Like many people, I was blown away by the cantina scene with its giddy mix of Casablanca, Star Trek, and old Westerns. I’d never experienced anything like the effect of the first spaceship seeming to pass right over my head and onto the screen. But it was hard not to get caught up in the hype. The acting was variable (to be kind), the shootouts were as lamely staged as in any grade B oater, and the climax was all too predictable. As a piece of filmmaking, it was no Jaws. I saw Star Wars (there was no Episode IV: A New Hope attached to the title) the week after its opening, in a big, full theater. Two years later, there were rumblings that George Lucas - a pal of Spielberg’s - had something even more game-changing. I’ve never felt so electric a response in a packed theater. From the first low burbles of John Williams’s score to the orgasmic explosion of one of the movies’ scariest monsters - a monster rarely seen, in part because the mechanical shark malfunctioned so badly that brilliant young director, Steven Spielberg, and his editor, Verna Fields, had to cut around it - we knew that the game had changed. It was and remains one of the great cinema-going experiences of my life. I was 15 when I saw Jaws - thought to be the first “modern” blockbuster - on its opening night in the summer of 1975. There was no Comic Con at which teenage nerds could join forces to wield their power over marketing and media coverage of movies with people firing ray guns at one another. before - among them Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, The Godfather, and Taxi Driver - drew large and responsive audiences. We were coming off an era of astounding independence in Hollywood, where grown-up films that could never have been made in the U.S. It was when there was still a separation between A and B movies, meaning that sci-fi/fantasy films were budgeted and distributed differently and played to a niche market. It was before a film could make anywhere near a billion dollars. Yes, it was technically a mere 42 Earth years ago and in our own Milky Way galaxy, but it was before studios spoke of “franchises” (outside of Burger Kings and Mobil stations), “tentpoles,” “universe-building,” or mass (toy) merchandising as a factor in giving a project a green light. This story was originally published in 2018 but has since been updated to include Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker, the final installment to the trilogy of trilogies.Ī long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, there was no Star Wars, and the business and art of movies were vastly different.
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