I saw it on initial release. I was 9, it was amazing.
I wasn’t born when it came out, but I did get to see it as a rental in ~ 1987 or so, I was young so rough guess. It was well before the box set that came out in 1992 which I got as a gift, which is still with my parents in the gigantic VHS collection (Dad got a camcorder, we have so much recorded, I’m converting it all to digital but by bit).
So at home as a kid on a (by today’s standards) small screen - a 25" RCA CRT TV.
I saw it during the original release, at the drive-in as part of a double feature with “The three musketeers”, which was what my parents went to see. Star Wars played first and started before sunset (the joys of far northern drive-ins) so it was washed out.
I saw it in the initial release. I was about a month or two before eighth birthday.
My uncle took me (I think he wanted to see it more than my dad, my dad has still not watched it)
Edit: fat fingers
In Munich in 1982. When it came out, I was too young to go to the cinema alone and nobody would go with me. In 1982 I was on a school trip to Munich. One night I walked past a cinema where it was on, so I spontaneously went in to see it.
As a young boy growing up in northern Mexico, I went with my brothers to San Diego on a Saturday afternoon in June 1977, to see two movies in a row:
- A Bridge Too Far at the Ken Cinema in Kensington.
- Star Wars at the single-screen theater next to the Mission Valley shopping center, I don’t remember the name, there is a Gordon Biersch currently occupying the same old building.
Star Wars of course required standing in line for a couple of hours. I think that for months it was the only theater in all of San Diego playing the film, whereas three years later The Empire Strikes Back opened in several theaters across town. Those were different days.
School excursion upon release… I don’t remember much as I was pretty young, but there are some scenes that are burned into my mind