With only thirteen days to go until Revenge of the Sith opens, I’m still considering exactly what I want to say here on Simple Tricks about the whole Star Wars phenomenon. It’s a big subject, at least it is for me, because I’ve quite literally been thinking about it my entire life. I’ve got a lot of Star Wars-related ideas that I could share — anecdotes, theories, memories, speculations, and, of course, my own highly subjective opinions. Enough material, probably, to keep me blogging non-stop for the next couple of months.

But part of me wonders if I should bother writing on this subject at all. My love for these movies is crystal clear to anyone who either knows me or has been hanging around this blog for very long, and just about everybody in their thirties can tell similar stories of what it was like to grow up with The Trilogy during the ’70s and ’80s. How many people reading this post stood in lines that stretched around the block to see the original film at a grand old theater that probably doesn’t exist anymore? Weren’t we all equally blown away as children by our first glimpse of an Imperial Star Destroyer? Or of all the monsters in the Mos Eisley cantina? Do I have anything to say about Star Wars that my loyal readers haven’t already heard, or thought, or experienced themselves? I honestly don’t know.

While I wrestle with that question, I figure you might appreciate a couple of links to follow — it is Friday, after all, and everyone needs some good ‘net-surfing material to help you kill time on those long, tedious, springtime afternoons.

First up is an article on George Lucas that’s currently appearing in Wired magazine. You may have heard about this one already, especially if you frequent political blogs. (For some bizarre reason, a handful of conservative bloggers are taking remarks George made about Fahrenheit 9/11 as evidence that he’s another one of them godless libruls. O-kaaay… that’s not how I read those remarks, which seemed to be more about how “non-fiction” is inevitably filtered through our pre-conceived notions whereas “fiction” is not. But then I’m not inclined to see every little comment made in the media as evidence of an ideological — specifically liberal — bias, either.)

I found the Wired piece interesting because it seems to bolster a number of my pet theories about The Great Flanneled One’s thinking, and why the prequels haven’t been quite what we fans were hoping for. (I’ve long held the opinion that Lucas felt trapped by the success of the original Star Wars trilogy, and that he really didn’t have much interest in making the prequel films, at least not as far as wanting to tell more stories set in the SW universe. The article provides some confirmation for this idea.) However, while I personally believe Lucas will be remembered more as a technological innovator than a writer or director, Lucas himself thinks he’ll be remembered as a filmmaker, and he hopes that his Star Wars movies never become too dated for people to enjoy them. Ironic, since the tinkering he did on the Not-So-Special Editions in ’97 was out of concern that the old films looked shabby alongside newer spectacles. But then George has a long history of contradicting himself in interviews.

The Wired article also boasts some sharp writing and a number of good quotes from Lucas’ friends and colleagues. For example, this nifty passage, which encapsulates so much of what went wrong with the first two prequels:

While the original film had the scruffy vitality of a garage band making its big break, the recent episodes can seem like a whirlwind tour of [special effects shop] Industrial Light & Magic’s interplanetary showroom.

 

“For me, those films pummel you into submission,” [George’s THX-1138 collaborator Walter] Murch says. “You say, OK, OK, there are 20,000 robots walking across the field. If you told me a 14-year-old had done them on his home computer, I would get very excited, but if you tell me it’s George Lucas – with all of the resources available to him – I know it’s amazing, but I don’t feel it’s amazing. [Emphasis added by yours truly.] I think if George were here and we could wrestle him onto the carpet, he’d say, ‘Yeah, I’ve gotten into that box, and now I want to get out of that box.'”

Much of the relevant press I’ve been seeing this week focuses on Uncle George’s plans for a post-Star Wars future. But perhaps you’re more interested in the past, in which case I recommend a fascinating essay called “May 25, 1977: A Day Long Remembered”. As the title suggests, this piece details the earliest days of the SW phenomenon, and includes a lot of interesting trivia.

For example, exhibitors had so little confidence in George “American Graffiti” Lucas’ little space movie, that it opened in only 43 theaters across the United States. Forty-three… that’s an astoundingly small number even by the relatively modest standards of 1977. Movies today routinely open on thousands of screens; back then, there were far fewer theaters, and virtually no multiplexes, so larger pictures would open on a few hundred screens. By comparison to Star Wars‘ paltry 43, the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me opened on 200 screens, while Smokey and the Bandit got 300. As this essay helpfully notes, the movie everyone expected to be huge that summer was the thriller The Deep, which got an opening push of over 800 screens. By the end of August, however, that little space fantasy had come into its own and was running in some 1100 theaters across the U.S. and Canada.

“A Day Long Remembered” also provides some history that might interest the fanboys waiting in line at Grauman’s Chinese in Hollywood — Star Wars opened there only because William Friedkin’s Sorcerer had been delayed, and when that movie was ready, SW got bumped somewhere else, only to return after Sorcerer flopped. SW then played non-stop at the Chinese until June of 1978, a full year. (I vaguely recall that it played at Salt Lake’s Centre Theatre for a full year, too, although I may be mistaken about that.)

Oh, as for the original Star Wars being called “A New Hope?” That wasn’t so in ’77. The Episode IV tag was added for a 1981 re-release, after The Empire Strikes Back had already come out…