CINEMA: THE FORCE IS BACK

According to one person who helped work on it, the most famous opening title in film history nearly began "A long, long time ago in a galaxy far away..." Not that that's so different from "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..." It's just that Star Wars has become such a cultural given that it almost seems as if the film had been channeled from the pop ether fully formed and perfect, like a melody entering Paul McCartney's head. With all the hoopla surrounding the current rerelease, it's easy to forget just how dicey a proposition Star Wars was in 1977 when it opened not on 2,104 screens around the country, as it did last week, but on only 35--which itself suggests an entirely different era of moviegoing. No one associated with the film expected it to be a hit, not even writer-director George Lucas. "I thought it was too wacky for the general public," he claims today. "I just said, 'Well, I've had my big hit [with American Graffiti], and I'm happy. And I'm going to do this kind of crazy thing, and it'll be fun, and that will be that.'"

Of course, as pretty much anyone old enough to read this knows, that wasn't just that. Despite a comparative lack of hype, even by 1977's standards, Star Wars was an instant line-around-the-block sensation, raking in then unprecedented repeat business to become the highest-grossing film of all time (until it was knocked off the pedestal by E.T. five years later). Star Wars also launched an armada of ancillary merchandise that has far outstripped the actual film and its sequels in revenues (roughly $4 billion, vs. a mere $1.3 billion).

Which isn't to underplay the movie's aesthetic triumph. With its unprecedented blend of narrative innocence and stylistic sophistication, of pseudomythic solemnity and high-tech kick, of abject weirdness and cunning familiarity, Star Wars helped set the standard for what a modern commercial movie can be at its best (ingenious, kinetic, exhilarating). Unfortunately it also provided a template with which countless imitators have since shown what a modern commercial movie can be at its dreariest (mind numbing, mechanical, pointlessly assaultive). For good or evil, Star Wars has been to the past two decades of American moviemaking what Ronald Reagan was to the past two decades of American politics: defining, unavoidable, but hard, in the end, for even detractors to hate.