I was 16 at the time when Stars Wars came out in 1977. I loved Star Wars from the very start of the movie. I later found out that I was basically a loner (among my friends and family) when it came to being a fan of Star Wars and did not have any friends who shared my own enthusiasm for the movie. As a young teenager, I told my entire family how much I liked the movie and they couldn't care less.
One of my aunts told me that she went to the movie and didn't like it because she couldn't understand the movie. I thought to myself, damn lady, don't you have any education? If you knew anything about solar systems and about our galaxy, you would have loved the movie. I always had an interest in science and liked Star Trek and now there was Star Wars! To hell with my aunt. (Of course, I was young and nice at the time and never said these negative things to her.)
Back in 1977, news flash, we didn't have personal computers, laptops, the internet (ouch), smart phones (or any pocket-sized cell phone), iTunes, DVDs or DVD players, Netflix, YouTube, PDFs or anything like this. We had stereo systems, records, cassette tapes (for music), 8-track tapes (for music - some people had these), newspapers, magazines, movies, theatre, symphonies, TV, radio, billboards, libraries, the white pages and the yellow pages. This is how we learned about the world around us and how we were entertained.
In fact, when I went to high school I was very disappointed. I thought, "Where are the computers?" I saw what I thought were modern computers in the reruns of the 1960's Star Trek TV show (in the 1970s) and I simply assumed that we had at least something comparable to the computers in Star Trek. What a disappointment. At college, I thought the computers would be better than high school. Nope. It was worse or at least it seemed worse to me. We had data cards, loud data card readers and I knew this was super low computer technology and I had no interest in this "computer" technology. Yuck.
Before getting back to my blog topic, I will first digresses a little bit. Here are several reasons why I felt that Star Wars was so fantastic.
1) The spaceships really looked like they were flying in space! This was important. Up to 1977, the 1960s Star Trek TV show (1966-1969) and the 2001 Space Odyssey movie (1968) had spaceships which simply do not have the appearance of what it would actually look like if the ships were flying through space. In fact, George Lucas had to make the stop motion technology to make spaceships look like they were actually flying through space. How cool is that?
2) Also, the 1960s Star Trek TV show and the 2001 Space Odyssey movie had spaceships which looked like they just came out of the factory and were always in pristine condition both outside and inside. Star Wars spaceships looked like there were worn from use and looked realistic.
3) Star Wars was the first movie where laser blasts looked and sounded real. Everything in Star Wars looked real. That was very cool.
4) Many of the movies of the day were very negative in the 1970s where the bad guy seemed to always be wining. I propose that this was due to the United States being in the immoral Vietnam War (which ended in 1975) and due to President Nixon resigning from office in 1974 due to the Watergate scandal which made many people distrust the government and authority figures.
Before Star Wars was released, I remember watching a movie where the last scene of the movie was were a cop pulled over the main bad guy in the movie (the cop didn't know he pulled over a really bad guy) and gave the bad guy a traffic ticket, and I believe ticket was for a tail light which was out. The bad guy pulled away and started down the road. The cop accidentally kept the bad guy's driver's license. The cop started his motorcycle, turned on his lights and siren and tried to pull the bad guy over again just to give him back his driver's licence. The bad guy had enough of the cop, pulled out a gun and killed the cop and kept driving. That was the ending of the movie.
To me, this was the mood of the country in the 1970s, the bad guys kept winning. Not to mention that we had some of the worst hair styles and clothing in the 1970s as well. Then Star Wars happened. Good against evil, it had excellent music, a good story line, humor, the space ships look real, the space ships looked real while they were flying in space, the blasters looked real and the good guys won! This was awesome. The movie had a positive ending!
How I knew I was a Star Wars fan from 1977.
1) I remember after watching the movie for the first time, I got out of movie at night time. On the drive home, it was at night and the roads seemed narrower to me, so I felt as though I was in an X-Wing fighter. Having just seen X-Wing fighters flying through the "canyons" of the Death Star. It was so cool driving home. Imagination is so wonderful because remember there were no movies on DVDs and no computer games.
2) As a teenager, I had very little money so I didn't even have a Star Wars t-shirt. However, I did see Star Wars about 10 or 12 times. Back in the day, it was basically unheard of for people to see movies more than once at the theater. I remember at the time that the news reported that Star Wars was the first movie where many people went back to the movie theater to watch the movie over and over again.
3) I also remember reading how George Lucas planned to make nine movies. He made the first movie in hopes that it would be successful but if it was not successful, then at least he would have made one space movie. Then from what I can remember, the nine movies were basically never talked about throughout the 1980s and 1990s. I believe that if you remember how George Lucas originally planned for nine movies and also how the news never talked about these nine movies in the 1980s and 1990s, this also helps define you as a Star Wars fan from 1977. (And now we know that George Lucas planning nine movies might not be true due to a 2012 Huffington Post article.)
4) As a Star Wars fan, I actually dreamed that it would be awesome to be living in the Star Wars world where faster than light (FTL) space travel was possible and flying from star system to star system within a galaxy was an every day occurrence. I wanted to live this type of life. I still would like to live this type of life!
5) I could and did make Darth Vader's breathing noise and could quote, in Vader's tone of voice, "The ability to destroy a planet is insignificant next to the power of the Force." (I can still do this.)
6) I wanted a landspeeder, that would be really cool of course. I'd also want my own spaceship but the landspeeder was really cool. And of course, I wanted a blaster and light saber.
7) There were no DVDs in the 1970s. The technology for video tapes for home use, according to Wikipedia, stared sometime in the 1970s. However, at my household, we did not have a VCR machine and no video tapes. According one to one website, the first home VCRs in the USA were sold in 1977 and a limited number of movies were sold on video cassettes for the first time in either 1977 or 1978.
To enjoy movies, for most people, we had to rely seeing re-runs on TV or listen to movie sound tracks on records. Music records. The Star Wars record jacket had two records with pictures from the movie inside and a poster with the Han Solo, Luke Sky Walker and Princess Lea. Almost every day after school, I'd come home (my mother was usually at work) and I would play the Star Wars record loudly while laying on the living room floor dreaming about the movie and dreaming of living in that world and looking at the pictures (from the movie) inside the record jacket. I don't know how many times I listened to the two record set but it must have been hundreds of times.
To enjoy movies, for most people, we had to rely seeing re-runs on TV or listen to movie sound tracks on records. Music records. The Star Wars record jacket had two records with pictures from the movie inside and a poster with the Han Solo, Luke Sky Walker and Princess Lea. Almost every day after school, I'd come home (my mother was usually at work) and I would play the Star Wars record loudly while laying on the living room floor dreaming about the movie and dreaming of living in that world and looking at the pictures (from the movie) inside the record jacket. I don't know how many times I listened to the two record set but it must have been hundreds of times.
8) I also had some baseball cards of the Star Wars characters. I have no idea if I still have these, I don't think I do. Too bad because there were really fun look through.
9) Back in the 1970s, food coloring (for making different colors when coloring icing for birthday cakes) was very popular and was a staple, if you will, in the kitchen where I lived. I would use several drops of the blue food coloring in my milk so it looked like the drink the Luke drank on Tatooine at his aunt and uncle's place. In the kitchen cabinet, there'd be several little bottles of food coloring (red, green, yellow, blue) and suspiciously, the small blue food coloring bottle would soon be empty. Not sure if my mother ever figured out where the blue food coloring disappeared to. I blame it on the Force.
These are several of the things that defined me as a Star Wars fan from 1977. I loved the advanced technology, space travel, good music and the story.
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An aside: According to a 2012 Huffington Post article, the writer says that George Lucas claims never to have said he'd write a nine (9) episode space opera, that the news media misunderstood him and got it wrong. In fact, the same article quotes Mark Hamill as saying Lucas told him he planned on making a 12 episode space opera. However, I thought for sure, that George Lucas did say he was going to make a nine episode space opera and I thought he repeated this in at least one of the "making-of" movies. However, I guess I'm wrong on this point.
I think that Lucas said that he made the the first movie in 1977 in hopes that it would be successful but if it was not successful, then at least he would have made one space movie. However, it was a huge success and decide to finish the rest of the space opera.
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Reference:
'Star Wars' Sequels: George Lucas Always Teased 9 Films; Or Did He?
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