At age seven, I wasn’t clocking movie premieres the way
everyone does now. This was 1977, and the only way to find out what was playing
at the theaters was to catch a television commercial, read the daily paper, or
drive by the theater. Again, I was seven. I was much more concerned with
twelve-inch G.I. Joe action figures, my burgeoning interest in movie monsters,
and mastering the skateboard as my new means of transportation.
It was my friend Dennis who asked me to go see Star Wars with him. Dennis was my friend
who was into science fiction stuff; mostly that meant Star Trek, and if you were really nerdy, Space 1999. I had a bunch of Mego 8” Planet of the Apes action figures. He had a bunch of the Mego 8”
Star Trek aliens, including the Mugato space ape. We got along famously, as you
can well imagine. So, he said, “Star Wars?”
and I said, “I’ll ask.”
Thankfully, Mom agreed.
It’s hard to recall my very first time watching Star Wars from start to finish. I
watched it several times after that in rapid succession, and so those viewings
all blur into one blob of feverish wonder and intense curiosity. But I do remember when I realized I was
watching something game-changing. The first half hour of the movie is great,
and no one would ever argue otherwise: we had the stormtroopers, Vader’s
entrance, the droids on Tatooine, and even the obviously cued and symbolic
entrance of Luke and Ben. Oh, of course, the Lightsaber was amazing, but it was
ten seconds and then it was turned off. A magic trick.
But as soon as they walk into the Cantina, that’s when you
know you’ve left Earth. Up until then, the aliens—the Sandpeople and the
Jawas—were just people in cloaks. Maybe shorter than others, but still. It’s
not until we get into Mos Eisley that you know you’re not in Kansas anymore.
The cantina sequence, from our party’s first entrance to
Han’s flippant exit, was my first most favorite scene ever. It was as if the
Don Post Halloween mask ad from the back of Creepy magazine had come to life,
and then some. Everything about the scene, from the band playing music that
sounded legitimately not-of-this-Earth, to the entrance of Han and Chewbacca,
to Ben taking off the guy’s arm with his lightsaber, and all of those short
cuts to weird characters drinking, smoking, talking, and otherwise being aliens
in a bar, was world-building in its quickest form. This bar was representative
of the galaxy, the world we were about to go zooming around in. So simple, and
so elegant, but absolutely necessary to the story, and with wonderful
implications about what’s in store for us.
Who cares that some of the aliens were off-the-shelf masks?
I sure didn’t. For every werewolf in the scene, there’s Hammerhead and Walrus
Man (I know, they have names now, but my brain calls them what they were named
by Kenner, and
I can’t convert), who don’t look like any Don Post mask I’ve ever seen.
And of course, the cantina is where we first meet Han Solo.
As movie introductions go, his first scene at the table and the follow-up with
Greedo is note-perfect. Anything you need to know about Han can be found in
that scene. Cocky, brash, arrogant, worldly, unlucky, cynical, and
opportunistic. Luke has an arc, a journey, all through the first movie, but not
Han. He pops at the end, under the pressure of the narrative, but right up
until that final battle, he’s as mercenary as they come. He was my guy, right
from the start.
Dennis and I came out of the theater blown away, like
everyone else. He wanted to know all about the space ships. I wanted to build
my own lightsaber. All of our other interests got shoved aside as we went back
out into the summer of 1977, our eyes opened to this new idea that was Star Wars. My journey had begun. I had
taken my first step into a larger world.
