Fans have been waiting for a new Star Wars film for roughly a decade. For some highly devoted fans, they have camped out outside the theaters – in costume – waiting for the actual premiere of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
And that’s also true of the crowds around the globe who turned out in droves to see the original trilogy in the ’70s and ’80s. These vintage photos prove that times change; nerding out over Star Wars doesn’t.
Fans lined up during opening weekend on May 25, 1977 to see “Star Wars” at the Coronet Theatre in San Francisco.
San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis
The Coronet Theatre on Geary Boulevard seated close to 2,000 and became a Mecca for the “Star Wars” films, before it was demolished in 2007.
San Francisco Chronicle/Corbis
Theater goers waited in line on June 7, 1977 at Avco Center Theater in Los Angeles to see “Star Wars,” which had seats sold out for every performance since it had opened 12 days prior.
AP
Star Wars opens to British audiences for the first time on December 27, 1977. This was the queue outside the Leicester Square Theatre for the London opening of the movie.
AP
People waited on line for the midnight premiere of “The Empire Strikes Back,” on May 21, 1980. Some of the fans expected to be in line as long as 36 hours in order to be among the first in the nation to view the new movie.
Nick Ut/AP
People waited on May 22, 1980 in Denver, Colorado to get into a screening of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.
John Sunderland/The Denver Post / Getty Images
Movie fans lined up on Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street for the premiere of the Movie “Return of the Jedi” on Wednesday May 23, 1983. Fans began lining up Tuesday night to see the Star Wars trilogy.
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“Star Wars” fan Danny Fitzgerald of Staten Island, in Darth Vader costume, posed in front of the Loews Astor Plaza movie theater in Times Square in New York on May 25, 1983, where fans lined up for the premiere of “The Return of the Jedi.”
Dave Pickoff/AP
Three costumed fans of the “Star Wars” movie trilogy, from left, Kevin Maguire as an Imperial Fire Control Officer, Stephen Robards and his brother John Robards as Rebel Fighter Pilots, stood in a line of ticket buyers outside a Boston theater before the first showing of the “Return of the Jedi” on May 25, 1983.
Southwick/AP
The Force is with them: many hours before the curtain went up at the University Theatre in Toronto, Canada hundreds of Star Wars fanatics lined up to buy tickets for the world premiere of “Return of The Jedi” on May 25, 1983.
Toronto Star/Getty Images