Last weekend saw a thirtieth anniversary that many people of a similar age will look at very fondly. The original Star Wars film - then simply titled, now rebranded 'Episode IV - A New Hope' was first released on the 25th of May 1977. Only twenty-five cinemas screened the film on it's day of release. In 2005, Forbes Magazine (see post below) calculated the franchise to be worth over US$20 billion. Famously, creator George Lucas waived his director's fee and took control of the merchandising rights instead (the studio believed they were worthless). Thirty years ago, nobody could forsee the amount of plastic figures, games and other trinkets that would pour forth from the Star Wars stables, making Lucas billions of dollars for himself, and young kids very happy.
I was 9 months old the day the original film was released, so it's no exaggeration to say that I grew up with Star Wars. Boys everywhere are entranced by action, spaceships, aliens, laserbeams and so on - and although some films before and many since have had those things in abundance, it always comes back to Lucas's sci-fi saga. Of course, I was too young to take advantage first time round, and when the second in the series was released I was still only 4. But in 1983 the third (and at that point final) edition, Return of the Jedi, hit the screens. By this time, I was 7 - the prime age for flashy space chases and collecting plastic crap. I can still remember my Dad taking us to the Preston Odeon to see Return of the Jedi, and watching in disbelief at what was going on - I just wanted to climb into the screen and be a part of it.
From that moment on, all the pocket money I could scrape together went on Star Wars stuff. I'm sure George Lucas was impressed with the sales figures dropping on his desk from West Lancashire. The best day of the year, by far, was the last day of the school term. Not only because it was the last day of school - but because that was the day we could bring in toys and games. For practically every year during my junior school days, that day meant one thing - a mass Star Wars battle. The girls brought in Cabbage Patch Dolls or My Little Ponys or whatever, and the boys completely ignored all of them and crazed about on our knees battering small lumps of plastic into eachother.
It wasn't just the character figures, either. We brought in the ships and speeders, tauntauns and AT-AT's. My Dad had to drive to Manchester one Christmas to find one of those for us - but it was absoutely worth it. I still remember the day my friend Jonathan brought in a Millenium Falcon. However, soon afterwards he moved to Israel and I never saw it again. Er, him, again. Predictably, the market for collecting and trading Star Wars stuff is colossal - there are dozens of websites devoted to it, like www.swfigures.com. "If we had only left them in the box!" is often heard ($250 for one of these, which we had), but even unboxed and loose (as ours are, and I imagine most other thirty-something's collections are), they are worth something. $29 for an AT-AT Commander? Didn't we have two of those? $59 for Boba Fett?!? Are they still in the spare room Mum? Blimey.
Recently the franchise has taken a battering - the ill-conceived 'prequels' ruined the precious memories of the first three, for many people. But the next generation of Star Wars fans fell under the spell (co-incidence, Mr Lucas?) and a new lust for all things Ewok, Jawa and droid began. So for that reason alone they were a good thing. Yes, the afficionados hated Jar Jar Binks (just Google it, and look at the links on the first page), but he was the comic character - the latter-day equivalent of R2D2. Although R2 was handy with that spinny-screwdriver thing, he also fell over a lot and made funny plinky noises for us seven year olds. Let them have Jar Jar. The franchise will roll inexorably on - there are rumours that they will be re-released one after the other, in 3-D (since denied by Lucasfilm). I bet in 1977 they can't have imagined how enormous Star Wars would become. As an exasperated Harrison Ford said during filming - "You can type this shit, George, but you sure can't say it."
Star Wars celebrates 30yrs
Official Star Wars Site
