Star Wars Turned 30
Filed under "Can't Believe I Missed This..."
Friday, 25 May, was the 30th anniversary of the US release of Star Wars.
Of course, everyone's been getting in on the fun... there was a party in LA (with a slew of Slave Leias - she was priceless)... the USPS has been getting in on the act with stamps and R2-D2 mailboxes. My usual cirlce of geeks hasn't mentioned anything, and outside a brief mention in a news site I read, nothing from by daily blog reads.
Star Wars was the first non-Disney movie I remember seeing in theaters. I was 6. I remember loading up the car (some kind of station wagon) and driving into downtown Jackson, TN to the theater that was there. I don't think my sisters, aged 4 and 2 at the time, joined us. Could be wrong about that. I think Dad wanted to see this more than any of us, but he got me hooked on it. I owned a lot of Star Wars figurines after that. Or maybe that was Michael, the neighbor. Michael and I would play on his front porch all the time with them. Darth Vader lost one-on-one battles with Artoo Detoo from time to time.
Since then, I've owned the trilogy on VHS once (the final VHS run before the remastered trilogy was released in the late 1990s) and on DVD twice — once with the remastered trilogy, and the most recent release with the remastered trilogy AND the original theatrical releases. I tried getting the daughter into Star Wars when the remastered trilogy came out. That didn't work so well... she was still into Barney. The son, OTOH, likes them... but I think that's more of a "Dad likes it so I'll like it" kind of thing that doesn't last once he gets out of earshot. He's got Anime and bass guitars on the brain.
When I'm old and grey, though, they'll be buying it for me on HD/Blue-Ray/whatever media is prevelant at the time. Unless the nursing home only has plain old DVD, in which case I'm all set.
For those who wonder, though, Empire Strikes Back was the best one.