justwrite7 posted some interesting comments here about the importance of Star Wars on a personal level:

As for my alter ego, Luke Skywalker I was REALLY young when STAR WARS came out in 1977. I don’t recall having anything like it at the time. I lived in a real tough city; I’m talking gangs, gunshots at all hours of the night, hookers doing their thing right behind our house.

George Lucas gave me a vehicle to fantasize my way out of that environment. I once read a description of Luke Skywalker (gotta love that name) as a bored, twenty year old farm boy who dreamed of adventures among the stars. Aside from the age difference and the whole farm thing, that was so me.

What a wonderful sentiment. And the comments reminded me of an interview I read years ago with writer-director John Singleton. Remarkably I found the quote from that interview in this profile here:

I grew up in South Central Los Angeles, and went to Hollywood to hang out when I was a kid and a teenager, and I developed a love for the power of film. That’s what drew me to film school, cinema was my rite of passage. … When I was nine years old I went to see Star Wars, like ten times, and I started breaking down how they made the shots, and studying how to make a film. And I started making animated films on the sides of notebooks, because the power of the moving image was very intriguing to me. That’s the power of Hollywood.

I’m sure we’ve all read many similar comments re the impact Star Wars has had on countless actors, writers, and directors. In my own world, my oldest son, Will, was a complete Star Wars fan from the time he was about 7 years old. When we lived in LA and Fox released the updated version of episodes 4, 5, and 6, I took Will to opening night of each one at the Century City theater. On one occasion, our family went to see John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl to conduct the orchestra as they performed several of the musical themes he’d composed. I can still recall seeing Will, probably about eight at the time, standing on his tip toes, shouting out, “Star Wars!!!” as loud as he could before the second, then third encore, and how ecstatic he was when finally the orchestra broke into the famous “ta-ta-ta-taaa-taaa” intro to the main Star Wars theme. Doubtless, his immersion into the world of John Williams must have been a contributing factor to Will’s eventual focus on violin and music composition.

And oh yes, my other son is named Luke.

I have another wonderful memory of Star Wars. When it was released in the summer of 1977, I was living in New Haven before starting my last year of grad school. I went to see the movie and was, like everyone else, blown away. My friends and I must have talked it up because about 10 of us grad students decided to go see it together including Henry Nouwen, the noted priest, writer, and theologian, who had a faculty appointment at YDS at the time.

As it happened, I sat next to Henry at the movie (Henry, who was Dutch, asked for some “corn pop,” which we happily got for him). I was so excited to share the movie with my friends, I kept looking over at them during the screening to see their expressions. And Henry’s were the best of all, the images from the screen reflecting off his big glasses, his eyes wide, his mouth slack in amazement.

Afterward, everyone in our group couldn’t stop talking about the spectacle, the visuals, the story. Henry was lost in his thoughts, then he finally said, “I have never seen anything like that.”

I suspect millions of moviegoers in that summer of ’77 felt exactly the same way… and millions more since.