It feels like everyone’s going to write about the Star Wars films—and this one actually came out before I was even born. It really gets to you. I had to wait for the re-release just to see it on a big screen. This movie broke my streak of seeing Star Wars movies opening night... …although *The Force Awakens* nearly ended that too. I had to drive all the way to my parents' place, just to keep up with tradition, and when I got there they’d already gone twice! After a few frustrated words, I managed to convince my mom, reminding her about the trip, to go see it for a third time. But that’s not really what this is about. This was the movie that began everything. The first time I saw it, it was on Beta—my family used to have it on Beta! Then I had the whole trilogy on VHS and later on DVD. And that pattern will just keep repeating as new formats arrive. It’s one of those movies you feel like you need to own, no matter how technology changes. It's actually a movie you want to buy right away when something new comes out, just so you can see it in better and better quality. That should mean something, I guess, but maybe it doesn’t for some people. For the rest of us, though, it's a fairy tale set in space, with knights, old wizards, and a princess. It's a fairy tale in space made for people like me—nerds. It's a legend, and the kind of legend that sticks with you and makes cynical, grumpy Gen-Xers like myself feel like kids again. Along with *The Godfather*, it’s the sort of movie that inspires what I jokingly call "mental spousal abuse"—generations of men forcing their wives to watch them, only to be confused and a little sad when they don't get why they love it so much. Unlike *The Godfather*, though, this is the film that fathers show their children, and those kids then pass on their affection for it to the next generation. Star Wars is an endless cycle—even the bad movies are good. And fans constantly come up with new theories about them; they buy t-shirts, toys, anything they can do to keep that love alive and share it around. *A New Hope* started all of that, and even though there have been better films in the series, this one will always be first.

Source on TMDB