Fans celebrate 30th anniversary of Star Wars : Netglimse.com News

Fans celebrate 30th anniversary of Star Wars

Star Wars "super fan" Shawn Crosby is celebrating the 30th anniversary of one of the most influential pop culture phenomena in history.

"Star Wars," now re-titled by director George Lucas as "Star Wars: Episode IV-- A New Hope," first hit screens on May 25, 1977.

Crosby, who on Friday's anniversary dressed as the Jedi knight Ben Obi-Wan Kenobi, with a matching beard, first watched the film when he was just 10 years old.

"As long as the film's been out, I've been pretty heavily into it," says Crosby, speaking in the same soft tones as Alec Guinness when he played Kenobi.

Crosby told CTV Newsnet he still remembers first seeing the film's famous yellow text float onto the screen.

"Not only do I recall it, but I recall the theatre I was at and who I was with," he said.

"We were at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California, which is largely considered to be ground zero for Star Wars at that time. The minute we saw the opening credits roll past, and we saw the giant star destroyer move overhead, I think everyone in that audience was hooked."

In crafting the Star Wars plot, Lucas was heavily inspired by Joseph Campbell's writings on classic mythology. While Lucas placed his characters in a place "far, far away," they could still fit in to any earth-bound fable.

And now, 30 years later, the odds names of Yoda, Darth Vader and Chewbacca have entered the cultural lexicon.

When "Star Wars" and its first two sequels first appeared, it's doubtful even Lucas thought they would have had such a strong impact. For many, they were just a great way to escape reality for a couple hours.

"They provided a certain escapism that, up to that point, we hadn't been afforded in science fiction," said Crosby.

"We had read a lot of books and seen a lot of stories, and of course a lot of us were 'Star Trek' fans, and fans of other science fiction media. But 'Star Wars' had a certain innocence and excitement to it, where you jumped right in, you got to the derring-do, and for the next couple hours was just incredible escapism with a strong moral code.

"The performances might not have been the best ever, and the script might not have been the best, but it was probably the most fun any of us had ever had in a movie theatre."

To commemorate the anniversary, the U.S. Postal Service has released a set of 15 Star Wars stamps.

The stamps are issued as a single sheet resembling a movie poster, and feature both main characters and space ships like the Millennium Falcon -- arguably a character in its own right.