Watch Mark Hamill's 1984 introduction to the Star Wars premiere on TV

By Rick Marshall January 6, 2016

Star Wars 1984 TV premiere intro hosted by Mark Hamill

Just a few decades ago, the premiere of a major movie on television was a very, very big deal — and back then, no movie was bigger than Star Wars.

With Star Wars: Episode VII — The Force Awakens breaking box-office records and everyone talking about the sci-fi saga’s history, a video has found its way online featuring the introduction to the 1984 television premiere of the movie that started it all, 1977’s Star Wars.

The Star Wars intro video was uploaded to YouTube in 2012, but resurfaced recently amid all the buzz surrounding The Force Awakens. It features a tuxedoed Mark Hamill providing a dramatic lead-in to the film’s small-screen premiere, complete with interviews with fans young and old, some behind-the-scenes footage, and clips from various press segments featuring Star Wars director George Lucas.

There’s even a brief profile of a family deemed to be the biggest Star Wars collectors of all time, and it’s difficult not to wonder what their collection — estimated to be worth around $15,000 in the video — would actually be valued at now.

It’s also worth noting how many times some of the Star Wars fans claim to have seen the film in theaters, with several fans indicating they’ve seen it anywhere from 50 to 100 times. Given the current price of movie tickets, it’s hard to imagine anyone seeing The Force Awakens that many times in a theater these days.

Still, even with people seeing The Force Awakens just a few times, the film remains on an impressive pace to become the highest-grossing movie of all time. The latest box-office report had the film already past the $1.5 billion mark worldwide, and moving into second place on the all-time domestic box-office ranking with $750.2 million — an amount that it earned in just three weeks.

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