A long time ago... the summer of 1977, one of my friends said "Hey, let's go see that new movie that's supposed to be so terrific". I looked at her and said "What movie?". I really didn't pay too much attention to the movie news, even then, even if it involved an extraordinary new movie called Star Wars... So I hadn't heard a single word about it. My friend said "it's been out 3 weeks and it's still selling out the theater". There I sat - feeling a bit stunned. Here's a movie that everyone seems to have heard about but me...

Well, off we went to find a paper and look it up for show times. Turns out it was playing in only 1 theater in the entire St. Louis area - ONE! Hmmm, might be difficult to get tickets we discuss it and decide to drive out to see what show times are available. As it turned out, we bought our tickets that day for a show time 3 days later!!! Holy smokies people. This was amazing! The first time I ever heard of a movie selling advanced tickets. All I could think was... this better be worth it!

The day finally arrived and we piled into the theater with the rest of the sold out crowd. This was one of the few theaters left that still had the HUGE screen. Around that time was when theaters had almost become extra large television rooms - the screens about the size of big screen tvs of today. But this was one of the last of the old time screens - stretching across the width of the back wall, from floor to ceiling. This theater also sat several hundred people. Yeah - this is how a movie was meant to be seen!

Then it began... I can't possibly put it any better than Sgt. Mom who said:

Inside the very modern Cinerama Dome, the atmosphere was electric with excitement and anticipation. The lights went dim, and the music came up, and the great letters of the opening titles swam through dark space. We were sucked in, from the very first opening scene, with the fleeing transport shooting back at the Imperial battle cruiser, which grew bigger, bigger, unimaginably huge, the sound of it rattling your heart in your chest. Ahh, that was an exhilarating, dazzling roller-coaster ride of a movie, with all the classical elements, dashes of wit and adventure, of battered technology and strange creatures, bursting with visual creativity, Robin Hood and Buck Rogers and all. JP and I stumbled out of the theater two hours later, feeling like it had only been twenty minutes or so.

It was all that and more. No one had ever seen anything quite like it before! As the next 2 movies were released, I watched them. Each had better special effects than the first one... neither had the "grab you for the ride of your life" effect of the original. I have a feeling the original movie was a movie for that time and place. If kids today saw it, as I did, on that big screen in the theater - it would fail to impress.

I haven't seen the other 2 Star Wars movies. I have no desire to see them. The last installment (I've heard that Lucas is going to stop there) is all set to hit the theaters... I won't be seeing it either. Why? Because there are fabulous special effects... but there is no magic.

Posted by: Teresa in Film at 08:54 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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