I have a long, rich history with
Star Wars. I was seven-years-old in 1977, when
Star Wars became an instant phenomenon. No more so than in my house. Between my brother and I, we had two of
every action figure, and at least one of all of the vehicles and sets. Truly. Every. But the toys were only one manifestation of our full on obsession. Posters, books, records, comics, trading cards, stickers, notebooks, coloring books, lunchboxes, thermoses, games, Shrinky-Dinks, bed sheets, towels, drinking glasses, cereal, tooth brushes, tooth paste, Dixie cups, night lites, every manner of clothing from hats and shirts on down to Underoos and shoelaces, a watch, a necklace, shampoo, popsicles…literally whatever you could slap the logo or characters on, we damn well had it.
Star Wars in many ways quite literally took over my life.
Between the initial summer ’77 release and the various re-releases up until and even after
Empire’s release in the summer of 1980, I saw
Star Wars in the theater nearly
thirty times. My Dad loved it just as much as we did, so he was always game to take us, and we were always game to go. This was pre-VHS or cable, at least in my neighborhood, and unlike other blockbusters of the day,
Star Wars was
not aired on television in a timely manner.
Close Encounters and
Jaws and
Rocky and
Smokey and the Bandit you could see on ABC as the Sunday Night Movie...but not
Star Wars. It was eventually aired on cable TV in the early ‘80s, but even after the VHS market boomed it was not available to rent or own that way until about 1985, as I recall. Panned & scanned, of course. I didn't see it properly on a television screen until the LaserDiscs in the early 1990s.
By the time
Return of the Jedi landed in the summer of 1983 and I was thirteen, I was
starting to outgrow it, a bit. Still saw
Jedi multiple times in the theater, but though I had gotten ALL of the action figures and vehicles when
Empire came out (when I was ten), I only picked up a select few for
Jedi. By then I was MUCH more obsessed with
Raiders of the Lost Ark than
Star Wars, but obviously nothing has ever or could ever match the kind of mania, focus, and devotion that the seven-to-eleven-year-old me had with
Star Wars and
The Empire Strikes Back.
That having all been said, the forty-four-year-old me did
not include
Star Wars on my ballot. Partially because I knew it didn’t need my help, and yes, partially because through attrition the wretched prequels and “Special Editions” have dampened my love, a bit. I still have the original trilogy in its original cuts, via the 1993 “Definitive Collection” LaserDiscs, so I can and do enjoy them from time to time. But honestly, they aren’t that high on my re-watch rotation. There is a long list of films that I watch at least once a year.
Star Wars and
The Empire Strikes Back don’t ALWAYS make the cut.
And
Star Wars didn’t make my cut, here. But, you know….it changed my life, Man. And I'm not at all sad nor surprised to see it all the way up at number four.
And for the record, I
did also have the gigantic
Alien toy, which was a much bigger scale than the
Star Wars figures. It used to take the combined forces of the Rebels and the Empire, the Micronauts, as well as gigantic Colonel Steve Austin and Bigfoot, to have ANY chance at defeating the massive xenomorph with the projectile silver chompers. And sometimes, they didn’t.
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