Genius_Gone_Insane

F*** me I am so excited.  This news totally made my day.  Wow!!!

What great news!!! I am literally crying at work!!!  What wonderful news...I couldn't be happier!!!

I think it should be interesting. Nonconformity is good.

Describe the moment between the theater lights dimming and the fanfare blast for you.

What was going through your head?

I can't imagine what it must have been like.

I try to think about what I would be thinking in that moment. Honestly I would probably wonder if the music for the titles would be different. If there would be a title crawl. If the text color would be different for that crawl. If the text might crawl right to left?

I mean...at that point, it could have gone in any direction.

I understand why you are asking these questions. However, if you had asked an audience-goer these questions he/she would have probably been confused. Very few people would have seen Star Wars more than a few times. And of those few viewings most people would have remembered the plot details and the heroics of Luke, that sort of thing. Maybe they would remember the scroll or the "A long time ago..." but those would have been minor details.

During your ESB viewing, when you saw the Lucasfilm logo, the Fox Fanfare, and the scroll, and the opening music, you were not thinking "what woul the titles look like?" etc. Maybe a handful of nerds would have been concerned with that sort of thing. Most people were excited about snow and Luke Skywalker flying this weird looking space ship. Or whatever they remembered from the trailer.

The point is -- and this is actually very important from a historical perspective -- when the titles, fanfare, and scroll came, you were thinking "OH, WOW, I REMEMBER THAT!! COOL, THEY ARE STARTING IT THE SAME WAY AS STAR WARS!"

You have to remember that few people had VCRs at the time. And there were only a few TV channels. Each of your few viewings of Star Wars were a novelty. There was nothing like it. So when ESB came out, you really had no idea what to expect. There was no prescribed formula for how to make a sequel.

This is George Lucas' genius. With ESB, he set a new standard for what a sequel should be (I am not sure there even was a standard at that point).

And since then, George Lucas has gone on to set a standard for what a prequel should be. I wish this accomplishment was recognized more often. The magic you felt when the Lars homestead was visited in AOTC and when Hayden put on the Vader mask has become a new standard for prequels. You saw it in the recent Batman movie where Robin enters the Batcave and again with the Hobbit.

At any rate, my point is that your questions are more pertinent now than they were back then. No one cared. They were too busy excited to see the new Star Wars movie.

I strongly agree with Paglia.  Apparently I am not all that insane.