re: Those who saw the original Star Wars trilogy in the theaters..

When Star Wars was released the first time in '77, I was two. I'm not going to tell you that I remember anything. I really don't. I know it was the second movie that I was ever brought to, and I'm told that I sat still the entire time. The only memory of it I have is a vague flash of an X-Wing and TIE in a dogfight scene. By the time Empire came out, I was five. I definitely remember standing in line for it.

Remember, when Star Wars was originally released, "A New Hope" and "Episode IV" were not part of the crawl. There was no thought initially that this was going to be anything other than a standalone. Those elements were added after ESB was announced.

I think the difficult part for later generations to understand is that even as a kid my age who could not comprehend the entire story, we were inundated with the toys, read-along/cassette/record books, and the music.

We actually played with the toys in lieu of video games, etc. The original film stayed in movie theaters for 44 weeks at a time when multiple, multiple movie screen theaters weren't really a thing. Star Wars was burned into the subconscious of many of us.

Comics came out shortly after as did the release of the sequel book "Splinter of the Mind's Eye," the much-maligned Holiday Special, etc. So there were already expanded universe stories to consume. But there was definitely a build-up to ESB, and I can certainly remember the years between ESB and ROTJ everyone waiting to find out what happened.

By the time ROTJ came out, I was the age of Lucas' supposed intended audience. I was old enough to understand the Luke/Vader dynamic. Not having a lot of outlets that produced spoilers certainly helped, but I think I was able to go into ROTJ with just a sense of wanting to see what happened and not needing to dissect and posit what I was hoping would happen beforehand.

The other thing that was neat at the time for me that I enjoyed were the original "making of" documentaries that appeared. I always have enjoyed the process of seeing movies like this go from concepts to actual realized finality. So we had that and crappy plastic Halloween masks with an elastic string to appease us.

As hokey as it is to say, it really was a much simpler time when lulls were enjoyed. Binge watching didn't exist like it does now, and you really could take the time to appreciate and think about what you saw for a longer period of time before your brain was bombarded with more to overload it.

Recently, I watched the Despecialized Versions of Star Wars, ESB, and ROTJ. These are the versions that were shown in the theaters in '77, '80, and '83, respectively. I truthfully was excited to watch these and it felt like watching something new again...as weird as that sounds.

When the Special Editions were released in '97, I was in college. To have those movies come out in spans of like three weeks apart was cool at the time, but in large measure, I was in the theater searching for the "new" stuff or "upgrades." Some were fine. Some were just unnecessary. But there wasn't a sense of wanting to just see what came next. It felt processed and not organic.

The organic nature of what happened in '77 through '83, just simply cannot be replicated...particularly in today's world and even in today's Star Wars world. The intent behind the movies as a swashbuckling adventure and to a large degree modern myth has been overrun to fit modern agendas and shaped into something it was never meant to be.

The reality is, if George Lucas has not been limited by the technology of the time, I don't know that Star Wars would have become Star Wars.