logo Sign In

Share your Star Wars theater experience

Author
Date
Author
Time
Post link
I can clearly remember which theater I saw ROTJ SE in, and I am lucky for that. I cannot find an interior picture (I think I have one floating around, I will look) but from the outside it looks like this:
http://www.laokay.com/lathumb/laphoto/Westwood079.jpg

Coincidentally, one of the ROTS premieres was held there.

A Goon in a Gaggle of 'em

Author
Time
Post link
I saw all 3 of the prequels and two of the SEs at Big Newport in Newport Beach, CA.

http://img118.imageshack.us/img118/5671/newportfrontnewjj5.jpg
F Scale score - 3.3333333333333335

You are disciplined but tolerant; a true American.

Pissing off Rob since August 2007.
Author
Time
Post link
The theater I saw Star Wars in, every week of the summer of 1977, was torn down about four years ago. It was the first theater in the city to have more than one screen (it had two). The screens were gigantic by today's standards. They were set into the wall about eight feet deep, so they had a presence about them. I saw a ton of movies there. They were run by General Cinema Corporation. While looking for a picture of the theater, I stumbled across a site with a link to another site that had the GCC intro. I must have seen that intro a hundred times as a kid. This was long before the pre-movie sensory overload you're subjected to these days. Back then, the film was the experience.

Here's the GCC intro that played before every film; Theater intro

Here's a picture of the theater (not taken by me);

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f20/stonetriple/movietheater.jpg


It had been shut down for a while before it was demolished, so I knew it was just a matter of time. One day there was a chain link fence around the property. About a week later I drove by one afternoon and the back wall\screen area was in a giant pile of rubble, the roof was gone, and one of the side walls was about half gone. You could see the inside slope of where the seats used to be and the entrance from the lobby into the theater. An entrance I'd passed through for more movies than I can remember, and more showings of Star Wars than I can count.

It was a weird thing to see it being demolished. Now it's a strip center with a Circuit City about where the theater used to be. That road next to it isn't even there anymore. They leveled and redeveloped the entire area.
Forum Moderator
Author
Time
Post link
Star Wars - Back in 77 at the Odeon Cinema, Leicester Square, London, UK. I must have been about 6, and fell asleep because I thought it was 'Boring' Came to my home town, and for some reason I kept watching it. By the end of it’s run I was hooked – Big time

Empire – In my home town the cinema was only 3 mins walk from my house, so my Uncle would take me all the time. Watched it - loved it. Was about 9, sort of remembered my mother letting me go to watch the film on my own on a Saturday afternoon. It was a very trusting time.

Jedi - Now this one I remember like yesterday. Again it was at the local cinema.
I think it was one of the happiest experiences of my life (after my son being born). 3 long years I’d waited to see this film, and man it was good.
I watched Jedi about 17 times in the 3 weeks it was on. The best bloody days ever!

EDIT: As we seem to be adding pictures, here was my second home for a long time

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f25/DirtyWookie/broadway2-1.jpg

http://www.facebook.com/DirtyWookie

Author
Time
Post link
I was living in Florida in 1982 which is when I saw Star Wars and Empire for the first time. I don't remember the theater(s) at all, but they are probably gone now- perhaps replaced by mega-plexes with stadium seating. I saw JEDI on opening day in '83 (also in Florida). I don't remember anything about the theater itself, all I remember is that it was a packed audience.

The AMC theater where I saw Empire SE has since been remodeled and turned into a huge hobby shop
(they tore down most of the interior walls and had to level all of the floors to remove the slopes). I think I also saw TPM there. I think I saw SW SE and Jedi SE at REGAL cinemas, but I'm not sure.

Author
Time
Post link
Howdy all - long time lurker, first time poster. This seemed as good a thread as any to start. I remember very well seeing Star Wars for the first time (even though I was only five years old at the time!) at the Varsity Theatre in Des Moines, IA right around the 4th of July, and once again a few months later, also in Des Moines. Oddly enough, I don't really remember too much about going to see 'Empire' in the theater, other than I recall going with my mom, but I distinctly remember seeing 'Jedi' back in '83 at the Cinema 4 in Fort Dodge, IA (now the Cinema 8) and being absolutely blown away.

However, don't get me started on the prequels. I stood in line for darn near 24 hours (sometimes in the rain) for Episode I to catch the midnight show on opening night. What a disappointment! I learned my lesson, though, and only stood in line for about 8 hours for Episode II, and roughly 3 hours for Episode III.
"You don't know the power of the dark side!"
Author
Time
Post link
Originally posted by: HotRod
EDIT: As we seem to be adding pictures, here was my second home for a long time


Cool looking theater. Looks like a church. Is it still there?

Forum Moderator
Author
Time
Post link
Yep still there. Actually that pic was of the opening night of the re-vamp in 96. The outside looks the same, but inside where there used to be just one screen, with an upstairs balcony and downstairs seating, are now 3 screens. Two small ones downstairs and a big screen up.

http://www.facebook.com/DirtyWookie

Author
Time
Post link
I'm happy to say that the last time I saw ROTS on the big screen, especially if it really is the last Star Wars film ever, was at the Uptown in D.C., the only theater in the area showing Star Wars on May 25, 1977.
Author
Time
Post link
I can only tell you all about my experience seeing the SE's, as they were the first theatrical versions I saw (I already had the Faces set on VHS at the time). The theatre I went to (where I saw all three, coincidentally) was a small Famous Players theatre in the middle of the Square One Shopping Mall in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. There's one there now that's a Cineplex Odeon, but that one is crapped compared to the old one that used to be near The Bay. When I saw the SW SE, the projector crapped out for an hour, forcing the manager to come in and tell us that there was just a delay. My aunt (who took me to two of the three) though she was going to see an entirely new film.

How wrong she was.
Author
Time
Post link
Some of you know this story already...

I have a somewhat unique Star Wars theater experience: in short, I didn't have one at all (even though I was 7 in '77).

See, our family stopped going to movie theaters around 1975 or so after a bad experience while seeing Bambi at the drive-in: the theater showed a trailer for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre during intermission. My parents were so horrified that they decided they would never go back to a theater again... and they didn't, at least not until after I had grown up and left the house.

So I never did see Star Wars in the theater originally.

However, that didn't stop me from becoming the biggest Star Wars fan in my school. I read the novel, the comic books, the Scholastic storybook, listened to the Story Of Star Wars record, and collected the cards and action figures. And I was hooked.

There was actually a point where my 4th grade class took a field trip to go see Star Wars at the local small town theater (a field trip I suspect my teacher may have arranged for my benefit to give me a chance to see the movie). Parental permission had to be obtained for us to attend, though. Sadly, after some debate my parents decided to stick to their guns on their decision... and I ended up being the only student in the class who had to stay at school by myself and do busy work while the rest of the class went to see Star Wars. Oh, the tragic irony!

In fact, the first Star Wars film I saw was actually The Star Wars Holiday Special when it aired in 1978. Which might explain a few things about my acute interest in that particular, er... masterpiece of cinematic accomplishment.

The first time I actually saw Star Wars itself was around 1984, when I was in high school and it had just come out on videotape. Pan-and-scan on a television screen. Not quite the ideal experience, but I was stoked anyway. And it was just as good as it had been in my head all that time.

Kudos for my parents for sticking to their word, but in this case I think their staunchness was misguided. Yet, perhaps it's because of all this that I became the kind of dedicated Star Wars fan I am now.

--SKot

Projects:
Return Of The Ewok and Other Short Films (with OCPmovie) [COMPLETED]
Preserving the…cringe…Star Wars Holiday Special [COMPLETED]
The Star Wars TV Commercials Project [DORMANT]
Felix the Cat 1919-1930 early film shorts preservation [ONGOING]
Lights Out! (lost TV anthology shows) [ONGOING]
Iznogoud (1995 animated series) English audio preservation [ONGOING]

Author
Time
Post link
http://i22.photobucket.com/albums/b345/DarthLars/Travels_With_Yoda_Stockholm/rigoletto-small.jpg
Rigoletto in Stockholm is the theater for watching Star Wars movies in Sweden. A few times, it has been the only one who showed a Star Wars movie on opening night. For a long time, it held the national record for screen size and number of seats.

In 2005, it was the only theatre that sold tickets to the opening night of Revenge of the Sith. My group waited in line (as #2 in line) for six days camping on the sidewalk next to the posters you can see on the left in the picture. The line stretched half a mile along the street to the next intersection. My group took organised the queueing system, we met a whole lot of fans, and had a lot of fun. Members of my group were interviewed by several newspapers and TV teams and also a book author that had followed us for almost a year. When we got our tickets we celebrated with champagne and cup cakes.

Sadly, the line experience was of course much, much better than the movie.

This image is of a Yoda doll that is traveling the world. He visited in January this year, and we just had to take a picture of the him with the theatre.