A photo from the opening of George Lucas’ “Star Wars” in 1977 at the old Mann Chinese Theatre in Hollywood shows swarms of fans waiting to enter. The image is fascinating, not only taking us back to a time before the world ever knew “Star Wars” but also conjuring thoughts of what it might have been like to be there at the creation.
What the photo doesn’t suggest is a national frenzy. Though there was certainly a crowd at the opening, little was known about the movie from the young Lucas, and days and weeks passed before most people would find out about Luke Skywalker and lightsabers and all the rest, let alone turn it into a cultural phenomenon. Only about 40 theaters across the country initially screened the movie. When consumers finally began flocking to it, they learned for the first time about Han Solo and Darth Vader and the Millennium Falcon, not quite believing what they were seeing.
The scene at the same site for J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” this week was, needless to say, much different. A long stretch of Hollywood Boulevard was appropriated for a tented party space. Celebrities dressed up as characters. There were twice as many security checks as for the average domestic flight.
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Stormtroopers interact with the crowd at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Daisy Ridley, who stars as the new character Rey, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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John Boyega, who stars as Finn, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Carrie Fisher, who reprises the iconic Leia, plays with the photographers at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Maz Kanata, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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George Lucas, left, creator of the “Star Wars franchise, and director J.J. Abrams chat at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Adam Driver, left, who plays Kylo Ren, and Oscar Isaac, who plays Poe Dameron, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actor Harrison Ford and his wife, actress Calista Flockhart, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Mark Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Oscar Isaac, right, sneaks up on Adam Driver at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Anthony Daniels, left, who plays C-3P0, and Peter Mayhew, who plays Chewbacca, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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George Lucas, left, creator of the “Star Wars franchise, and director J.J. Abrams share a hug at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actress Kate Capshaw, left, and her husband, director Steven Spielberg, arrive at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actress Carrie Fisher, left, poses with her daughter, Billie Lourd, at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actor Andy Serkis arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Domhnall Gleeson, who plays General Hux, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Lupita Nyong’o, who plays Maz Kanata, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Adam Driver, who plays Kylo Ren, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Photographers swarm droid BB-8 at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Droids C-3PO, left, and R2-D2 arrive at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Max von Sydow, who plays Lor San Tekka, arrives at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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A peek inside the tent at the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” reveals a silvery character.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Statues of characters Rey, Kylo Ren and BB-8 made of Lego bricks are displayed inside the tent at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Daisy Ridley, one of the new stars of the franchise, walks the red carpet for the premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Luke Skywalker himself, Mark Hamill, gestures toward photographers on the red carpet for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in Hollywood.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Harrison Ford and his wife Calista Flockhart pose on the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Carrie Fisher quiets a raucous crowd while walking the red carpet.
(Jason Merritt / Getty Images)
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Director J.J. Abrams greets Spike Lee and his wife Tonya Lewis Lee at the red carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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John Boyega, who plays Finn, arrives at the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actress and cast member Lupita Nyong’o walks the red carpet.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Adam Driver and Oscar Isaacs clown around on the red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma, strikes a pose at the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Anthony Daniels, who plays C-3P0, poses on the red carpet at the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Billie Lourd, solo, on the red carpet.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Clare Grant and her husband Seth Green, writer Lawrence Kasdan, and producer Kathleen Kennedy and husband Frank Marshall take in the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Peterr Mayhew, who plays Chewbacca, takes to the red carpet with his lightsaber cane.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” actor Andy Serkis makes it known that he is in the seventh installment of the “Star Wars” franchise at the film’s Hollywood premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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C-3PO and R2-D2 at the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” on Hollywood Boulevard.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Mellody Hobson and George Lucas arrive at the world premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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A large Captain Phasma awaits inside the tent housing the red-carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Karrueche Tran, left, and Chantel Jeffries make their way down the red carpet at the premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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The stewards of “Star Wars,” George Lucas, left, and J.J. Abrams, meet and hug on the red carpet.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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J.J. Abrams acknowledges George Lucas as he continues down the carpet toward the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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More of the atmosphere inside the tent housing the red carpet premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Musician Janelle Monae.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Robert Iger, chairman and chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., arrives on the red carpet with his wife, Willow Bay.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Model Kelly Rohrbach catches photographers’ flashes.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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“Modern Family” actress Sarah Hyland and actor Dominic Sherwood hit the red carpet for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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“Modern Family” actress Sarah Hyland and actor Dominic Sherwood kiss on the red carpet.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Stormtroopers continue to make their presence felt on the red carpet at the premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Stormtroopers drink in the spotlight on the red carpet -- while keeping order, of course.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actor Max von Sydow.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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An Empire-themed car is displayed at the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Hollywood premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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“Heroes Reborn” actor Greg Grunberg
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Reporters wait for the stars to arrive at the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Hollywood premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Actress Zendaya
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Rey, Kylo Ren and BB-8 figures at the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Hollywood premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Stormtroopers inside the tent housing the red-carpet premiere of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens.’
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Peter Mayhew (background) attend the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jesse Grant / Getty Images for Disney)
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A security dog keeps watch.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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A cosplay staple at “Star Wars” events, the Hip-Hop Stormtrooper arrives for the premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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The red carpet for the Hollywood premiere of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Darth Vader and Stormtroopers decorate a dress at the premiere.
(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
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Eric Garcetti, Andy Serkis and Domhall Gleeson.
(Left - Ethan Miller/Getty Images; center and right - Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
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Joseph Gordon-Levitt, left; Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee; and Sofia Vergara.
(Left - Michael Kovac/Getty Images; center and left - Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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Zendaya, Constance Zimmer and Jaime King.
(Left - Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP; center and right - Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
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Actress Gina Rodriguez, left, Chris Hardwick and Lydia Hearst, and Geena Davis.
(Left - Jason Merritt/Getty Images; center and right - Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
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“Game of Thrones” actress Gwendoline Christie, who plays Captain Phasma, takes selfies with “Star Wars” fans.
(Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images for Disney)
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Actresses Carrie Fisher and daughter Billie Lourd attend the “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” Hollywood premiere.
(Jesse Grant / Getty Images for Disney)
Yet Disney sought to take a page from Fox’s 1977 playbook in one key respect: the lack of information heading into the event.
The typical big-budget sequel these days follows a well-choreographed set of moves. The trade press ferrets out much of the key log-line information. Numerous trailers begin spelling out the action. Screenings for junket press and critics begin to leak out more info.
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By the time a premiere happens, there isn’t a lot of material information that remains undisclosed, the event less a grand unveiling than an inevitable confirmation. Sure, the quality of a film may not be widely known, but the shape of it largely is, at least to those motivated enough to seek it out.
Not so for “The Force Awakens.” There was, for all the marketing bombast, a rare absence of actual information. Shooting leaks on this film were almost nonexistent. Not a single member of the media had seen the film (or confessed to it, anyway). By one unofficial count, about six minutes of trailer time were released, about half the usual amount. The key facts about most main characters were unknown.
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On screen, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” is filled with nostalgia for the first trilogy, whether with its individual scenes or larger themes. The studio’s marketing department, it turns out, was jumping into its own wayback machine — taking a 2015 movie and employing the reticence of 1977, when most people knew little more than what they saw in the odd poster or trailer.
Part of the motivation for this comes from Abrams himself. The director and his collaborators are known for embracing the idea of the mystery box and often veer toward the secretive, even releasing pages to cast on a need-to-know basis. But the strategy has also been part of a larger studio plan.
Disney has danced a delicate two-step on “The Force Awakens” — to seed as much interest as possible while telling as little as possible, on the assumption that the name alone is enough to fill seats. And so the information could come at 1977 levels. Without the safety valve of Internet discussion, interest, which was already as high as for any franchise in recent memory, began to surge even more.
On Monday, it all burst forth. Except that it all burst forth not into 1977 but 2015, when the “Star Wars” universe is a) already extremely well known and devoutly studied and b) the fruits of that study can zap around the world, entering the vortex of online reactions and counter-reactions that it had avoided for long.
And so information that would have been doled out, reacted to, made peace with, then debated anew over months all came out and went through that process within hours, like some kind of movie-marketing particle accelerator.
Breathless positivity and plot hints were reverberating all around. When Patton Oswalt tweeted, “Without spoiling it, I can say that #StarWarsForceAwakens has the BEST final shot of any Star Wars film. Wow,” the tweet was “liked” thousands of times, many of the likers wanting to know just what it was that was so wow-worthy.
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Meanwhile, negativity, even of the mild sort, became a fulcrum of online obsession. The influential blogger Devin Faraci, for example, left the theater and tweeted: “STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS is ok. I know it’s poetry, I know it rhymes, but does every line have to rhyme with the last poem?”
And, of course, the reviews coming out at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday will ensure that every plot point is scalpeled, dissected and analyzed before the first consumer ever steps into a theater.
This is all fine from Disney’s standpoint, since no information or reaction can change the movie’s box-office trajectory. At this point, spoilers — or even lukewarm sentiments — are not going to stop anyone from buying tickets.
Whether this was all a good way for a consumer to experience the release of a movie is a more complicated question. There are those — Abrams is among them —who would argue that less is more in a culture that is long past the point of trailers giving away the whole movie (these days, blogs and pre-release coverage do that). In such a world, an ounce of mystery is worth a pound of goodness.
Of course, what the holdback strategy has done in this case, what it inevitably will do in 2015, is not so much preserve the pre-release mystery as reveal it all at once. It’s not that most people won’t know much when they enter a theater to see “The Force Awakens” this weekend, learning of characters and major developments for the first time, “New Hope”-style. They’ll know — they’ll just have found it all out in a rush a few days before. Disney didn’t create a more mysterious moviegoing experience. It just drove a lot of pre-release traffic to entertainment websites.
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In fact, it’s not even clear that we ever truly had a desire not to know, judging by the widespread online inquiries Monday. Interest in a phenomenon like “Star Wars” operates on two almost-opposite levels in our current moment: There’s a craving to be surprised but a need to find out. Curiosity and mystery duke it out in the antipodal filmgoer mind. And with so much information available, the outcome of that battle is rarely in doubt, though that hasn’t stopped weapons from being furnished or star pleas from being made.
In an era when old-fashioned movie unveilings are rare, Disney tried to create one. But the world is a new-fashioned place, and the reactions could only follow in kind. “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” has been an experiment in how a studio can turn back the clock — in several ways, actually, but particularly when it comes to pre-release information. If it tries really hard, it can. Until it can’t. Time, and Twitter, always win.
Steven Zeitchik is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer who covered film and the larger world of Hollywood for the paper from 2009 to 2017, exploring the personalities, issues, content and consequences of both the creative and business (and, increasingly, digital) aspects of our screen entertainment. He previously covered entertainment beats at Variety and the Hollywood Reporter, has contributed arts and culture pieces to the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and the New York Times and has done journalistic tours of duty in Jerusalem and Berlin. While at The Times he has also reported stories in cities ranging from Cairo to Krakow, though Hollywood can still seem like the most exotic destination of all.
