Last Sunday, the Shanghai International Film Festival had a viewing of the original Star Wars trilogy. Based on Google, the English-speaking world thought this was kind of a big deal.
Don't get us wrong: die-hard fans are very excited for the epic space opera, to meet Darth Vader, and to watch the movies.
And they definitely got hyped over a recorded message from The Force Awakens director J.J. Abrams.
But saying that “Star Wars to screen in China for first time ever” basically implies Chinese are still the same group of people who just woke up from the Cultural Revolution 40 years ago.
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Granted, the space epic's delayed official premieres are milestone-ish in China, but there's a few reasons not to think The Force has just started to be with them.
The official Chinese-version posters of the Star Wars prequels.
1. The whole six-part Star Wars series is not premiering in China for the first time.
Although all six parts of the Star Wars series to date were shown on the big screen at the Shanghai Film Festival, only the original trilogy was premiered for the first time, according to the official film festival site.
The movies that make up the "prequel trilogy — "The Phantom Menace," "Attack of the Clones," and "Revenge of the Sith" — were all publicly screened in China in 1999, 2002 and 2005 respectively, according to an 2005 Sina News report — exactly the same year each of them premiered in the U.S.
2. Even the original trilogy "premiering" is still arguable, according to die-hard fans. The very first film even, "A New Hope", was screened in 1984 in an event called American Movie Week in several Chinese cities.
"My mother took me to the cinema 30 years ago," says one Weibo user. "To a boy, the memory of a great sci-fi movie could accompany his whole life."
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And the memory is so vivid that many are still recounting the sweet details.
“In the last day of the 1985 American Movie Week, god’s voice led me there, the lights in the cinema were already turned off but my brother and I bribed a staff with ¥1.20 (=$0.20) and got in. I remember the guy was a bit fat but always smiling! The cinema was full of people so we had to sit in the front row. The flying spaceship was huge, bravo! I was in the 4th or 5th year of elementary school…” recalled one Weibo user.
3. The movies that are being shown on the big-screen for the first time(ish) are not a part of a nationwide — or even citywide — premiere.
They are among hundreds of other premieres in the 18th Annual Shanghai International Film Festival, which could best be called the Chinese cinema-lover's version of Sundance. And the festival has a tradition of introducing golden movies to China so this is really not something unique. Only a couple thousand people out of China's billion-odd people got to watch these premieres.
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4. And let's be clear: if you wanted to see Star Wars in China, there have always been ways. On one Chinese piracy site, the series has been downloaded over eight million times.
5. Only the hardcore fans really cared about the premieres — but even the most hardcore of the hardcore fans had a tough time getting tickets.
It's been reported that the way the tickets were distributed was less than kosher. A group of fans spent the whole day arguing with cinema staff, because the tickets that were supposed to be distributed only in that ticket booth disappeared mysteriously. But those who sat in front of the computer at home easily got them on the online ticketing platform.
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