On this day in 1977, audiences went to theatres to witness a movie the likes of which they'd never seen before. The lights went down and the projector came alive, taking the viewers back to "a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away."
Large yellow letters appeared and spelled out the words "Star Wars". And then in an opening sequence that has been parodied and imitated countless times, viewers were told about the plight of the Rebel Alliance.
35 years ago today, a blow was struck against one fictional empire and one very real empire was created, that of George Lucas. Having directed the relatively unknown science fiction film THX 1138 in 1971 and the teen classic American Graffiti in 1973, no one was prepared for the scope of his newest work. No one predicted that Star Wars would spawn a franchise that now includes five more movies, comic books, toys, novels and a TV show.
When 20th Century Fox initially went to distribute the film in the US, less than 40 theatres agreed to show it, leading Fox to withhold another film from theatres, The Other Side of Midnight, unless they picked up Star Wars as well. Burt Reynolds' Smokey and the Bandit was due to come out two days after Star Wars and Fox was worried that their film would not perform well next to it. By the end of 1977, The Other Side of Midnight made less than ten percent of what Star Wars did at the box office and Star Wars outperformed Smokey and the Bandit by over two-to-one.
Esteemed British actors Sir Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi) and Peter Cushing (Grand Moff Tarkin) were in the movie but who the heck were Mark Hamill (Luke Skywalker), Carrie Fisher (Princess Leia) and Harrison Ford (Han Solo)? The thought of Harrison Ford being a unknown entity may be hard to comprehend these days but he was one in those days, with his biggest role having been in American Graffiti.
We're used to grander scale with films these days, but imagine what it must have seemed like to the audiences of 1977. This was before the long list of rereleases and special editions. A large spaceship comes into view, seemingly on the run from another vessel, firing their laser cannons. Then you see what is chasing them, a much larger ship that dwarfs it in every way. The tall, black-suited villain is immediately more threatening than any man in a rubber suit pretending to be an alien (except for in Alien), choking a man from a distance without even touching him.
To make the opening scene seem small in comparison, we are shown a space station the size of a moon next to which spaceships look like ants. This station then blows up an entire planet. Traditional sword fighting was too tame for Lucas and so the swords had to be made out of light energy and could cut through anything with ease.
Instead of setting the story anywhere familiar, Lucas created an entirely new galaxy. The benefit of this being that without any ties to the real world, he could be as imaginative as he wanted without risking the viewer's suspension of disbelief.
Cinema had never witnessed anything at this scale before.
Without Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope, as it is now called, the science fiction movie would not be the action-packed spectacle it is today. Whether or not this impact has been positive on movies is debated by film critics, but it has been profound. After it and Jaws (made by Lucas's friend Steven Spielberg), summer movies became faster paced and more action packed.
Star Wars fans are incredibly devoted, dressing up in Stormtrooper outfits for conventions, reading all the spin-off books and comics and hotly debating the series on the internet. All Star Wars books published are part of the official canon, making the story much vaster than the original movie series. Wookiepedia, the Star Wars-only version of Wikipedia has more 90,000 articles.
Although Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey raised up science fiction movies from being eternally cheesy, silly monster flicks, Star Wars is what made science fiction "cool" for movie audiences. No matter who you are, you've at least heard of it and you've definitely heard the movie's musical score. No child can imagine a world without lightsabres, jedis, the Force or Star Wars themed Lego and video games.
Pop your DVD, Blu-ray, VHS, Betamax or other video device in your machine (it's been released on everything) and enjoy a piece of pop culture history. It did win six Academy Awards for a reason.
C-3P0 would have you not tell him the odds but odds are you know someone with a copy.
Colin Slark is a Grade 12 student at Duchess Park secondary who has been job shadowing in the Citizen newsroom for the last month.
