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Who here actually saw Star Wars Episode IV in 1977?


Maverick
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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

They have a morning showing?

 

The cinema in my town has the first showing at 6am. Six different screens, starting every half-hour until 1am. :o

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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

They have a morning showing?

 

The cinema in my town has the first showing at 6am. Six different screens, starting every half-hour until 1am. :o

 

Dang! :D

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10am is early enough for me!

 

I just looked at the local showings here and there's a 10 am one. I was just surprised because it seems like I never went to the movies before 2pm most of the time. I'm obviously not a morning person. :LOL:

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saw it in the theater in 1977. its the only Star Wars movie I have ever seen
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Saw it 3 times in the theater back then. I was awe struck.
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saw it in the theater in 1977. its the only Star Wars movie I have ever seen

 

Just curious, but why have you not watched any sequels? Did you not like the original?

 

I also saw the original in 77. Subsequent rewatches were never as magical as that first time on the big screen.

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To me it was, is and always will be Star Wars. None of this "Episode 4" BS.

 

I was 11 when it came out. I grew up on a farm several miles from the nearest town (which did not have a theatre). From that small town it was a number of miles until you hit the subdivisions. In short, I grew up in the "far unlit unknown" - although my school district included both the small town and the subdivisions.

 

Or you could go much further into the "far unlit unknown" until you came to another small town. That town had a wonderful, old, small, family owned theatre. The mother of my best friend growing up took me and him 4 times to see Star Wars at that theatre - long after everybody else in school had seen the movie. My folks almost never went to the movies and would not have had the interest or time to take me.

 

The most wonderful thing is that theatre is still there. And the family still owns it and still runs it - by all accounts successfully. A true & wonderful miracle in this day and age. If I can, I would like to see the new movie there.

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I was 16 when I saw it in the theater. Having been raised on Star Trek, The Outer Limits, The Twilight Zone, Lost in Space, the Apollo program, NASA, etc., I was the quintessential "target audience" for this new genre called Sci-Fi/Fantasy.

 

Sci-Fi has been just as much a part of my life as rock & roll, baseball & football, and chocolate ...... :haz: :haz: :haz:

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I saw it four times across 1977 and 1978.

 

What was your experience?

 

I saw it!!! Three times in the summer of 1977! Festival Cinema in Walnut Creek California! I was 9 years old. I remember seeing the trailer on the TV. I was counting the days as a very young future Rush Star Wars Nerd.

I knew about Star Wars before RUSH! WOW!

 

So yep, I remember it like it was yesterday. "A New Hope" blew my young mind. Who would have thought that in 2015 "The Force Awakens" would have blown away my young mind as well!!!

 

The Force is with me.

 

Carry On My Wayward Son.......................

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Saw it in the theater in 1978!

 

I told my Mom I wanted to see a movie called "Star Wars." She asked, "why would you want to see something about movie stars fighting?" Not joking.

 

We lived in the outskirts, so it took a while to see it. Actually when I saw it, it had been running in the theater for one whole year! Back in the pre-VCR days, movies would stick around as long as people paid to see them.

 

In that one-year time I had basically read every comic book and article about the movie, so nothing really took me by surprise. Still I was awestruck. However the droid scene inside the sandcrawler creeped me out.

 

My Dad fell asleep during the movie. Later, when my brother and I were talking about it, Dad asked, "you mean you actually LIKED that?"

 

Oh parents, so silly sometimes!

Edited by antiquark
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I was 13 and I remember when the words faded off into the distance and the opening scene started my jaw was on the floor and the thought in my head was " Man this is going to be way better than Star Trek" :lol:I saw it 12 times after that and have seen all the movies to follow within one week of them hittng the screen. Oh and yes i am still a fan of Star Trek too :D
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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

Maybe. I've never experienced any loud mouthed idiots in the half dozen mainland Asian countries' cinemas that I've been to even when the theater is 100% packed.

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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

 

I haven't either. Maybe it depends on the kind of neighborhood the theater is in?

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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

 

I haven't either. Maybe it depends on the kind of neighborhood the theater is in?

 

Possibly...the only reason I speculated was that I seem to remember a thread about cinemas ages ago, and a lot of people were saying that audiences would cheer and clap etc during the film

 

I've never seen behaviour like that at a British Cinema.

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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

 

I haven't either. Maybe it depends on the kind of neighborhood the theater is in?

 

Possibly...the only reason I speculated was that I seem to remember a thread about cinemas ages ago, and a lot of people were saying that audiences would cheer and clap etc during the film

 

I've never seen behaviour like that at a British Cinema.

Same in Asia Fridge. No cheering/clapping. By "people" maybe they meant "American people want to cheer & clap"? Don't know. Too many factors to guess like this.

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Saw it twice back in '77, first with family and then with friends. Enjoyed it to be sure, but I was a huge classic Star Trek fan (huge classic sci-fi fan in general) and I didn't really get the phenomenon that was Star Wars. To me it wasn't sci-fi, it was a really fun and well-done action/adventure movie set in space. My best friend at the time had no interest whatsoever in sci-fi, as I had, yet he was obsessed with Star Wars and saw it like fourteen times in the theater that summer. When Empire came out, a different best friend was the same way -- Star Wars-obsessed with no interest in sci-fi otherwise. He borrowed my manual trans Chevette (it was high school after all), even though he couldn't drive a stick, and skipped afternoon classes to be the first of our circle to see it. I was surprised he hadn't ruined the transmission, not that it would have made much of a difference, especially as he told me he drove like 80 mph to get to the theater; 80 mph was probably as fast as it would go and was certainly really dangerous at that speed; between the suspension, brakes and horrible chassis he was risking his life to stand in line ten minutes earlier than otherwise. Anyway, the appeal obviously goes way beyond the norm, whatever it might be.

 

I've come to really like the first one, being a perfect popcorn movie, like the first Indiana Jones. The rest of it I can take or leave, though I recognize that TESB is a really well-made movie; no surprise that Lucas didn't direct that one; that the first was so good is probably explained by George not having enough money to screw it up, though he managed to do that years later, which is why I still watch my old VHS version when I'm in the mood.

Edited by Rutlefan
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Saw it twice back in '77, first with family and then with friends. Enjoyed it to be sure, but I was a huge classic Star Trek fan (huge classic sci-fi fan in general) and I didn't really get the phenomenon that was Star Wars. To me it wasn't sci-fi, it was a really fun and well-done action/adventure movie set in space. My best friend at the time had no interest whatsoever in sci-fi, as I had, yet he was obsessed with Star Wars and saw it like fourteen times in the theater that summer. When Empire came out, a different best friend was the same way -- Star Wars-obsessed with no interest in sci-fi otherwise. He borrowed my manual trans Chevette (it was high school after all), even though he couldn't drive a stick, and skipped afternoon classes to be the first of our circle to see it. I was surprised he hadn't ruined the transmission, not that it would have made much of a difference, especially as he told me he drove like 80 mph to get to the theater; 80 mph was probably as fast as it would go and was certainly really dangerous at that speed; between the suspension, brakes and horrible chassis he was risking his life to stand in line ten minutes earlier than otherwise. Anyway, the appeal obviously goes way beyond the norm, whatever it might be.

 

I've come to really like the first one, more than in the beginning, but still don't really consider it sci-fi, not the aspiring-to be-smart kind that dominated before Star Wars changed the game. The first one is a perfect popcorn movie, like the first Indiana Jones. The rest of it I can take or leave, though I recognize that TESB is a really well-made movie; no surprise that Lucas didn't direct that one; that the first was so good is probably explained by George not having enough money to screw it up, though he managed to do that years later, which is why I still watch my old VHS version when I'm in the mood.

 

I see it this way: Star Wars was the the first epic Sci-Fi/Fantasy film. Its heavy emphasis on the fantasy attracted a huge number of fans. It didn't go into great detail about the super technology, which appealed to people who weren't so fluent in it. The light saber battles, the firefights in space, the daring rescues and chases, and the classic Evil Overlord, dressed in black, thrilled audiences to no end. Add in the mystical, supernatural element of The Force, and you get a major league cult following.

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^ Good take. I see the difference as that classic sci-fi was speculative in that it tended to ask Big Questions or at least raise serious questions -- The Day the Earth Stood Still, Forbidden Planet, War of the Worlds, 2001, Solaris (the "Soviet" version), Silent Running, Soylent Green, etc. Star Wars was Space Opera -- swashbuckling characters flying through space a la Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers, just done (for 1977) in a mind-blowing way the like of which had never before been seen (combine the tired universe of Dark Star with the special effects of 2001, and you get the look of Star Wars, but Lucas wrapped it around a great story and fun characters -- the first one that is). After Star Wars, Space Opera became the rule; intelligent sci-fi (Blade Runner, Gattaca, etc.) became the exception.

 

No worries, the first SW is great fantasy adventure, whatever one might think of what has followed.

Edited by Rutlefan
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I guess it depends on the theater. I still enjoy it especially if it's a popular movie and people are really into it.

Disembodied has a point with his list of home amenities. The Warren Theater chain is top-notch and clean, I think people even behave better there because the pride and five star experience rubs off. Unfortunately the nearest Warren is 90 minutes away so I'm going to crappy local theater in the morning. Then I will populate the other thread. ;)

 

This must be an American thing....I have never experienced any loud mouthed idiots at all when visiting the cinema.

 

I haven't either. Maybe it depends on the kind of neighborhood the theater is in?

 

Possibly...the only reason I speculated was that I seem to remember a thread about cinemas ages ago, and a lot of people were saying that audiences would cheer and clap etc during the film

 

I've never seen behaviour like that at a British Cinema.

 

That's very common in a film like Star Wars in the US. I have seen the new film three times and at each viewing folks have cheered, clapped, jeered, and laughed at various points. We don't look at it like some live theater performance. :D To us it's like a sporting event and you express your emotions. Popcorn films aren't high-brow experiences here.

 

It was even more rampant in the 1970s and 80s. People went NUTS over the original Star Wars film. Lots of verbal expressions.

 

I assumed this happened everywhere. ;)

Edited by Presto-digitation
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