What was Episode I hype like?

I was reading about When Weird Al did his episode I parody song “The Saga Begins” on Wikipedia. He said he got the lyrics to it by scouring the internet for spoilers months before it came out. He got to confirm the plot by going to a special screening that you had to pay alot to go to before he released the song. Anyway, it got me thinking, was the hype for Episode I pretty big before it came out? I imagine since there was websites reporting rumors and stuff then the hype must have been up there some. I wasn’t into star wars at the time so I didn’t see anything about the buzz and I didn’t care about Star Wars until 3 came out and everyone was saying how good it was.

I heard about it from my roommate.

I remember it being pretty big. They kept talking about it on the news; I remember watching one TV special about the entire SW film series at that point; and there were those KFC/Taco Bell/Pizza Hut ads everywhere.

Here’s an article I think helps describe where we were when the Phantom Menace trailer was put online.

It’s astonishing to think how much things have changed in the last decade and a half, and many of those changes began for me that very year. In 1998 I got my first email address – Hotmail, of course. I hand-wrote my initial essays, until I got a word processor with a three-line LCD screen. My phone was a payphone at the end of the corridor – you had to hope someone passing by would answer it and then knock on your door – which is not coincidentally why I got my first mobile phone that year, an Ericsson T28.

We had the iTunes Trailers site and Ain’t It Cool News, but no Facebook, no Twitter and no YouTube. Into this veritable stone age came the first teaser for “The Phantom Menace” on 18 November 1998, six months before the film’s release.

The first trailer was shown before Universal’s “Meet Joe Black”, Disney’s “The Waterboy” and 20th Century Fox’s “The Siege” at 75 US and Canadian theatres. Fans queued around the block to get in, watch the trailer – and then leave. Trailers were repeated after each movie, so some fans are reported to have ducked out before the feature presentation only to return at the end for a second glimpse of the preview.
https://www.cnet.com/news/how-the-star-wars-the-phantom-menace-trailer-made-web-history/

And lest we forget…

Well I feel old now.

TV’s Frink said:

Well I feel old now.

Now?

TV’s Frink said:

Well I feel old now.

Any personal anecdotes of your experience with the hype? I missed it myself, didn’t pay close attention to Star Wars until the DVDs altered the alterations.

Did you miss the part where I’m old? I don’t remember that far back. 😉

TV’s Frink said:

Well I feel old now.

It was the second movie I saw in theaters. I was 6.

Do you remember it?

One of the earliest I remember was Flash Gordon in 1980. I was 6.

Wazzles said:

TV’s Frink said:

Well I feel old now.

It was the second movie I saw in theaters. I was 6.

I was 3. First movie I saw in theaters twice.

suspiciouscoffee said:

MathUser said:

I was reading about When Weird Al did his episode I parody song “The Saga Begins” on Wikipedia. He said he got the lyrics to it by scouring the internet for spoilers months before it came out. He got to confirm the plot by going to a special screening that you had to pay alot to go to before he released the song. Anyway, it got me thinking, was the hype for Episode I pretty big before it came out? I imagine since there was websites reporting rumors and stuff then the hype must have been up there some. I wasn’t into star wars at the time so I didn’t see anything about the buzz and I didn’t care about Star Wars until 3 came out and everyone was saying how good it was.

That Weird Al song is the closest thing to the prequels that will ever be in my personal canon.

😦

ray_afraid said:

It was the most hyped film of all time. That kind of hype will never be seen again.

Yeah, come to think of it, my roommate did say he wanted to see it.

Did anyone notice Lucy Liu and Shaq were in the React video? There is a howard stern react video recomended too. He was so sad that it sucked. He was under a gag order and he still reviewed it.

MathUser said:

Did anyone notice Lucy Liu and Shaq were in the React video?

I don’t watch any react videos.

Well, it’s the first video posted here. The second video is actually a snippet from it.