The "Star Wars" franchise has generated billions and billions of dollars, and today is followed by millions and millions of enthralled fans. It even has its own informal holiday, which is Saturday.
A pun on the saga's iconic catchphrase, "May the force be with you," Star Wars Day has become a global commemoration every fourth of May. Celebratory events include everything from re-screenings and movie marathons to costume parties and trivia contests to merchandise sales and charity events--and more.
Just like the Skywalker Saga itself, the fandom has become bigger than life. But like most truly revolutionary, genuinely game-changing occurrences after which nothing is ever the same, it didn't start out that way.
George Lucas' original idea was conceived around 1973, rejected by several studios, and rewritten repeatedly after being accepted by Twentieth Century Fox. The screenplay evolved even as filming began: It wasn't until after production started that Luke Starkiller's name was changed to Luke Skywalker.
Production difficulties pushed the picture millions of dollars over budget. The signature beginning word scrawl was based on 1940 "Flash Gordon" episode openings, and initially scoffed at by peers. Many of the cast and crew had a foreboding sense of failure.
Despite heavy promotional efforts by Fox, barely 30 theaters across the country agreed to show the film on its opening release date of May 25, 1977--two days before the Memorial Day weekend and the debut of "Smokey and the Bandit" and popular Burt Reynolds.
But "Star Wars" sold out those theaters, and another dozen that were added for the holiday weekend. By the time Fox expanded the theater run in mid-June, "Star Wars" was a full-on sensation, with crowd queues lined up around movie houses everywhere.
I stood in one of those lines in Memphis with a friend whose mom had driven us to the nearest available location from northeast Arkansas.
But our anticipation didn't come just from trailer previews. Aficionados today, mesmerized by the overwhelming and incredibly impressive sensory extravaganza surrounding all things "Star Wars," may not know or recall that six months before the original movie opened, there was a book.
And like many Trekkies obsessed with what was coming next in space opera cinema, we not only read that book, but studied it.
The book novelized George Lucas' screenplay, and even carried his name on the cover, but he didn't write it. It was ghostwritten by science-fiction writer Alan Dean Foster, who had virtually no visual experience with the upcoming movie. He hadn't seen any of the filming, and didn't know much about physical appearances of the characters or aliens.
Using the script and some of the pre-production concept paintings depicting "the feeling of the film," was all he had to work with, he said, which made his novelization all the more magnificent.
It was 240 pages of a words-only preview of Lucas' "Star Wars" story, scenes and cast of characters, which flooded my imagination with fantastic imagery long before I ever saw it unfold with amazing special effects on the big screen. Filled with anticipation in line for the box office, we couldn't imagine the movie-making tricks and techniques that would bring things like lightsabers and X-wing fighters to life.
But because it pre-dated final film production by months, the book had a few minor differences from the movie, including the initial wording. Nobody who had read the book expected to see "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away ..." come up in theaters, because the novel began with "Another galaxy, another time."
In the book, the term Droids had a leading apostrophe--'droids--giving the impression the word was abbreviated slang for the robot synonym "android." Obi-Wan Kenobi's body count in the cantina ran higher in the book, too, as Luke is harassed by three aliens, not two. When old Ben brandishes his lightsaber, he dismembers one and slices the others in half.
The relationship between Luke and Leia Organa came off more romantic in the novel as well, presumably because Foster was writing without the knowledge that the two were secret siblings.
Thus the final sentences of the book clearly portended future advancement. At the triumphant awards ceremony--Chewbacca rightly receives a medal in the book alongside Luke and Han Solo--Luke's heart isn't racing from the cheering crowd, or his future adventures with Solo and the Alliance: "Instead ... he found his full attention occupied by the radiant Leia Organa. She noticed his unabashed stare, but this time she only smiled."
Once we were inside and at our seats, however, all memories of reading were rendered secondary, and the screen seized our entire attention. Those who watched "Star Wars" during that opening summer cannot forget the first time that Imperial Star Destroyer lumbered into view. The deep rumble from the Dolby system speakers. The streaking laser cannon fire.
The stage was set for the next two awe-inspiring hours, and from that moment forward, everyone in my theater and other theaters everywhere realized the motion picture world of science fiction storytelling was forever changed.
Whether you're a fan, or you know one, May the Fourth be fun for you this year.
Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.