OK Star Wars

[prog]

My Star Wars memory:

I was too little to be aware of the first Star Wars film when it was released, but I nonetheless had contemporary exposure to it when my mom brought some a couple of Kenner dolls, a Sand Person and some other guy. My guess is she went to the toy store to get me a treat, and the clerk showed her these as the new hotness.

Anyway, I had never owned "action figures" before, so my mom demonstrated how I might play with them. She took them out of their blister packs, left their tiny plastic weapons aside, raised their arms and had them embrace. "See? You can make them hug."

The first movie in the series that I actually saw was Empire, but I knew all about Star Wars by cultural osmosis by then, just from one or two years of grade school. When the movie was over, I didn't want it to end, and I cried and cried. I asked my brother Peter how many more they would make. "I don't know. Six?" he said. I cried more.

Comments

[rserocki.livejournal.com]

I saw Star Wars when it came out. The line was so long, I didn't make it to the ticket counter before the showing was full. I believe people liked CP3O and R2D2 walking past the cross-fire, and I am sure people cheered and possibly applauded during the Luke swings with Leia across a chasm scene.

The only thing I recall the local reviewer saying is that people 'really did' cheer during the scene, but a coffee cart owner said that reviewer gave the movie an initial negative review and then gave it a positive review after various positive reviews came out. Coffee cart owner has little respect for that reviewer.

[radtea.livejournal.com]

I was 13 when it came out, but it didn't show in my hometown--we only had one theatre and it didn't get most movies. I guess I must have bugged my parents a lot, because eventually my father and I drove seventy miles to a city where it was showing, sometime in the weeks after it was released.

It was everything it promised to be: swashbuckling adventure, good guys and bad guys and beautiful princesses. Life has very few perfect moments, but watching that film at that time was one of them.