My memory is that Jedi DIDN’T have a tiered release, btw, that it opened wide that May weekend.ĮSB was the movie that brought home the concept of “delayed gratification” to me: One advantage was supposedly - and I think this still may be true - that the local operator got to keep a greater percentage of money later in a movie’s run. The models for a successful movie were movies that sat in a single theater in a region for as long as possible: Godfather I-II, Jaws and Star Wars being strong examples of that. I was right there that first damn day, that’s for sure.Īlso, you have to remember that there were fewer screens and playing movies on multiple screens in the same market was a strange and rare thing, whereas today it’s quite common. I wasn’t tracking it pre-release and downloading the trailer for multiple viewings on Apple and feeling like it opened elsewhere just not for me. If you had asked 11-year-old me that August when Star Wars opened, I would have said June, because that’s when it opened for me. What I’m suggesting is that lot of memories are probably keyed to the wider release because that’s how people interacted with most movies back then. Yeah, like I said, there was a limited release and a wider release. (Now closed.) My parents said we HAD to see it there, “It has Dolby sound!” I’ll never forget the line for the movie wrapping around the building multiple times, and into the parking lot.ĮSB, thanks for the lifelong memories. Last nostalgia to share: Six (almost seven) years old in May 1980, saw the ESB at the big movie theater on Route 4 in Paramus, NJ. For those of you who don’t own those back issues, highly recommend them for the guest artist pin-ups alone! (The actual adaptation is VERY well done as well.)Īnother great memory was being on my grade school playground in April / May 1980, and a friend had some of the first ESB Kenner Action Figures, prior to the film’s release (I think), “Whoa, what’s this blue winter coat Han Solo is wearing?!” “Don’t do it, Luke! It’s a trap!”Ī subscription (that my parents got for me) to Marvel’s Star Wars was my gateway into comic collecting, as it was for legions of other Gen Xers who later jumped into comics during the “Copper Age.”Ĭoincidentally, my first issue of Marvel’s Star Wars to arrive in the mail was issue #39, which began their six issue Empire Strikes Back adaptation. (Almost certainly because it was the last one that producer Gary Kurtz would in involved with after EMPIRE, it was George Lucas all the way.)Įmpire made it okay to be a nerd who quoted a green hand puppet, and led the way to our complete takeover of world culture.Īnd then came the Ewoks and betrayal, disappointment and the knowledge that nothing was ever going to be as good as you hoped it would be. It was grown up in an unself-conscious way that nothing to do with Star Wars would ever be again. From the frozen beauty of an icy horizon studded with AT-ATs, to the steaming green swamp where Luke Skywalker begins his archetypal but unique hero’s journey, to the crimson horror of the carbon freezing chamber, to the primal red and blue of the final battle between Luke and Vader, no SF blockbuster has ever captured the imagination so cleanly and completely. STAR WARS might have been new and cool and funny and fresh, but EMPIRE was all that AND sad and tragic and shocking and filled with the kind of terror and awe that the greatest storytelling inspires. Today is the 30th anniversary of the release of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, probably the single greatest event in the history of nerddom.
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