Did Star Wars “Jump the Shark” Back in 1983?

As I write this Star Wars: The Force Awakens has not been released yet.

It might wind up being an incredible movie. I hope so, because I’m a huge Star Wars geek. Pretty much every male who was alive before the 80’s is a Star Wars geek. You can’t avoid it.

I was 7 years old when the original Star Wars was released in 1977. I can’t describe how magical that movie was. I think I saw it 8-9 times in the movie theater.

We didn’t have VCR’s or ways to watch it again, back then. If you wanted to see this movie, you had to see in on the big screen. I kind of miss that.

In 1980 when Empire Strikes Back was released I was 10 years old. Me and my best friend got dropped off at the mall at 6:00AM the day it was released. You couldn’t buy tickets ahead of time.

When we got to the mall, there was a line that stretched from one end of the parking lot to the other.

It took us two hours to finally get to the front of the line and we wound up getting tickets to the 11pm showing. We found a phone booth, called my friends mom and told her what had happened.

She figured we would see a 1PM or 3PM showing. We had planned to meet her back in front of the mall at 6PM.

Unfortunately, those plans weren’t going to work out. She had to pick us back up then drive us back to the theater at 10PM…then pick us up at 1:30AM after the movie was over.

We were tired by the time Empire started, but it was sooooo worth it!

Here’s the opening scene.

I consider Empire Strikes Back to be the greatest movie ever made. I wish I could time travel back to 1980 and watch this again for the first time.

Then 3 long years later Return of the Jedi was released.

Most people claim that the prequels, which were released later were when Star Wars took a wrong turn.

…but I really believe that things began to go south when Return of the Jedi was released in 1983.

Star Wars was “edgy” in the first two releases. Empire was beyond edgy, it got a little dark.

I understand that George Lucas probably wanted to lighten things up a bit for Return of the Jedi, but in my opinion he went a bit too far.

It’s still a good movie. It was just a letdown compared to the first two films. Yes…I know I’m being picky.

My hope is that Star Wars: The Force Awakens has a feeling closer to Empire Strikes Back…and less like every other Star Wars movie that followed.