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Happy 40th Star Wars


Darth Wicket
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Today is the anniversary of the release of the original movie which started it all. It's hard to believe it has been 40 years already. i didn't get to see the original in the theater as I was only about 6 months old. However, my first memory of watching a movie in the theater was going to see Empire Strikes Back in 1980.

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Sat it opening day in '77. At the time, I was big sci-fi film & TV fan, so I had been brought up on productions very different than Star Wars. ​There was some build-up to see the film, but expectations (based on trailers, a press kit and a few magazine articles) were in question mode, more than excitement. By the time the assault on the blockade runner ended, with the sparring between Vader & Leia, I was pulled in, staying until the last frame of the credits. What a different movie era that was.

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  • 3 weeks later...
Guest El Chalupacabra

I was very young when Star Wars was released in 1977, so didn't see it in the theater then. But I did get to see it in the theater when it was re-released around the time of TESB.

 

I think one of the things that made Star Wars the phenomenon it was is the era it was released. Back then, the only way to see it was in the movies. Later on, HBO, and VHS. I don't even remember seeing it on broadcast TV until the mid 1980s. One of those movies that everyone my age group had seen, but distribution was not as easy as it is today.

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That's so true. People sometimes forget that watching your favorite movie 5000 times wasn't always a thing. And one of the things that made Star Wars feel extra special in those early days was the rarity of seeing it on TV (or if someone you knew had a laser disc player like my uncle). Later when VHS became ubiquitous it changed things a bit, it let psychos like us really examine every moment and memorize every line as we cruised well past 5000 viewings.

 

I do sometimes miss that rarity - that excited feeling I got if I read in the TV Guide that Star Wars was going to be on Sunday afternoon.

 

I think I'm going to miss it more in a few years when I'm starting to feel about Star Wars movies, the way I do about the MCU.

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Not only that, but there also used to be literal YEARS before movies would make it to home video. Especially Star Wars. Lucas always took his time. My copy of ANH I watched over and over as a kid was recorded off of TV, commercials included. My ESB was from Showtime, and we didn't have ROTJ cause in my VHS years it hadn't come out yet at all. It would be a few more years. I had the Ewok movies recorded off TV before a copy of ROTJ.

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I only had Empire, taped off HBO for a very long time. I watched it all the time. Then in probably 1990 or 91 my parents came home from Price Club with the trilogy box set. I faked sick the next day so I could watch it all. It had been so long since I saw Star Wars that I actually had misremembered some parts of it. For instance for some reason I always had thought that there was a scene where Obi Wan and Vader were in the dark both walking backwards for some reason and bumped into each other. I can still picture it in my mind now. I was so certain the scene existed before getting that box set.

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I have a lot of false Star Wars memories from my childhood:

 

1. Vader standing over Luke on the ground, saber to his face... on Tatooine

2. Luke with a yellow saber

3. R2D2 giving Luke an injection

4. An Ewok shooting a blaster and dropping it, startled

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It's a shot in ESB-- but somehow I edited in my head.

 

My guess is seeing that shot from ESB in a trailer or promo on TV as a kid when at the time ANH was the only one I'd seen, and could barely remember.

 

I remember having a crap ton of Star Wars toys at the age of 5, but the move came out when I was 3. We had no VCR so I think for a long time my version of ANH was completely made up based on toys, pictures, and the storybook.

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Guest Robin

There are TV Edits, duh, but those I believe are usually done by someone with the station. It's amusing to imagine GL doing all of them however. Regardless of who does it, TV Edits sometimes add things in that aren't in any other cuts of a film at the time.

 

e.g. There was TV Edit for Wrath of Khan which added several transitional and "meanwhile" like scenes. One of which was McCoy reading in sickbay in the quiet before the climax, David and Carol are sitting with him, this is where David comes from when entering the bridge during the climax.

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e.g. There was TV Edit for Wrath of Khan which added several transitional and "meanwhile" like scenes. One of which was McCoy reading in sickbay in the quiet before the climax, David and Carol are sitting with him, this is where David comes from when entering the bridge during the climax.

During the original Halloween II's production, John Carpenter went back and shot additional scenes for the first Halloween's TV broadcast. The film as made was too short once the edits for television were made, so Carpenter had to make it longer by adding new scenes. This not only made it broadcast ready, it also better connected the first with part 2 (the whole Samhain narrative and the sister plot twist.)

 

As a kid I recorded Halloween off a TV broadcast and got so used to that version that when I finally saw the original theatrical version it threw me off. It made me like the TV version much better.

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1. The studio is responsible for all edits. Only blockbuster and sensitive Christian groups did their own cuts.

 

2. The TV cut of TWOK was my version too. I knew of so many scenes that I never saw in another edition until the BlueRay directors cut. Thankfully I watched it so many times I knew them by heart. Those scenes also included all the bits that canonized Preston as Scotty's nephew.

 

3. The fact the TV cut of Halloween was the first place it was hinted that Laurie was Michael's sister caused all sorts of canon drama before Halloween 2 came out.

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Having no understanding of how films are made, no idea that reshoots and TV edits existed, I remember as a kid how strange the character of Linda looked in that one scene where she's borrowing a blouse from Laurie from her appearance in the rest of Halloween. It wasn't until later I found out that scene had been filmed 3 years later; the actress had aged noticeably.

 

The fact the TV cut of Halloween was the first place it was hinted that Laurie was Michael's sister caused all sorts of canon drama before Halloween 2 came out.

Halloween II was released in 1981 and as a kid I remember when I first saw ROTJ and Leia was revealed as Luke's sister, I thought, this is just like Halloween 2!!! Two franchises that have absolutely zero to do with one another and here I was making a connection.
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  • 3 months later...

I saw ANH in the cinema when it came out. I was 7, going on 8.

I was 5, going on 6.

 

I still remember the first time I saw it and they had added Episode IV at the top of the scroll...I was confused for days.

 

I also remember we were sitting in the last row of the theater and there was a trash can behind me. I was convinced Darth Vader was coming out of the trash can to get me.

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