As I was driving home from the Westwood screening, it was the middle of the afternoon, and I was on the phone, talking to a friend about trying to find some time to hang out.
Well, STAR WARS is over, and Ive got a Prepared Childbirth class with my wife tonight, I said, and soon as I heard those words out loud, a wave of melancholy broke over me. Things are changing, and I think there are no two clearer markers of that for me than these.
You cant possibly understand what it felt like for me sitting in the theater watching this film play unless you were there in 1977 for the very first film. Which isnt to say that my experience is better than that of someone much younger... it just wont be the same. This is the closing of a major chapter in my life, a rite of passage for fandom at large, and the thing that makes it hardest is that the film is so damned good. Lucas exhibits such confidence that its almost frustrating. The opening half-hour is relentlessly paced, and both Hayden and Ewan appear to have really connected with their roles. Even better, Lucas has fine-tuned his sense of humor, and fans are going to go nuts for R2-D2 during the first half-hour of the movie. This is the coolest R2s been since EMPIRE, and its a pleasure to have him back. There are images in the film that connect the prequels to the original trilogy in ways I didnt expect. I found the film quite moving as a whole, and there are moments all over the movie that gave me chills... genuine chills. If you were there in the theater in 1977, there are a few moments that imprinted upon you, moments where the score and the cinematography and the performances all came together in ways that were unarguably magical. If you saw that film with the crowds that packed the theater all summer long... and Im not exaggerating. Its hard to imagine for younger audiences, even if you see a blockbuster theatrically today, even during opening weekend. There was something so communal and amazing and chemical about going to see STAR WARS during, say, its 23rd week in theaters. In the local paper, there was the omnipresent STAR WARS ad amidst all the other movie ads, and there was a starburst in the corner of the ad saying how many weeks it had been in theaters.
It was #1, of course. It was always #1. There was no question about it being #1. There were no box-office charts running in the paper every Monday. There was no national Monday-morning-quarterback-voracious-appetite-for-numbers mentality yet. But you knew that STAR WARS was #1 because it had gone from being wildly popular movie to event to news story to phenomenon to news story again to genuine home-grown cult, and being part of that... being a STAR WARS fan... it was ours. It was the first thing I ever felt like I was in on from the ground floor. No one told me that STAR WARS was a big hit film, and I had no concept of a tentpole picture or a popcorn picture or a rollercoaster ride or any of the other current standards of the pop lexicon that simply didnt exist at that point. STAR WARS wasnt sold to me. It wasnt marketed to me relentlessly. It was something that happened to me. All at once. I walked into the theater expecting I was going to see a movie, and instead, someone shot me in the head with a movie. And going back in those later weeks, it was about sharing in the joy of STAR WARS with other people who had already had that experience, and it was about taking people who somehow had missed the film so far (something that seemed more and more incomprehensible as the year wore on) and showing them how empty and pointless their lives had been before. STAR WARS was viral for those of us who saw it in 1977. It got inside you, and you had no choice but to be evangelical about it. As quickly as they could figure out how to make merchandise for it, you bought it. Not because it was an obligation. Not because you were bombarded by marketing for all the stuff. But because you wanted to have portable STAR WARS, things you could carry around that would remind you of STAR WARS during those unfortunate moments where you werent actually watching the film. You wanted to have STAR WARS you could replay for yourself at home (which in those days meant THE STAR WARS STORYBOOK read slowly while the soundtrack album played on the stereo). You wanted to dress in STAR WARS so that people would know as soon as they saw you, and theyd have to ask you about it, and then youd be able to talk about it, and aside from watching the film, there was nothing better than talking about the film. Audiences didnt just react to the film in theaters. They went crazy for it. They exploded at every joke. They would applaud after big action moments and cheer during them. They practically tore the seats out during the Death Star attack. It was part celebration when the film would play, and part pure visceral release. Every. Single. Time.
