Friday, June 25, 2010

Livin' in the 70s - Star Wars

The following story originally appeared on my first website, jwilsonsworld, on 8/26/2006.

Star Wars: Movie event of a lifetime. I feel a little bit sorry for anyone not old enough to remember seeing Star Wars when it originally came out in 1977. The later Star Wars' films might have been bigger and certainly were more of a spectacle, but that is no substitute for the life altering effects that the original had on everything connected to movies, Star Wars would forever change what movies could be. George Lucas' masterpiece was like nothing that came before it, it was completely fresh and exciting to our young eyes and did not compare to anything else we had ever seen. The combination of its adventurous, entertaining fantasy story and ground breaking special effects created a film that compared to absolutely nothing that came to the theaters before it. After Star Wars the world of cinema would never be the same again; there were now only two types of movies, those that came before Star Wars and those that came after. Like a lot of other people I found in Star Wars a film that completely opened up my imagination and forever changed my expectations about movie making. Everything after Star Wars was compared to it and most came up short. Although released in May I actually didn't see the movie until the end of summer. Most of my friends had already seen it and were telling me how great it was, but because of the long lines, the silly title and all of the ensuing buildup I had put off seeing it and was most definitely prepared to be let down. I was sure that no movie could live up to all of the hype that this movie had created and I was positive that Star Wars could not compare well to the movie going experience that I had while seeing Jaws a couple of years earlier, nothing would ever top that. Boy was I wrong! After I walked out of that theater in August of 1977 neither me, movie making or the world would ever be the same again.

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