Spoiler warning
In 1977, movies didn’t open in thousands of screens. They’d play in big cities, and then, eventually they’d get to the smaller ones. I lived near Canton, IL, which had two movie theaters, and older one with a balcony and everything, and a newer, smaller one across the town square that was more like a box with seats in it. We had to wait on movies to come there, so we usually got things a month or two after it was released and if we DID get a new movie the first week, it was usually a stinker that bigger theaters didn’t want.
So, when Star Wars came out, we didn’t get it until late July.
By then, I had read the comic adaptation and the novelization.
I had had the movie spoiled. And I didn’t care. I knew the story, I knew the twists, but it was so well made and I was so excited that I was there for the experience and the spectacle.
We are now so crazed about avoiding spoilers that people asking that the movie not be spoiled takes us a third of the Facestab page.
I’ll see the movie in a couple of weeks when the theaters aren’t full. I am sure someone will spoil things. I won’t care. The point of the journey is not the arrival.
