Star Wars opened today in 1977, I'm enormously fond of the first, terrible, trailer 20th Century Fox cut for it. They had no idea how to sell it, or faith in the project, and it it shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHk5kCIiGoM
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I saw this when it came out (I was 10) and I don’t remember the trailer per se, I just remember Star Wars everything was EVERYWHERE, like pop culture just completely coalesced around it.
When I first went to see it, I picked a quiet time, 5.00 pm. After the film was over, we were asked to exit by the side doors because the foyer was overflowing.
It's crazy to think it blindsided everyone! William Friedkin had SORCERER opening the same weekend and he said something [re STAR WARS] along the lines of "Nobody's going to see that nerd shit."
Sorcerer opened weeks after Star Wars vs IIRC when Fox did the initial still limited SW expansion. On Damnation Alley - that's a claim on Wikipedia that I have serious doubts has much credibility. Fox positioned SW as a carefully nurtured film, #2 of the summer. DA was a routine release.
I mean 20th Century Fox was so certain that The Other Side of Midnight was going to be their money maker that season they put it in contracts to theaters that if you wanted it, you also had to take this piece of Flash Gordon shit the American Graffiti kid made.
I remember, years after it came out, reading old magazines and SF articles from the era, those articles themselves skeptical about how good "The Star Wars" could be
That said, what ended up happening (& they did sense by mid-spring after dates were set that SW had big potential) was that their limited first broader out slowly have all sell outs create demand strategy worked brilliantly.
Other was their A film. Fox made no such demand, which was among other things illegal, let alone anything they'd put in writing. Most theaters were single screen then. Their preferred ones got Other, the 2nd tier initially got SW. (This was my 2nd yr as a film buyer, I was present for all this.)
my dad took me to see star wars & after we saw it went to a bridge too far which he wanted to see, a movie with the proverbial cast of thousands (i’ve never watched it again & remember almost nothing about it)
Thanks for that detail. OTOH, even given that fact, the trailer team had access to high energy footage, and chose basically a generic soundtrack piece that did nothing to accent the onscreen action.
it's so interesting how they leaned into the weirder elements of Star Wars instead of the more traditional aspects of its narrative. Later trailers would sell it more as a space fantasy-action film like it actually is, but this seems to be trying to capture that Logan's Run/2001 crowd
2001 set the tone for all SF movies until Star Wars hit. Everything that went into production between about 1968 and 1978 went for some kind of high concept philosophical weirdness. Even Disney with The Black Hole.
It wears its ‘70s disaster movie in space’ origin on its sleeve. Like Towering Inferno crossed with 20k Leagues Under the Sea (in space). I think Star Wars gave it cutesy robot sidekicks and Dykstraflex inspired motion control cameras.
While I don't remember this trailer, as I was 7, I do remember walking into the movie and walking out a different person. It was transformative for me.
I saw it in 1977 too. I was in my first year of teaching. It was the most amazing thing I had ever seen. We took the students at the end of the year and they loved it too.
Just wish Lucas didn’t change the originals. If they released digital versions of the originals they would sell like hotcakes. Not everyone was smart enough to save their VCR version
I know, right? I saw this trailer in theaters and, even though I was SURE it couldn't be anywhere near as good as it looked, I wanted to see the movie anyway....
Truth to be told nobody had much faith in it when it first came out. Critics called it superior B picture. Who made the film and franchise to what it is today was the public and large group of SW fanatics.
I wonder why there is no footage of the Death Star Trench Run. Of all the scenes in this movie, I'd think that would be the one that would generate the most hype.
But it started a whole lot of SF films because suddenly the film companies thought there was actually money to be made from it. I remember every year for some time there were new SF films.
I actually really like this in a strange way, the early history of Star Wars and what it slowly evolved into across the first three movies is fascinating to me, and then the EU canon that directly conflicts with the prequel trilogy because it was made long before it
Really? In 1977, notable events included Jimmy Carter's inauguration as US President, the release of the film Star Wars, and the debut of the Apple II computer.
So, I remember seeing this trailer back then in a theater, and laughing out loud when R2-D2 toppled over. Then, I saw the film when it opened in Chicago with someone I'd just met. We've been married now over 40 years.
I think one of the problems with this trailer is that there likely were a lot of visual effects that were still unfinished, and couldn’t be used. But it’s unquestionably a bad trailer
I have a memory of seeing just one brief ad before the release that had no narration, just a quick montage of images. It was enough to make me think, whatever the hell this is, I'm seeing it.
Mark Hamill has a funny story of being in a theater when this played and at the end when the voice says it’s coming this summer some guy in the dead quiet room yelled “yeah and it’ll be on TV this winter!”
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I just raced to the theater and got a front row seat, about 15 feet from the screen.
Thanks for finding that. A space romance. Yeah. That's it, all right.
but there was a line around the theater for months
(Probably because it’s an enormous piece of shit with utterly pathetic effects.)
There was already 50 years worth of rousing scores from the likes of Max Steiner, Dmitri Tiomkin and Alex North that could have set the tone.
And Erich Korngold's Kings Row fanfare: 🤨
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHUqdX61Zyc
Fox didn’t know what to do with it, and it was considered a risk, but at least there give a fuss to try.
So I called that a footnote.😉
They're hilariously bad.
I apologize to anyone who may have been there with us.
Fucking hippies.
In Star Wars' case, it could also be the problem of having a lack of completed music and effects to include six months ahead of its release date.
Not even close.
When the Death Star rolls into the screen
It was amazing
Star Wars Day for me would have to wait until July 15 when in opened in Marquette MI, me and my mom the last two admitted to a sold-out show