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An observation about yesterday's anniversary
Yesterday was the 30th anniversary of the release of the next-to-last good Star Wars movie.
I didn't see it 30 years ago today. It didn't open in Chapel Hill until July 1 (which, coincidentally, was my birthday).
It's hard to remember now that the "summer film which opens everywhere in America on the same day on tens of thousands of screens" is a relatively recent phenomenon. Heck, we're only just now getting films which open on the same day everywhere in the world*.
On the other hand, 30 years is a significant percentage of the lifespan to date of the film industry. So it's not that new.
*In fact, this quirk of staggered international releases is responsible for how I saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Stepshow in 1999. I was vaguely interested in seeing it as a cultural phenomenon, but at that time I was still operating under my Vow to not see sf films which were stupid, because if I people like me kept seeing stupid films, the makers of the films would have no incentive to make them less stupid. I'm not a gung-ho about this Vow as I used to be, though I do still try to keep it in mind.
Anyway, there was no way I could go to see Phantom Jigaboo in the theatres without breaking the Vow. But I didn't mind skirting the edges of it. One of my co-workers at Crossover was a huge fan of Star Wars and of course saw Phantom the day it came out. However, one of his high school friends was then living in Germany, where the release date was two months later. So Jeff bought his friend a bootleg DVD. Before he mailed it off, he copied it onto VHS for me.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
supergee, nellorat, and I watched it together in the comfort of our home. The print was washed-out and the sound quality was bad, which made it look very much like what it was: a mediocre 1950s cheeseball space adventure which would be completely at home on MST3K.
I didn't see it 30 years ago today. It didn't open in Chapel Hill until July 1 (which, coincidentally, was my birthday).
It's hard to remember now that the "summer film which opens everywhere in America on the same day on tens of thousands of screens" is a relatively recent phenomenon. Heck, we're only just now getting films which open on the same day everywhere in the world*.
On the other hand, 30 years is a significant percentage of the lifespan to date of the film industry. So it's not that new.
*In fact, this quirk of staggered international releases is responsible for how I saw Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Stepshow in 1999. I was vaguely interested in seeing it as a cultural phenomenon, but at that time I was still operating under my Vow to not see sf films which were stupid, because if I people like me kept seeing stupid films, the makers of the films would have no incentive to make them less stupid. I'm not a gung-ho about this Vow as I used to be, though I do still try to keep it in mind.
Anyway, there was no way I could go to see Phantom Jigaboo in the theatres without breaking the Vow. But I didn't mind skirting the edges of it. One of my co-workers at Crossover was a huge fan of Star Wars and of course saw Phantom the day it came out. However, one of his high school friends was then living in Germany, where the release date was two months later. So Jeff bought his friend a bootleg DVD. Before he mailed it off, he copied it onto VHS for me.
supergee, nellorat, and I watched it together in the comfort of our home. The print was washed-out and the sound quality was bad, which made it look very much like what it was: a mediocre 1950s cheeseball space adventure which would be completely at home on MST3K.
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I would argue that they were right.