I grew up with the PT, so Star Wars had a big impact on me.
I remember one of the first commercials for TPM, back when they were promoting it as Episode I; I think it involved those battle droids on their flyer thingies in the Naboo swamps. I was confused as hell, but, DAMN, if it didn't look cool!
I am, unfortunately, one of those who never got to see the OT in their original venues: on the big screen. The first time I saw all three, I rented them back in '97 (so I saw them in their pristine, original forms). Over the next two years, I became obsessed with the movies. A buddy of mine had a box set of them, so I borrowed them and used to watch them over and over and over again. I can still recall that beautiful scroll coming up my screen one dark night: so damn beautiful.
In '99, I ate all the merchandising up; there was Star Wars in the theatres! I can barely remember seeing TPM at the movies, but I know I liked it.
I have a better memory of AOTC, especially all the hype leading up to it; at one point, I was told that the frontman from Savage Garden was going to play Boba Fett, and that the Millenium Falcon was Anakin's original ship, being called that way because the Sith were "swooping down after a thousand years".
Well, after all that, there was a contest going on a local radio station: they'd play a soundbite of R2-D2 and you had to guess which character it was; if you guessed correctly, you'd get two tickets to the Wednesday preview showing of AOTC. My mother caught it during the day, and when I got home from school, I was greeted with two shiny black tickets.
So, I went to the showing, and it was packed. Although I think I might have gone to the toilet shortly after the Count Dooku/Death Star scene, it was just so damn exciting to be the first!
Three years passed. Having been a lurker on theforce.net, and having seen the Clone Wars cartoon show in its entireity, I knew most of what would happen in the movie before it came out, but it still gave me chills to hear that drumbeat... and then, ZOOM, that martial fanfare kicks in, and we drop down into the battle. DAMN, I almost got motion sickness from that...
Though some scenes were crap, and others were just meh, I liked the movie. Heck, I even laughed a couple of days later, when some cad on theforce.net boards posted some list that included stupid baby faces to go along with the hairbrush scene! I laughed it off, dismissed it as some juvenile wanker, and went back to lurking. Of course, if I had known it was Chefelf's Reasons to Hate list, well...
So, there it is: what do you think?