![]() The 1970s, Hollywood's second golden age, were characterised by baby-boomer film students making pictures personal and dark enough to reflect the political morass of post-Watergate, in-Vietnam America. So what happened? After all, nobody's attributing Star Wars' epoch-making, culture-shifting success to a wily decision to put Princess Leia on the posters. Blimey, even the novelisation sold two million copies, and let's not get started on the merchandising. When Star Wars came out in the summer of 1977 it had been focus-grouped, and to great effect - everybody went to see it.īy November, it had dethroned Jaws in the all-time box office charts, a position it held until Independence Day. As a direct result of this research, Star Wars was deliberately packaged to attract older and female cinemagoers: the humans were pushed centre-stage and the film's epic, fairy-tale qualities were emphasised in the publicity material. Researchers armed only with a title and brief synopsis came back with some worrying results: only males under 25 expressed a desire to see a film called Star Wars. Back in that dark, pre-enlightenment age, 20th Century Fox conducted some market research on their forthcoming sci-fi adventure. Close your eyes, concentrate hard, rewind those famous scrolling credits until there's just blackness. It's tricky, but try to imagine a time before Star Wars.
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