![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/31.media.tumblr.com\/d60e30ef2dac3578f0ec96e77fe11eff\/tumblr_inline_n4wy09bv0B1sqr9zc.jpg?w=700&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I first saw Star Wars<\/em> on its opening day in the summer of 1977. I was there at the beginning, and I was 11 years old. Several weeks later I would read a largely negative review claiming\u00a0Star Wars<\/em> was aimed primarily at 11-year-old boys. That critic was being dismissive, but I couldn\u2019t agree more. I was the target audience, and to the 11-year-old me Star Wars<\/em> wasn\u2019t just the greatest movie I had ever seen, it was a life-altering experience.<\/p>\n Those who remember the summer of 1977 know what I\u2019m talking about. Star Wars<\/em> was a cultural juggernaut. At Camp Notre Dame that year, everyone was talking about it, even the \u201ccool\u201d kids who wouldn\u2019t ordinarily be caught dead watching science-fiction movies.\u00a0I remember an older camper saying Star Wars<\/em> was even better the second time you saw it, that you could really understand the schematics for the Death Star during the pilots\u2019 briefing on Yavin IV. Kids were boasting about how many times they had seen Star Wars<\/em>, but I had yet to see it a second time. The idea of seeing a movie more than once at a theater seemed like a luxury to me. But I had seen it opening day. That gave me some bragging rights.<\/p>\n OPENING NIGHT DELIGHT<\/strong><\/p>\n I saw it that first night with my friend and next-door neighbor Don Hullenbaugh. We wanted to go because Star Wars<\/em> had received a big write-up in either Time or Newsweek. The text didn\u2019t matter as much as the picture of the X-Wing fighter at the top of the page. A couple of burgeoning nerds, we were suckers for cool spaceships. Don was into Star Trek<\/em> while I favored Space: 1999<\/em>, but after that night only Star Wars<\/em> mattered to us. Halfway into the movie, probably when Chewbacca did something awesome during the rescue of Princess Leia, we looked at each other and simultaneously shouted, \u201cWookie power!\u201d<\/p>\n I rode that high for the rest of the summer. I got a yellow T-shirt with the Hildebrandt Brothers\u2019 version of the poster art \u2014 the same image that adorns the water bottle that sits in front of me as I write this \u2014 and I swear I was wearing that shirt unless it was in the washing machine. I bought every magazine that had Star Wars<\/em> on the cover, and in the summer of \u201877, every<\/em> magazine did<\/em> have Star Wars<\/em> on the cover. I cut up pieces of black electrician\u2019s tape to spell out the Star Wars<\/em> logo on my bedroom wall. Decades later, my parents were able to paint over the residue of that tape.<\/p>\n I was not alone in my enthusiasm. The entire country was Star Wars<\/em> mad that summer. While it was the biggest blockbuster of the era, it was not the first. In the preceding years people lined up around the block to see The Godfather<\/em>, The Exorcist<\/em> and Jaws<\/em>. But those movies belonged to the realm of the grown-up (OK, Jaws<\/em> was on the borderline, but I was still too young for it). While not billed as a kids movie (like another attraction that summer, the G-rated\u00a0Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger<\/em>, which strangely enough featured a naked Jane Seymour) Star Wars<\/em> was a movie that reawakened the kid in everyone. It was George Lucas paying tribute to his own childhood space idol, Flash Gordon. In doing so he created another set of immortal heroes in Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Princess Leia, and in Darth Vader, he created a villain who blew Ming the Merciless out of the galaxy.<\/p>\n![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/31.media.tumblr.com\/d665a94db1b0b6f574ad1077a5ccf72c\/tumblr_inline_n4x0xyrT6R1sqr9zc.jpg?w=700&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/31.media.tumblr.com\/dd37843ec4116c68e20be32824ad6dce\/tumblr_inline_n4x2d4PhPa1sqr9zc.jpg?w=700&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n