Ripping Good Yarns: First Movie Hall of Fame Winner

Obi-Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader begin their final confrontation.

With 40% of the vote, our first entrant into the Ripping Good Yarns Movie Hall of Fame is Star Wars.  The next closest was The Wizard of Oz with 15%.  Star Wars is a very good movie.  If you haven't seen it yet, you should check it out.

I remember the summer Star Wars came out.  It was a staggered start, opening in bigger cities before it came to smaller cities and towns.  So we knew what was coming.  We heard all the buzz.  Some from our area even went to Detroit to see it.  They came back raving about how good it was.  By the time it came to Saginaw, Michigan, it was a huge event.

I and my friend waited in line for hours to get good seats at the Saginaw premiere.  It was the first time I had done any such thing.  Unprecedented to get in line and wait that long for a movie.

When I saw it, my breath was taken away.  As a lifelong science fiction fan, I was blown away with what it was actually doing.  Where so many movies I had seen in the past had backed away, this one went full throttle.  They didn't just talk about other planets, they went to other planets.  They just didn't talk about aliens, they showed a whole rich diversity of aliens.  When I saw the cantina scene, I was completely in.  That was the kind of thing I had been waiting all my life to see.

But not everyone was enamored.  At the full house showing we went to, there was a couple sitting behind us who at several points in the movies just said to each other, "That's not real!"  I don't know if they were just people who wandered into the wrong movie by mistake, or they were CGI experts from the future.  Either way, it demonstrated to me that even a movie as wonderful as Star Wars didn't have universal appeal.

Speaking of which, this was also the summer of Smokey and the Bandit.  I also saw that movie in a full house, crowded theater   Everyone around me was going nuts with laughter and cheers.  I looked at it, and thought, endangering people with automobiles was funny?  So I sat in that raucous theater,  stony and confused as to what was going on.

Not every movie is beloved by everybody.  60% of our voters picked a different movie.  But still and all, Star Wars comes the closest.

May the force be with you!!!