No one needs to review Star Wars anyway; it's a good movie, one of the greatest ever.
Google says that Star Wars was released May 25, 1977. I saw it after it had been out more than a week, so probably in June. Times were different way back then, so we had not seen trailers on the Internet and heard all about the movie from our friends, and I had not heard about it at all. However, my friend Raul had heard it was really good, so we went to check it out in San Francisco.
In fact, the movie was only playing at one theater in San Francisco, an exclusive engagement, something you won't see anymore for a major movie. As I recall, Star Wars was still playing in theaters a year after it was released, because there just were not enough seats available for all of the people who wanted to see it, even though eventually it went to wider release.
So Raul and I went to see Star Wars, and when we got to the theater, we went to the back of a long, long line stretching block after block. The line was not moving, so it kept getting longer. Then, it started to move, and it moved a long ways, but it stopped again before we got to the theater. Word filtered back through the line: One showing had ended, then they let people in until the theater was full, and now we were waiting for the next showing. We stuck with it. As I recall, the weather was nice, and we stayed there in line through an entire showing of the movie. When that showing finally ended, after we had been in line maybe three and a half hours, the line started again, and we got in.
The first time I was really blown away by this movie was right at the beginning, when the big Imperial ship passes over the screen, with the camera under it. The scene created the illusion of a huge ship, very impressive. Probably it was done with low-tech special effects (this was long before CGI) and tiny models, but I had not seen anything like it.
The second time was when the Millennium Falcon went to light speed and all the stars stretched out. The whole theater cheered.
It was a good story, good versus evil with one of the best villains in movie history and some memorable heroes. However, it was the look of the film that was really amazing. Tatooine looked like another planet - much of it was filmed in the Sahara Desert I believe. The droids were well done. The bar scene with numerous kinds of aliens was great. The ships were impressive.
But for that reason, this movie probably wouldn't seem so impressive to someone who grew up later and has seen more recent movies, whether Star Wars or other sci-fi. Special effects have improved tremendously, the jump to light speed has been done many times, the ships don't look any more impressive than the ones in lots of movies. Thing is though, at the time, it was just amazing. We had never seen anything like it.
And the story still holds up.
Walking update
First, let me say that I am almost 40 miles short of where I should be right now. I have taken more than 12,000 steps several days, including today, but I find that it is easy to come up short for various reasons, and some days very short, so it's hard to make up. Still, I have a pattern for a normal day that includes walking the dog, walking again without the dog, and then walking a third time with my brother at night, and that gets me close to 12,000 steps. If I can do better at avoiding short days, I can make up the distance.
Meanwhile, I have walked 455,000 steps, 227 miles, which puts me near Skykomish Washington, well into the Cascades, on or near Highway 2. I should be more than half way across Washington State and over half a million steps by the end of November.
No comments:
Post a Comment