This week was the 30th anniversary of the release of the first Star Wars movie. Thirty years! I’m having a hard time fully digesting that fact — I remember going to see the movie as a seven-year-old in Chapel Hill, North Carolina with my family. We went to Arthur Treacher’s Fish & Chips for dinner before the movie and, later, my then four-year-old brother got scared by the sound of explosions and cried the whole way through the movie. But, I loved it — what little kid in the late ’70s didn’t love the original Star Wars flicks? (That’s me in the middle, above, sporting the Star Wars shirt, sitting between our childhood friend Kevin on the left and my brother Dave on the right, at Kevin’s birthday party I think).

I saw Star Wars (no, not Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, the name was Star Wars) only three or four times in the theater. I say “only,” simply because it was terribly common for kids of my generation to go back again and again to see the movies over and over and over, both during the summer of the original release, then when the first movie was rereleased in, I think, 1979 or 1980 just previous to The Empire Strikes Back (no, not Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back). My memories of the first Star Wars are not about action figures and comic books as much as they are of the Dairy Queen, and cornfields in the summer, of arguing about Boba Fett by the jungle jim at recess more than pretending to be a Jedi. Living in a small Ohio town in the late ’70s and early ’80s, it’s all a jumble of nostalgia at this point.

Anyway, it’s strange being an adult and thinking back on all of this. Greg Costikyan’s recent post encapsulates a lot of how I think of these movies and their impact on popular culture — wonderfully fun, but lacking even back in the original presentation of the movies. As one ages, one finds more and more problems with the films, which makes their endurance as popular culture powerhouses even more strange to me. David Brin’s breakdown of the unsavory political subtexts within the Star Wars flicks (written shortly after The Phantom Menace, I think) still bears reading. And, of course, is always very entertaining fodder for fan discussions.

Regardless, at least Lucas finally did the right thing (sort of) and released all three original films — albeit packaged with the “Special Edition” nonsense — back last Fall. They aren’t anamorphic prints, the discs are barebones, but whatever, they’re the original, original films: Greedo doesn’t shoot first, there are no shots of Coruscant, and there are plenty of “yubnubs” to go around at the end. I bought it immediately, then watched the original versions of Star Wars and Empire, but haven’t forced myself to watch Return of the Jedi yet. For all the amount of talk on this weblog I devote to nerdy obsessions from my childhood, I actually very rarely go for things solely because they’re “collectible,” but did in this case, spending an extra $10 to get the decorative tin the movies came in:

Anyway, yeah, three decades, two good movies, and some merchandise out of the lot. I’m old and jaded, I guess.

I miss the Dairy Queen and 1977.