[optimus_prime]

i grew up as a child with the OT, and while I dont remember ANH when it was released at all back in 1997, I do have vague memories of ESB & ROTJ.

I remember my dad taking me to see ESB in the theatres, i was about 4 yrs old. all i remember from that outing was how bright the scenes were on Hoth. It was the only time I remember being virtually blinded in the theatre..maybe it was cause I was so young and my vision was much more sensitive back then than now..i dunno.

I also remember when I got a Lando Calrissian action figure during my 2nd grade school christmas party..i was like.."who is this guy?..he was in star wars?"

I used to think the Luke Skywater was so cool with his LifeSaver and he would use his LifeSaver to battle Dark Vader. (yeah, I really thought it had the same name as a fruit flavored hard candy)

Ill try to post some more memories when they come to me.

[Despondent]

My friends had the action figures, I had Ben, and we'd play. I was a grade ahead, but their age. Something didn't seem right as I was really too old to be playing with the toys action figures.

I'd cartoon on my notebook covers "school wars" about my good bud Kevin and I breaking out of the "death school", then coming back to wreak havok in our fighters. We also had the ESB script / notebook and the soundtrack LP, so we recorded parodies. They really weren't that bad.

But then JEDI came out and it was all over. More for the tykes.

[optimus_prime]

I was a grade ahead, but their age.

ah!,.so you were one of those bright geniuses that got to skip a grade? i knew a kid like that back in grade school. legend was, he made straight A's all the time..he got a B+ one time and started crying. He was a really smart kid...He's probably the CEO of some major construction company these days..who knows.

[Despondent]

No, but my dad got to skip a grade. I was one of those who's November birthday was beyond the cut-off, but I'd have been bored at home all year otherwise. A week or so into the term, Dad took me to the grade school where they said no, too young; he then trotted me off to a private school where they said yes, we'll take him; Dad then took THAT info back to the grade school (elementary school) where they let me join First grade, now in progress.

No genius here, but thanks for the implication.

[OhNo_Stereo]

I also have no memory of the first time I saw a new hope

but I do remember that when I was five or six my little brother got to see empire strikes back before me somehow, so I was grilling him for details, but since he was three or four I didn't get far and he got frustrated cause I wouldn't leave him alone. for some reason I thought yoda's house would probably be in a long tall closet...

then when I was about ten or eleven a family friend who had been up till then a still-in-the-original-packaging style collector sudden descided the whole thing was frivilous without someone enjoying the toys so he gave them all to me and my brother. an at-st, the falcon, a couple of tie fighters, an x-wing, boba-fetts ship, some speeder bikes and like a couple dozen action figures. it was awesome.

I also used to think that obi-wan said "in the dark times, before the empire-ass" which I later realised was the sound luke turning on the light saber combine with a shitty vhs recording. oh yeah and I though wedge was saying "luck ass falls in attack position" yep...

[optimus_prime]

anyone remember these?...

http://www.swseller....s/cu/cu5002.jpg

http://eightiesclub....m/1063049c0.jpg

http://www.stuffucra...arwarsglass.jpg

[Just your average movie goer]

I actually saw 'Star Wars' for the first time in primary school. My awesome year two teacher put it on for us one day. And I remember renting all the movies shortly afterwards - I also remember wondering where episodes one to three were... but only briefly.

A little later, we taped them all when they came on TV and we'd watch them so many times that we knew exactly when each ad break started and when it ended so the moment one was coming up, we'd leap off the floor (we didn't bother with chairs much when we were kids), fast forward the advertisements, let go of the button and lie back on the floor just in time for the movie to resume.

It's funny actually because later, we got the proper videos and some members of the family commented that they were going to miss our precision fast-forwarding.

I think that alone probably explains sufficiently how much I loved the films. We also got given a whole lot of second-hand Kenner action figures once for Christmas and that was brilliant. We loved playing with them. We also loved drawing 'Star Wars' pictures - especially the rebel fighters. I think I got quite good at it after a while. I do remember the Millenium Falcon being a bit hard to draw though. Actually, I also remember I made a very cool TIE-Interceptor toy and an A-Wing toy out of cardboard and sticky tape (I also cunningly used the sticky tape to make transparent cockpits for them). They were actually pretty cool, I have to say. I think this exemplifies the kind of creativity that the original 'Star Wars' movies inspire. I doubt anyone would be inspired to do things like that by any of the crappy prequels - but that's another story.

As for other kinds of merchandise from the early years, I remember some of those 'Star Wars' cups and I also have a cool "The Empire Strikes Back" hand towel kicking around at home somewhere. I can't really see the details of the picture on it anymore but hey, it's still cool.

I guess that's the early memories for me. I could go into the cool games of the early 90s and the Timothy Zahn novels but that's not early-memory territory.

Actually, I also remember misunderstanding lines when I was younger too. Sometimes (like in the example I'm about to give you), I knew that couldn't be what the characters had said but it was what I thought I'd heard - as in this one:

Luke - But how am I to know the good side from the bad?

Yoda - You will know when you are calm, at peace.

But the first couple of times, I swear it sounded like "You will know when you call a priest." Obviously I knew that wasn't right but for some reason, I couldn't work out what he really said.

Oh, and I also liked in the same movie how there was some dialogue that was intended for older audience members that went straight over little kids' heads, particularly this one -

Han - Don't get excited.

Leia - Captain, being held by you isn't QUITE enough to get me excited.

Han - Sorry, sweetheart. Haven't got time for anything else.

I don't know when but one day, I was old enough to understand that last line and I remember having a little chuckle to myself. I thought "Cool. Han's dodgy - just like me."

That's probably all for now but maybe I'll remember some other stuff later...

... oh yeah, I also had a major crush on Princess Leia... um... still do.


Great thread, by the way, Optimus Prime.

This post has been edited by Just your average movie goer: 30 August 2007 - 08:27 PM

[civilian_number_two]

This thread was started by Despondent in July 2004 and by Paladin later in October of the same year. But that's the thing about Nostalgia; it never gets old. Here's what I wrote back then, with some typos corrected and possibly some new ones added.

I was nine in 1977, and hadn't seen very many films in the theatre by that time. I was an avid comic book reader, mostly following the silver age marvel stuff and the chessiest cornball DC stuff I could get my hands on. I used to collect the Jimmy Olson and the (far superior, though corny as hell) Lois Lane stuff, as well as Flash and Shazam, of all things. For some reason I had no tolerance for cornball Batman syuff, so steered clear of all the stuff from a decade before; fortunately in the seventies Batman was on his own again and often quite serious.

I encountered STAR WARS first as a comic book series, although of course I knew it was out there. The toy revolution followed long after the films, so it wasn't like the kids at school were running around with the Kenner action figures and generating interest. The closest I came to a pop-culture awareness of the film was seeing C3P0 on the cover of TIME magazine and wishing I had the $2 or whatever it was to grab a copy to read. No way; all of my money I spent on comic books.

By 1978 I had the screenplay, a year's worth of further adventures from Marvel (including one about a water world that would later figure prominently in the Holiday Special), and the novel. It was high time I saw the damned thing. I told my parents, and they they packed all the kids into the station wagon and we went to the drive-in, where it was playing in a double-bill with BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (I shit you not). Of course in those days the drive-in didn't broadcast on AM radio, so you had to grab that little speaker and hook it on to your car window.

It was a gorgeous summer night and I watched the movies from the roof of the car with my younger brother an a friend from his school. They were equally enthralled by the back-up feature, but I had no interest in it. Even at that tender age I knew a lame ripoff when I saw one, and frankly I was also a little scandalized by how blatantly it ripped off the Bible. I knew lazy writing when I saw it, and there I was, looking at it.

It was just getting good and dark when STAR WARS hit the screen; BG had been washed out somewhat (even though it was the new release, they played it first, as a back-up to STAR WARS). The opening text crawl looked just like it had in the comic, and just like the Flash Gordon serials that had been rerunning on a local station in the wake of STAR WARS. I had seen THE LION MEN OF MONGO and was I think well into FLASH GORDON CONQUERS THE UNIVERSE. It had never occured to me that the opening text in the comic was an homage to Flash Gordon until I saw it on the screen. I was instantly enthralled.

EMPIRE I saw after school when a good friend's maiden aunt rushed us out from the three o'clock bell all the way from the the suburbs to the city. Those of you familiar with Vancouver may know that at that time the Stanley Theatre showed movies, and damn it was a classy joint. Much nicer now, of course, that it is back to being a venue for plays, but as a kid I was impressed by the great architecture and not yet sophisticated enough to know that a stage theatre just doesn't have the acoustics for film. The screen was so big that the movement of the snowspeeder gave a real sense of vertigo (the 70mm print didn't hurt either). I knew nothing going in, since I had doggedly avoided spoilers (in those days, this was pretty easy to do), and of course this is the formative filmgoing experience of my life. In the months that followed, I bought up all of the non-repetitive EMPIRE literatre I could, including a journalistic piece writen by some guy they invited to document the filming. I was still buying the comics of course, which had matured ever-so-slightly, and I saw the film in the theatre nine times in its initial run.

I've said enough of my opening-day JEDI experience: suffice to say I was pleased and yet simultaneously underwhelmed. Luke/Leia left me cold, the die-hards actually booed Kenobi's "certain point of view" line, and it was really just another movie, since by that time I was more intrigued by the idea of a RAIDERS follow-up than by a ho-hum STAR WARS finale. I can say, however, that I saw an opening-day film in the days when that meant something: playing in only one theatre at that time of day, that was the screening that ALL the die-hards went to. these days opening day is such a big deal that the first-screening crowd is dispersed in different rooms all over town. I saw Tim Burton's BATMAN in a JEDI-style opening-day experience as well: there is nothing like all that concentrated fanaticism to make the experience memorable.

Anyone interested in reading the original threads, please follow the links above. Necroposting is encouraged.

One thing I should add: I sure said "in those days" a lot in that post. Damn. I sound like Grandpa Simpson.

[Cobnat]

I had Dash’s spaceship, 2 Battledroids and a Qui Gon Jin action figure when I was a kid.

[Bond]

I had a whole bunch of TPM action figures when I was a lad; most of them are still in their cases...

[KurganX]

I remember my dad reading me the Greedo subtitles in the theater. I also remember being so excited to see Return of the Jedi in theaters, but scarcely anything about it after the fact (all blended with memories of seeing it on pay-per-view at the hotel when we were on vacation and at home a million times recorded off of tv). I still am not positive which viewing I actually saw, but it may have been a kind of marathon at the second-run theater. I remember waiting in line and seeing a display case at the mall as you walked past the "hands holding the lightsaber" poster (which was cool) that showed lots of plastic Star Wars models that were painted silver.

I don't recall ever seeing ESB until it came out on home video (saw part of it at my uncle's on his betamax player and another time it was rented for my cousin and I to watch on vhs).

We always begged our folks to buy us the figures at the store or we got them as gifts. I was a bit jealous of my friends who'd bring the vehicles to show and tell (I had only a couple of the mini-vehicles for ROTJ and the AT-ST, but they had like TIE-Fighters with the shoot off wings and stuff).

I didn't have any of the fast food trinkets or bedsheets or anything, but I did have "Darth Vader" sneakers I wore to school one year (they had a vader picture on the bottom that of course rubbed off after a week or so it seemed), the red toy lightsaber that whistled and the "carrying case" that was shaped like a big rifle (and the bandoleer.. I was disappointed that the gun didn't shoot the figures out like bullets!). I remember saving up proofs of purchases (actually my mom did) to send away for Anakin Skywalker figure and so forth. My brother was six years younger than me so he really missed out on the whole thing, so I felt like I got really spoiled (but of course when you're a kid you always feel like other kids have all the cool stuff).

I had the Rancor and Jabba the Hutt which were probably my favorites, though I recall having the Boba Fett figure and the Wampa, Ben Kenobi with the lightsaber that came out of his hand, and a few other vintage "Star Wars" Or "Empire Strikes Back" figures. Of course back then to me it was all "Jedi" (though I knew that "Star Wars" was the name of the first one).

I remember staying up to watch the "The Ewok Adventure" on TV (just the first one, didn't see the second one until many years later on tape).

Keep in mind I was 5 in '83!

So back then Star Wars for me was just a cool movie (Return of the Jedi actually) that I'd watch with my little brother and baby sister anytime I had to babysit them, and the toys we collected and played with my same age cousin or other kids.

It started to fade a bit after that, until about 1992 when I made a friend at high school who was a huge fan and got me started on some of the better games, the novels (I had read the "Zahn" trilogy that I think I found out about via an ad in "OMNI" which was the shiznit back then) and anticipation for the special editions. My fandom started to die down around the time Episode II was in development, but by then of course I was grown up so it's a different story...

To "celebrate" the opening of Episode I, my parents gave each of us siblings a couple of action figures. That was pretty sweet! Too bad the movie was a letdown (it didn't really sink in until some time after the second viewing, though I remember being discernibly disappointed... "that's it? that's what we all were so hyped about?" after walking out of the theater the first time). Still I bought into the Episode I hype.. avoided spoilers, bought the novel and the soundtrack CD (the FIRST one, lol), and the DVD (used, from blockbuster... to "start my collection" I swear!).

I even got hyped up for "Obi-Wan" the game (which turned out to be an xbox only title and it was a disappointment by all counts, thankfully the far superior Jedi Outcast came out for PC shortly thereafter).

These days yeah I have all the DVDs and I've played most of the PC games (and a few of the console ones), and I'll read a comic or something if I have nothing else to do, but generally I just don't have the time to spend on a lot of the subpar crap that's part of it. Sure, there's some cool stuff now and then, but by and large the magic is gone. It's all nostalgia for me now...

[Toru-chan]

Some cool stories being told around the metaphorical camp fire there people. May I join you with mine?

Toru Chan's Personal Star Wars Saga

First saw Star Wars in the cinema in 1977 (or so I'm told). The cinema was absolutely packed and they stuffed so many advertisments before the main feature it was beyond ridiculous. Maybe an hour of ads? (Why didn't the idiots running the cinema just jack up their ad prices: same revenue for far less cinema time?) Then the feature started! Everyone got excited... oh... these were movie trailers. Is this it? Is this it? The Close Encounters of the Third Kind Trailer got us... we thought the air traffic controllers were talking to the Rebel Spaceship under attack. So finally, finally it started and we had a blast of a time. I was annoyed I knew Obi-won was going to die because the idiots that made 'Making of Star Wars' for TV showed us. If I ever meet the idiots who made that I'll kick them in the nuts. Saw the film in the cinema 8(?) times.

In 1980 at my most impressionable: Was in high-school when TESB came out with a large gang of Star Wars-mad, film-mad friends. We were really under the spell of Star Wars, and with Super 8 mm camera, stop motion, live action we were all churning out movies. A (3 minute!!!) reel of 8mm film was expensive, and cameras were hard to get, plus the cameras had a crap focus system. A weekends work could come back blurry. Reshoot: Still blurry. Kids these days who have Digital Video, 3DSMAX and PC editing suites are so damned lucky!

Saw TESB with Mum and my sibs. Loved it, but I knew Darth Vader was Luke's Dad because one aforementioned friend casually told us at school. A collective groan and repercussions followed. TESB was a great piece of cinema. We all loved it: The Hoth Battle sequence was the most exciting 14 minutes of my life. By this stage had a large collection of action figures. Lost the original packaging when an idiot I was making a film with decided he needed the colored bits of cardboard (e.g. patch of blue behind Threepio), and cut the cartons up. Dumb ass.

Still have many of the figures, sans packing. My greedier friends tell me they're worth a lot of money. I looked them up. Sorry guys. There are lots of them out there and they're not worth very much at all. Learn this: Mass Produced != Investment. Unfortunately years later (after ROTJ) much of my Star Wars collection was thrown out: Moved out, stuck it in boxes and my parents figuring I'd outgrown it threw it out.

Saw TESB at the drive in with my Dad and *audio taped* the movie (Hey, I *paid* to see it :-) VHS players were still very rare back then: expensive things only found in libraries and companies. From the tape, I knew every line in the movie even back then.

Was in University when ROTJ finally came out. Had outgrown the toys by them and busy with real life, so it never made the same impression that TESB did. Saw ROTJ with friends and thoroughly enjoyed it: loved Jabba stuff at the beginning, glad to see Boba Fett die (get over it fan boys, and yes we thought he was a lame ass character even back then) and the big battle at the end: the first time we (as in, humanity) had ever seen a space battle on that scale. I didn't think much of the Ewoks, knew they were there to sell toys, but the forest battle was impressive though even then me and my high-school age neighbors asked 'how the heck can stick and stones kill stormtroopers?' The good far outweighed the bad we decided, and ROTJ was a *fitting* *end* for the Star Wars saga.

In Fry's in L.A. one days saw LucasArt's Rebel Assault for the PC for sale. In store demo had impressive sound and graphics. I bought it, got it home, and discovered it was poorly-designed, poorly-executed buggy crapware. This was the first of many hundreds of dollars games developers fleeced out of me over the years.

A long time passed. Had a casual interest in Star Wars, but a lot of other things were happening then so Star Wars became just a fond teenage memory. Never got into the Extended Universe thing (and don't regret it either :-).

Did get X-wing/TIE-fighter games when they came out: Pretty good, but you had to pass all missions linearly to advance, and there was one I got stuck on and finally threw in the towel on. Despite the crappy Rebel Assault, LucasArts are a class act. Maybe they learn the lessons with bugs, because their games these days are the most stable I have ever seen ever. (Unfortunately I don't have time to play anything but BattleFront).

Many years later when TPM came out was sucked into the hype (but didn't bother going to see any of the SE editions). Saw TPM with a friend. He was too young to have seen the Original OT movies in cinema, and loved PT. He: "What did you think?" Me: "Yeah... It was... good!" Yes, of course it was good. It had to be. It was Star Wars. Over the next year I independently formed the opinion it wasn't a very good movie. When I finally found the buzz on the net, ahhhh....

I still have the PT action figures from before then. Even Jar Jar. NEVER PLAYED WITH. But I never bought the kid: He always pissed me off.

Discovered Neon Genesis Evangellion back in 1999, which held its own to Star Wars and completelt outclassed TPM. I looked at George and decided his destiny lay on a different path than mine. Add the extremely well made LOTR movies, and Lucas was a dead man.

Like many of you, was pissed off at the way Lucas had screwed the pooch, but was really unimpressed when Lucas refused to admit his mistakes, and "blamed 30-something fan boys for not realizing it was a kids film." Pretty disappointed that my childhood hero was blaming his fans for his own screw up. I decided not to see the movies in the cinema any more (better things to spend money on), so when AOTC came out saw it on DVD. My expectations were way deflated by then. CGI was good if overdone. Natalie Portman is an average actor but has great tummy. Ewan does a good Alec Guinness impersonation. That is all.

Likewise ROTS. I wasn't expecting much and got less. ROTS had a worse plot than AOTC.

As discussed in JYAMG's 'Now that the Dust has Settled' thread, the franchise had lost its magic. As a fan boy in exile, I was merely ticket-punching the last movies in the series. I'll probably continue watching anything else Lucas comes out of curiosity , unless it comes bad in a James Bond "Die Another Day" way.

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 05 September 2007 - 12:43 AM

[Just your average movie goer]

I have to say I envy all of you guys who were priviledged enough to see these films in their first theatrical runs. That must have been something.

I suppose us younger guys have the memory of seeing the "Lord of the Rings" films in the cinemas - although I didn't get to see "Return of the King" on the big screen because I was in Japan at the time and Japan gets new movies about a year and a half after Patagonia. However, I don't think it's the same thing because while they are amazing films, and in a lot of ways superior, they didn't change the cinematic landscape as dramatically as the original 'Star Wars' movies did.

You guys will be able to tell your kids about that one day. I'll tell my kids about VHS and how cool those old cases in the video store were (I actually have fond memories of the way the smelled too) - and the fact that some videos even had sections for those poor sorry Beta users.

[civilian_number_two]

I'm planning to regale my kids with stories of how I ripped my entire laserdisc collection to DVD and then stored it on a few 1 Terabyte drives for easy access. And then they'll be like "What's a Terabyte?" and I'll watch them roll their eyes as I explain it's one millionth of an exabyte. I won't explain what laserdiscs were. I'll just remind them to watch the radiation levels and not to take any Venusian rock salt from strangers.

[Toru-chan]

I have to say I envy all of you guys who were privileged enough to see these films in their first theatrical runs. That must have been something.

The atmosphere in the cinema was of course, electric, but what made it really different was (ok I'll say it: ) "in those days" it was a shared experience. VCRs were some years off. The only thing society had to watch was what was on TV, or what was at the movies. What kids talked about at school on Monday was whatever the Sunday night movie was. Same as each episode of a TV Series aired. With no VCRs, you couldn't "time shift" either. There was nothing else. So when Star Wars came along, *everyone* talked about it. When "The Making of Star Wars" appeared on TV, everyone saw it and everyone went wild. Sci-Fi was considered an unprofitable fringe. For kids there was Dr. Who and Space 1999 on TV which came closest to doing a full blown space battle (Episode "War Games"), but that was it. Star Wars was just so way ahead of anything else. It ended up at the cinema for over a year. That just doesn't happen these days.

I suppose us younger guys have the memory of seeing the "Lord of the Rings" films in the cinemas - although I didn't get to see "Return of the King" on the big screen because I was in Japan at the time and Japan gets new movies about a year and a half after Patagonia. However, I don't think it's the same thing because while they are amazing films, and in a lot of ways superior, they didn't change the cinematic landscape as dramatically as the original 'Star Wars' movies did.

I guess this is one reason the Star Wars phenomena won't be repeated even by (better) movies like LOTR. Over time, the shared experience has been lost. VHS coincided with rental libraries, so if there was crap on TV, rent a movie. The explosion of titles on DVD, and BitTorrent have divided things further. I like Anime, but it's very rare for me to find anyone who likes the same titles . The choice now is incredible. It's great that you can choose, but it's also a little sad you can't shoot the breeze with your coworkers (which may explain the existence of this ChefElf's BBS? :-)

BTW Even though I knew Obi-won was going to die, I cried when it happened. After Obi-won died and they headed to Yavin. Perhaps because I was thinking like a kid, when I saw the general giving the Death Star briefing, I thought Luke had found a new father figure and everything was going to be 'ok'! :-) Crying at movies began a long and noble tradition: I cried when JYAMG died in LOTR too.

I'm planning to regale my kids with stories of how I ripped my entire laserdisc collection to DVD and then stored it on a few 1 Terabyte drives for easy access. And then they'll be like "What's a Terabyte?" and I'll watch them roll their eyes as I explain it's one millionth of an exabyte. I won't explain what laserdiscs were.

Way back when I used to play on a friend's Commodore PET (8Kb RAM, Green Monochrome Screen, Tape deck for I/O) I wondered what computers would look like in the future. What's they've evolved into and the price just blows my mind. The sort of stuff you can get off even a mid-range PC Graphics card is mind blowing.

I'll just remind them to watch the radiation levels and not to take any Venusian rock salt from strangers.

Apart from the rock salt being Venusian, that could well be true of Earth.

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 05 September 2007 - 05:47 AM