go. and i FELL IN LOVE WITH IT. i think i was 16, turning 17 so it was later than a lot of people first seeing star wars. so after seeing that, i saw it again. i decided to go to the store and used like all my money and bought all the old ones and the other two new ones on dvd. i wasnt sure if it was a good idea becasue i havent seen any of them and i made a major purchase and bought them and ive been watching them ever since :]

love theeemmmm
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My first memories of Star Wars are when I walked into the living room when my dad and older brother were watching a new hope. I must have been 5 or 6. I clearly remeber Obiwan scaring of the sandpeople. My father explained Obiwan has this "force" so the sandpeople are scared of him.

My dad made a copy of the trilogy on the good old Video2000 vcr. It was such a good machine. It actually had double sided recording capability so all three movies fit on one tape! In weekends I usually woke up at 6 and the first thing I (and sometimes my brothers) would do was watch Star Wars.

I remember watching the oot so many times, not the whole movies but mostly parts we liked like the "snow battle" as we called it.

Soon after the movies came the toys. I remeber walking into the toystore and they had the Millennium Falcon hanging from the ceiling. I never got it though. I still have all my other toys like the AT-AT and the B-Wing. And ofcourse a lot of action figures.

But me "living" Star Wars wasn't limited to toys. When playing outside we recreated the story for ourselves. Also the Ewok movies btw. I really liked those as a kid.

I never saw the oot in the theatre because in 1977 I didn't exist yet. And for Empire and Jedi I was too young. Well, maybe I could have seen Jedi, but at that time I hadn't seen Star Wars yet. I never cared to go to the SE. At the time I thought it was stupid (now I kind of like it). But I hate the 2004 SE.

The first ever movie I saw in the theatre was Willow. To this day I absolutely love that movie.
Fez: I am so excited about Star Whores.
Hyde: Fezzy, man, it's Star Wars.
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I had avoided Star Wars for years, until I was 15 in 1997, and even then I still had missed out on the SE theatrical releases.

Near the end of August, I had broken my arm pretty badly (It ended up having to be set, which hurt just as much as breaking it in the first place) and for the first few days, I was advised to stay off my feet and keep the arm elevated, so, there was basically nothing to do but watch movies.

I had avoided anything starting with "Star" in it for years. but one of these nights, we all sat down to watch "Star TREK: generations" and that actually led me to give star wars a try, since I enjoyed it well enough.

More or less, I put the first movie in the same league more or less as star trek, then came ESB, with "No, I Am Your Father" (yes, I was one of the lucky few late comers to still be completely surprised by that revelation)

and so My star wars fandom began, although it basically went into hibernation until I was out of high school hell, and didn't really kick back in until the DVDs were announced, only to go back into the closet (this time literally) when george pasted Hayden Christensen's evil leer at the end of RotJ.

in sept 2006, my fandom came back and is still going.

this picture more or less sums up my perfect star wars viewing experiance:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n226/bJ8_2006/P1010132.jpg

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I was born in 1977, but only saw Star Wars for the first time in um...1986? Can't remember. Lived in an area where cable wasn't available and we didn't have a VCR either, so I only saw it on free TV once in a blue moon. It was a real treat. I always liked Empire best, mostly because of Hoth. Not sure how I first heard of the Star Wars movies. I can only remember one kid at school being obsessed with it, and that was in 1986, so most had moved on, I guess.

At any rate, I started collecting the figures around 1988, I'd guess, which was hard! Those were the "dark ages," after all. I would draw lots of SW-related pictures, I recorded the movies onto cassette tapes when they were on TV (I've probably heard them as much as I've watched them), found SW figures at yard sales (try doing that now!), bought the excellent Timothy Zahn books (he uses the word 'gingerly' too much, though), subscribed to Star Wars Insider, etc... All was well.

1999 killed my love of Star Wars. I was actually kind of embarassed to say I was fan for a while. (I never stopped loving the OT, though) AOTC was ok, but nothing great. ROTS wasn't much better. By that point, I was more interested in character and ship design than anything. Pretty sad. Then, a couple of years ago, I discovered this amazing site and the world of fan editing and my love of Star Wars is as strong as ever. I still don't care about the prequels, though. ;)

As for pictures, the only one I can think of relating to SW I have is one of me when I was around 9 wearing a ROTJ tank top. I'd hurt my shoulder in a bike accident and it was perfect for leaving the shoulder uncovered. Haha.

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I don't really know when I first saw Star Wars, I was too young to remember it. I think I was about 2 years old. It was on the television, I don't think it was a video rental. Supposedly my favorite part was the cantina, I laughed my head off at the aliens there. We must have gotten a VCR not long after that because I sort of rememer always having a VCR, and of course my most watched tapes were Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back, recorded from television of course. Return of the Jedi I didn't see until a few years later, probably when I was about six and it was playing on TMN, a friend of the family taped it for me since they knew I liked the films, but Jedi never really captured me in any significant way, I enjoyed it because it was the same characters and action, etc., but I was always bored by it. I remember some years later when I was maybe nine or ten all my friends would debate what our favorite Star Wars film was and most of them liked Jedi the most, which I found weird. Maybe I've always just had good taste. :p
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Saw it in the theaters in June 1977 when I was 17 years old. I was the perfect age - saw it three times that week, and 3 or 4 more times that year. With an experience like that, ESB and ROTJ were never much of a big deal to me, and the saga is just "eh".... it's always been about SW, the movie event of the century.

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i was about 10 1/2 , living in calgary alberta, canada, when i saw it..

i think i went with a friend of mine....after seeing it being advertised for ages in the paper..

i still remember the theater, and being engrossed at the story, the special effects, everything

came together in a near perfect experience...the battle scenes, the explosions, and the light saber battles!!

i told everyone at school, and from then on started my fascination with it.

 

here's the ad i saved when it was being re-released:

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/1527/starwarsad78svq3.th.jpg

 (had to go see it for the extra footage!!)

and here's some artwork i drew at 11: (i have a ton more of xwings etc)

http://img235.imageshack.us/img235/3452/starwarsart01sgv6.jpg

i bought the soundtrack, and played it a lot, and i still have the poster it came with..(along with toys,

all the trading cards, bedsheets, etc, etc)...

 

i watched the SE in the theater a few years ago, and i have it on several versions

of laserdiscs/and dvd now.....but still have only watched it < 20 times ever.....

 

empire was special too...as i watched the 70mm version here:

United Kingdom - London - Odeon Leicester Square

we were there on vacation, and i remember being enthralled

by the story, and surprised by all the revelations, and how dark

it was, and how it ended on a cliffhanger..

 

fast forward to houston, tx, 1983....a high school kid, i remember

lines around the block at the theater i saw it there, and everyone

was talking at school about the comic books, getting bootlegs on vhs

etc....i'll never forget each of those events..

 

later

-1

[no GOUT in CED?-> GOUT CED]

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The first thing I really remember of Star Wars was when I was 10 in 1977, there was a report on the News at 5.45 on ITV here in the UK, it was reporting about the release and success of the film in America, they showed the clip of the Tie-Fighters attacking the Millennium Falcon as it escaped from the Death Star. I remember watching it thinking boy that looks amazing, I didn't have a clue who the characters were, and when I seen C3-PO walking down the Falcon's corridor just before the ship get hit I didn't know if he was a good guy or a bad guy, then there was the big furry monkey thing, I didn't know what Chewbacca was mean't to be,never seen anything like it before. Now Star Wars didn't get released here in the UK until late December 1977 so it was around Jan or Feb 1978 before I finally convinced my dad to take me to the cinema to see it, but in the meantime I'd collected the comic books and read the novel and saved loads of magazine articles all about the wonderful characters and spaceships in the film, those are feelings that will never go away, the excitement of seeing Star Wars for the first time in the cinema.

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1995 I saw the trilogy box at my best friends house and I fell inlove instantly. It was on TV in 1996 and I started watching from when Vader is talking to Leia for the first time and the droids are walking on Tatooine, it was boring me and I had to go to sleep. I went to my uncle's house in 1997 and my cousins were watching ESB the scene where Luke has his trials on Degobah and he kills the fake Vader. I didn't understand why halfway through the series Vader was killed and that he looked just like Luke then one cousin said

"That's not Vader, he dies in the sixth one when Luke takes off his mask" and one cousin said

"Sixth!? There's only three!" Another said

"Yeah I have 1, 2 and 3." And the first cousin says

"Well I have 4, 5 and 6." As he smiles.

 

I hadn't gotten to the "I am your father scene" It wasn't until a year later when I saw the trailers and commercials for Phantom Menace that I understood what he meant. So I decided to watch them 1-6. 1999 comes around and I miss it in theatres, but I catch the poster of Anakin's shadow being Vader and I went "Holy shit! The kid is Darth Vader!" and so the movie comes out on VHS later and I rent it, and I hear his name is Skywalker and that's when I go "DARTH VADER IS LUKE'S FATHER!" Yes, it took me until 1999. So the next day while I'm at a friends, ANH comes on and we watch it halfway through. I then go and get ESB and ROTJ from the library and I was blown away! I went back and got ANH again so I could watch the first half again. And that's when (the year 2000) that I started looking up Star Wars stuff online. The title of Episode II is released and I go, "They're gonna clone Yoda, Anakin, Obi-Wan and Padme? That's weak" I had forgotten about that line from Obi-Wan. More and more is released on it and so the book is released and I get the book and read half and then the movie is released. The next few years I'm really getting riled up for ROTS and then to express my love of Star Wars I get into graphic art and eventually video editing, making my own fan clips. I remember when the first picture of Anakin was released in the hanger, I almost shat myself. So when the Teaser came out I went berzerk! I was so pumped and then eventually the next trailer and TV Spots were released and I watched the film opening night and two times more. Ever since I've been HUGE on Star Wars and have been reading EU.

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Guess what guys? I grew up with the Special Editions. That's right, I grew up with those things. Y'know what else? I grew up with the prequels too. I was 10 when The Phantom Menace came out.

I used to spend Saturday mornings watching my VHS of Special Edition Star Wars over and over, then go play around with my action figures and then watch it again. But, of course, I knew I was missing out on something. What I was watching wasn't Star Wars as everyone else knew it. I knew, even then, that the big pink-tinted entrance into Mos Eisley wasn't supposed to be there. I knew the occasional ugly Dewback crawling about was out of place. But I accepted it. I still do, in many ways, accept certain additions made in the special edition because for better or worse I grew up with them.

But it's the prequels that really get me. At 10 years old you're hardly interested in trade disputes or senate meetings no matter how visually impressive and galactic they may be. But I accepted that, and when I think back to my experience of The Phantom Menace in movie theatres it's mostly the image of battle-droids climbing out of their tanks that I recall along with that kid, who was annoying even when I was a kid. Jar Jar, strangely, doesn't much fit into my memory of things. Lucky, I suppose. I remember enjoying it.

Then came Attack of the Clones. I had grown up enough to realise how awful The Phantom Menace truly was by the time this movie came out, so when I went in to see Attack of the Clones I wasn't expecting much. When you're twelve, stupid romances don't bother you as much because they're only as bad as all on-screen romances when you're that age. They can be ignored until we get on with the pew-pew-pew. So there was a big mars-like planet, the farm was nice to revisit and Jar Jar thankfully wasn't there (who I'd watched on VHS recently and realized just how terrible he was). Overall, I felt okay about it. It was tolerable in comparison to how horrible I'd come to think of The Phantom Menace as.

So time went by again. As I grew up some more and became more critical in my viewing of Attack of the Clones I again had a revelation; this is awful! Putting my low-expectations aside I was again confronted with the bare reality that Attack of the Clones was an uncompelling and cringe-worthy pile compared to those films I used to watch every Saturday. So then Revenge of the Sith came out. I was through. I knew it'd be a stinker. I knew I'd hate every minute of it. Then I saw the trailer...

Wait! Gritty looking droids walking across a volcanic planet? Good old Ben doing the voice-over? Maybe this will be okay! Maybe he's finally going to get it right! Aside from the occasional cringe-worthy moment, the annoying purple-lightsaber, CG Yoda being back in action, CG everything back in action, the annoying loud-riding creature, the flaccid villain of Grievous who'd been so over-hyped and the unsatisfying transition to Darth Vader... I remember saying that it was "at least better than the others". But then, I sat down to watch it again. All those things that had been minor annoyances originally were now standing out sharply, and I simply couldn't watch it anymore.

Then I sat down to watch my old Star Wars VHS. Y'know what? I loved them just as much as I'd loved them as a kid. They were just as powerful, exotic and fun as I remembered them. But I just can't watch the prequels, and it disappoints me. It disappoints me because those movies should have been for my generation. They should have been as great as those movies I watched on VHS all those years ago. They should have been something I could enjoy, something I could be proud to say "I was there" about. But I can't. I can't because not only were they not good when I first saw them, but every year that I mature they actually get worse. The original trilogy remains as good as ever, but the prequels actually degrade every year. Lucas failed me and my generation. We deserved better.

That's the modern experience of Star Wars ... it's a sad picture, isn't it? :(

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Blackjack said:
this picture more or less sums up my perfect star wars viewing experiance:

http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n226/bJ8_2006/P1010132.jpg

@Blackjack

Hmm, I know this was originally posted quite a while ago, but I am just now seeing it for the first time. From the background I can see that you have emptied the 2004 SEs and the bonus disc out of their box, and set them on the shelf with the prequels where they belong, not a bad idea, the box itself is still nice enough looking and worthy of housing the real deal. You've printed off your own covers for whatever discs of the OOT those are, again, a very reasonable thing to do. The part I do not understand, is that if I am understanding the photo right, a copy of Fantasia takes up the fourth spot in the box??? Can't figure this one out for the life of me. Did you just put it in there to fill in the empty space? When you say, "this picture more or less sums up my perfect star wars viewing experiance" is Fantasia part of your perfect Star Wars viewing experience? If so I would be very interested in hearing more details on this one just out of curiousity.

"Every time Warb sighs, an angel falls into a vat of mapel syrup." - Gaffer Tape

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He stops watching RotJ at a ceretain point and watches one of the segments of Fantasia for a better ending.  He explained on another thread, I'll see if I can find it...

 

Found it:

The final segment of Disney's "Fantasia" Is Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" paired with Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria", another tangle between good and evil, albeit on a religious scale, with good triumphing yet again. Since I allready find many Religious parallels in Star Wars, (Particularly Christian) it augments the uplifting feeling the undestroyed RotJ ending provides me, (as well as calming things down and solemnising it) making it a perfect coda to my ideal Star Wars veiwing experiance.

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Star Wars was everywhere when I was a kid (I was born in '75 and I am talking about the early '80s). Kids my age or a little older talked about it all the time. My neighbor who was 3 years older than me had a Darth Vader poster in his room which fascinated me to no end. Darth Vader was the coolest looking "being" I'd ever seen.

I went to summer camp in '82 and the kids were constantly playing "Star Wars", and I always got to be Darth Vader, using a stick for a light saber (or "life saver" as some of us thought it was).

Around this time my neighbor (the one with the Darth Vader poster) gave me some Star Wars toys, including the awesome (and expensive) Millenium Falcon model, Lukes land speeder, an X-Wing and a TIE Fighter. I also got Boba Fett, Hammerhead, Greedo (I think), Luke Skywalker (in his orange flight suit), and Storm Trooper action figures. Unfortunately, he didn't want to part with his Darth Vader action figure; either that or he'd lost it—either way, I didn't get it. 

So from my earliest memories I was around all this hype surrounding Star Wars, and the whole thing fascinated me, especially Darth Vader, but I'd never seen any of the movies.

The first time I got to see Star Wars was in or around '84 on TV. I think it was the first time it was broadcast on TV (correct me if I'm wrong), but either way, it was a huge event for me. I finally got to see those toys, posters, and things I'd heard come to life, and I certainly wasn't disappointed.

Sometime around '85 or '86, my younger sister and I spent the day at our grandfather's house and he had a VCR (we didn't get one at home until '88) and he let us rent a couple of movies. I rented Star Wars and Return of the Jedi, which was awesome.

After we got a VCR, I rented those movies quite a few times, but I never rented ESB because for some reason, I thought I'd already seen it. One day I decided to rent it "again" and soon realized that I'd never seen it; so that was a nice surprise.

Years later when I saw the SE on video, I thought it was an interesting novelty; until I learned that the OOT was being replaced (rather than supplemented), at which point, I was furious. I lost respect for George Lucas at that point. It is hard to respect someone who is a vandal, revisionist, and just plain doesn't think correctly relative to normal human nature. People naturally place value on "original" as opposed to knockoffs or hacks, and people naturally tend to want to preserve significant aspects of history. George Lucas is aberrant in this respect; i.e., his head isn't screwed on right. On top of that, he is an established hypocrite, given his stance on the colorization of old B&W movies:

"I am very concerned about our national heritage, and I am very concerned that the films that I watched when I was young and the films that I watched throughout my life are preserved, so that my children can see them." - George Lucas expressing concern over the Colorization of black & white films

 

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"Star Wars" was actually my parents first date, but I wasn't born until 1980.

My earliest memory is talking about "Star Wars" with my brother. We were both really little, and we had a battered taped-off-HBO VHS copy of "Empire Strikes Back" but we both vaguely remembered "Star Wars" that we must have seen on TV or something. Our young minds tried to piece together bits we didn't recall, especially about Luke's mom and dad dying and how could Darth Vader be Luke's dad when we saw Luke's dad's dead body (we were small and couldn't remember that they were his aunt and uncle).

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It was 1977 and I was seven years old, I was a big science fiction/fantasy fan already (I loved Doctor Who) and I was watching Tomorrow's World (which was a popular science show on BBC1 for many years) and they had an item about the cameras being used in this new film which seemed to have a blue Dalek, a man in a gold suit of armor, a man in a monkey suit, a man in a gask mask and they were flying WW2 planes down a canyon in a metal planet.

Naturally I wanted to know more.

I got the Marvel comics (with the paper X-Wing and Tie Fighters) and learned all about such characters as Ob-Van-Kenob and Biggs Darkliner and pestured my dad as only a seven year old can to take me to watch the thing (I'd only been to the cinema once before and it was a film called "Where The North Wind Blows" and like Mr and Mrs TheBoost my auntie took us in half way through).

The film came out the same time as Close Encounters (the poster was interesting) and when were getting ready to go out my dad warned me that it might be a long queue and we might not be able to get in if the tickets ran out.

The queue was long, very long and went all the way around the corner of the cinema and up the road.

My dad told me that we couldn't see it that day and had got us tickets for Close Encounters instead (while I was upset at this I was still looking forward to that film too so I didn't mind so much).

We sat down and then the words "A Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Far Away" came up, by the time the words STAR WARS shot away into the stars I was carried away  (my dad pulled a sneak surprise on us).

I've never really recovered.

We went on to seeing Close Encounters next week (which was a great film but was made even more memorable because there was a trailer for Star Wars shown before it).

A few years later there was a clip of a film called "Alien" and I begged my dad to take me to see that too (shame really because it was certificate X and I was nine) but that is another story.

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Most of my memories are pretty stupid...

I vaguely remember watching The Phantom Menace with my biological dad (long story short: my mom and dad divorced, so I visited my dad on Saturdays... I think. Its been so long.) I only remember watching the pod race, but the scene where Jar-Jar is saved by Qui-Jon (after almost being crushed by the huge droid transport... so close!) is still fresh in my mind. I don't remember what I thought of the movie, but I must've enjoyed it a little bit. Definitely less now than then.

I went to the Star Wars science exhibit at the Boston Museum of Science (that's in Massachusetts). I remember "riding" the Millenium Falcon and jumping into hyperspace. Pretty neat. I got a nice little pin that said something like "I rode the Millenium Falcon!" or "I survived hyperspace!" I can't remember exactly and I can't find it either. There was also a large area with all kinds of things in it. I remember waiting for it to open and years later I realized the door was exactly like the door to Jabba's Palace. Inside I think there was a R2-D2 building station using the computer but by then it was time to leave and I don't even think it was fully operational. There were some documentaries that basically connected Star Wars to real science... there was a part of the exhibit where you could learn about real fake limbs like those of Luke and Anakin. A replica of Luke's speeder, a little tiny seat that simulated floating (pretty uneventful), I remember a staff member mentioning that George Lucas was at the exhibit opening, and then there was a history of either our galaxy or the Earth, narrated by Yoda... actually no, it was probably a real person... but whatever.

I have some trading cards and a single action figure (Emperor Palpatine I believe). I never cared for them, because I was never into trading card games. Besides, the Star Wars ones had the dumbest names - "TIE Fighter DS-55-2", "Return to Spaceport", even "Greedo's Marksmanship"!)

I have one Star Wars game, Rogue Squadron II for the GameCube. I never finished it, though I used cheat codes to access other levels and the documentary. I think the only mission I beat was the first one... Battle of Yavin! I used to have Revenge of the Sith for the Nintendo DS, but I later sold it. It was basically a port of the GBA with 3D flight levels.

No idea when I first saw the original trilogy, though I'm positive I never saw them in theaters (I was 3 in 1997, so I doubt it.) I do remember trying to rent a VHS boxset of the OT. My dad (my once-step dad, now my adoptive father) said no since I already had the DVDs. I think it was this set I wanted: http://i20.ebayimg.com/04/i/001/14/03/b64d_1.JPG

I did see Revenge of the Sith in the theaters, but the only memorable parts for me were: Luke's aunt and uncle (Owen and Beru?) holding baby Luke and looking at the dual sunset, Anakin being burned, then Darth Vader rising from his operation table thing, and the Death Star being built.

Finally, I remember putting in Empire of Dreams and telling my friend that the easiet way to fall asleep was to watch it.

Lucas also continues to lead the fight for film preservation. "It's amazing," he says, "that you have to fight the studios to get them to preserve their films. . . . Parts of 'Dr. Strangelove' are gone; some of the music is lost. Kubrick is having to photograph individual frames to create a new fine-grain negative. That's madness, tragic madness."

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My Star Wars story...wow. Ok here goes.

 

My first memory was staying up late 1 night til about 11 for my dad to come home from work and Star Wars was on TV, I'm guessing it was ROTJ becuz the memories I have were Vader sitting down with his hand chopped off, the stormtroopers running around while the alarms blaring in the background, and the Falcon flying away from the exploding Death Star. This was when I was like 2 yrs old, must've been in 1996 or 97, idk if it was the SE or not. Anyways a few yrs later I'd rent the movies every month from Blockbuster and watch em, the only original version I saw was Episode 4. Then in probably 1999 or 2000, we finally got a DVD player and wanted the movies for DVD but were disapointed to learn they were only for VHS, so we got the SE's on VHS and I watched them until 2004 when the DVD's finally came out (I still have those VHS's btw). By then I had seen AOTC in theaters and loved it (I was 8, calm down). Then by ROTS I was a huge star wars fan, buncha games, toys all that. But then once the GOUT came out in 2006, that was the last Star Wars thing I ever bought (I guess until Blu-Ray...idk) My obbession for Star Wars has really gone down, I've sold it all cept the movies. I still like the movies, well, when I say movies I mean the OT, not the PT trash.

 

Yep.

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doubleofive said:

He stops watching RotJ at a ceretain point and watches one of the segments of Fantasia for a better ending.  He explained on another thread, I'll see if I can find it...

 

Found it:

The final segment of Disney's "Fantasia" Is Mussorgsky's "Night on Bald Mountain" paired with Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria", another tangle between good and evil, albeit on a religious scale, with good triumphing yet again. Since I allready find many Religious parallels in Star Wars, (Particularly Christian) it augments the uplifting feeling the undestroyed RotJ ending provides me, (as well as calming things down and solemnising it) making it a perfect coda to my ideal Star Wars veiwing experiance.

of course, Fantasia supplements the Undestroyed RotJ ending, not replacing it.

 

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God it is hard to remember. I knew about star wars before actually paying attention to them I had seen darth vader on lunch boxes and had seen them before (but I didn't really pay attention.) Then about the time I was 4 I watched Empire Strikes Back because it had the coolest cover. I was blown away. After that I was a nerd for all things star wars. I don't know why I liked it so much and to this day I don't know why exactly I like it. But oh my the trilogy was a big part of my life.

"The other versions will disappear. Even the 35 million tapes of Star Wars out there won’t last more than 30 or 40 years. A hundred years from now, the only version of the movie that anyone will remember will be the DVD version [of the Special Edition], and you’ll be able to project it on a 20’ by 40’ screen with perfect quality. I think it’s the director’s prerogative, not the studio’s to go back and reinvent a movie." - George Lucas

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I saw SW at 5, Empire at 8, and Jedi at 11, so I have vague memories of SW, although I do remember the crowd cheering when the death star blew up.  I do remember walking out of Empire totally shitting myslef, as I was not ready for that type of movie at that age.  Jedi was the first SW movie I was old enough to anticipate, and finally saw it at a local theater, as I remember Trading Places was the other movie playing that day.  I remember loving it to death, and walking out totally juiced, and thinking every 3 years there will be a great SW film that will knock my socks off. 

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 (Edited)

My story is on the Secret History Of Star Wars site.  It starts off… _“I’m 45, for my generation…”. _ It ends just after the picture, with the statement  “…unrecognizable from 1977”

If I’m counting correctly, it’s the fourth story down.

http://secrethistoryofstarwars.com/starwarsmemories.html

 

Edit: a working link:-

http://fd.noneinc.com/secrethistoryofstarwarscom/secrethistoryofstarwars.com/starwarsmemories.html

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And my story is the third one after Anchorhead's (starts with "I was 10 years old in 1977....").