
On this day in 1977, Memorial Day weekend opens with an intergalactic bang as the first of George Lucas' blockbuster
Star Wars movies hits American theaters.

The incredible success of
Star Wars--it received seven Oscars,
and earned $461 million in U.S. ticket sales and a gross of close to
$800 million worldwide--began with an extensive, coordinated marketing
push by Lucas and his studio, 20th Century Fox, months before the
movie's release date. "It wasn't like a movie opening," actress Carrie
Fisher, who played rebel leader Princess Leia, later told
Time
magazine. "It was like an earthquake." Beginning with--in Fisher's
words--"a new order of geeks, enthusiastic young people with sleeping
bags," the anticipation of a revolutionary movie-watching experience
spread like wildfire, causing long lines in front of movie theaters
across the country and around the world.



With its groundbreaking special effects,
Star Wars leaped off
screens and immersed audiences in "a galaxy far, far away." By now
everyone knows the story, which followed the baby-faced Luke Skywalker
(Mark Hamill) as he enlisted a team of allies--including hunky Han Solo
(Harrison Ford) and the robots C3PO and R2D2--on his mission to rescue
the kidnapped Princess Leia from an Evil Empire governed by Darth Vader.
The film made all three of its lead actors overnight stars, turning
Fisher into an object of adoration for millions of young male fans and
launching Ford's now-legendary career as an action-hero heartthrob.
Star Wars was soon a bona-fide pop culture phenomenon. Over
the years it has spawned five more feature films, five TV series and an
entire industry's worth of comic books, toys, video games and other
products. Two big-screen sequels,
The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and
The Return of the Jedi
(1983), featured much of the original cast and enjoyed the same
success--both critical and commercial--as the first film. In 1999, Lucas
stretched back in time for the fourth installment,
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, chronologically a prequel to the original movie. Two other prequels,
Attack of the Clones (2002) and
Revenge of the Sith (2005) followed.
The latter
Star Wars movies featured a new cast--including
Ewan McGregor, Liam Neeson, Natalie Portman and Hayden Christensen--and
have generally failed to earn the same amount of critical praise as the
first three films. They continue to score at the box office, however,
with
Revenge of the Sith becoming the top-grossing film of 2005 in the United States and the second worldwide.
Taken from:
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history [25.05.12]
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