Among the other movies to open that day, just before the Memorial Day weekend, were Woody Allen's "Annie Hall," (which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1977) and "Fun With Dick and Jane," co-starring George Segal and Jane Fonda.

By the movie's opening day, Jimmy Carter was four months into his one-term presidency. During 1977, he spoke out against human rights violations around the world, granted a pardon to almost all American draft evaders of the Vietnam War era and urged Americans to respond to the U.S. energy crisis with the "moral equivalent of war. Carter's Moscow counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, had already been in power for 13 years and would stay Soviet leader for five more. The Brezhnev years included efforts to improve relations with the West but under his rule, the Soviet Union had invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968 and would do the same in Afghanistan in 1979. Two future presidents were making upward moves. Bill Clinton, who turned 31 that year, was the attorney general of Arkansas. The next year he was elected governor. Boris Yeltsin, 46, was a rising star in the Soviet Union's Communist Party leadership.

Two 747s collided at the airport on Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands, killing 582 people. The air disaster still ranks as the world's worst. Nearly half the U.S. population watched "Roots" on television. The fictionalized account of an African-American family -- from slavery to freedom -- inspired Americans of all colors to search for their ethnic origins. South African black activist Steve Biko was arrested for subversion and died brutally in police custody. The country's future president, Nelson Mandela, was about halfway through the 27 years he would spend as a political prisoner. The U.S. government ordered cars to be equipped with seatbelts by 1984, but a ban on saccharin proposed by the Food and Drug Administration was never enacted. Egyptian President Anwar Sadat became the first Arab leader to visit Israel. The United States and Panama sign treaties to relinquish American control of Panama Canal by 2000. A massive blackout in New York City and vicinity left millions of people without electricity for up to 25 hours. Police made more than 3,000 arrests for looting. Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt was convicted in Cincinnati of promoting obscenity and involvement in organized crime. The yacht Courageous, captained by Ted Turner, won the America's Cup; Turner, owner of the Atlanta Braves, put on a uniform and managed the team for one game during a long losing streak. Turner also was suspended from baseball for one year for trying to lure away a player from another team. The launch of CNN was three years away. The first episode of "The Love Boat" aired on television.

Deaths in 1977Charlie Chaplin, Joan Crawford, Bing Crosby, Groucho Marx, Elvis Presley.Births in 1977 Actor Edward Furlong, model Bridget Hall, Olympic gymnast Kerri Strug, actress Liv Tyler, actress Jenna Von Oy. Spit-and-polished 'Star Wars' returns to the big screen January 30, 1997

But director George Lucas has revamped the film that changed the way movies were made for this weekend's release, adding scenes and computer-generated characters and restoring the print to put "Star Wars" on screen the way he envisioned it. "I wanted to preserve ("Star Wars" and its subsequent two sequels) so that it would continue to be a viable piece of entertainment into the 21st century," Lucas explained. To do so, Lucas spent $10 million -- roughly the same it cost to film the original "Star Wars" -- to clean, restore, and digitally enhance the film.

Copies of the 20-year-old film were badly deteriorated, but Lucas assembled a team from several groups to accomplish the meticulous cleaning and restoration. And then, the techno-wizards at Industrial Light and Magic -- created by Lucas in 1975 to do the visual effects for the original "Star Wars" -- set to work. Digital technology -- much of it pioneered by ILM since the late 1970s -- allowed Lucas to create the bustling spaceport of Mos Eisley and doctor Skywalker's landspeeder so that it truly floats as it arrives in the city. "Twenty years ago ... I only had half a street to shoot on, and no real special effects or matte paintings to work with," Lucas says. "Now we're able to travel through the town, see how big it is." (186K/13 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

Computer graphics have also allowed Lucas to reinsert a scene filmed in 1976 but cut from the original because it just didn't work, and he lacked the time and money to make it work. In that scene, Han Solo confronts space gangster Jabba the Hutt, a big globular slug of an alien. Lucas filmed actor Harrison Ford with a stand-in actor, intending to add a digital Jabba later. He was dissatisfied with the results, and cut the scene.

"I really wanted to put that back in there," Lucas says, "because it's relevant to what happens to Han at the end of the movie and in 'The Empire Strikes Back' and 'Return of the Jedi.'" There's more: 4 1/2 minutes of new film, including a new creature ridden by the red-eyed Jawas and stormtroopers chasing C-3PO and R2-D2, and a $3 million revamp of the audio track. And if that's not enough, Lucas has created Special Editions of both 1980s "Empire" and 1983s "Jedi," the two sequels, to the tune of about $2.5 million each. "Empire" is scheduled to hit the screens on February 21 and "Jedi" on March 7.

In "Empire," Lucas cleaned up the opening battle sequence and created a more fierce Wampa creature for an ice cave scene. Scenes set in Cloud City, the home of Lando Calrissian, have also been enhanced. In "Return of the Jedi," ILM expanded a musical sequence at Jabba the Hutt's palace with new music, musicians, singers and dancers. Femi Taylor, who played the green-skinned dancing girl in the original film, returned to film shoot new footage for the scene. A Sarlacc beast battling with Luke, Leia and Han Solo has also been enhanced. After 20 years, Lucas revisits the films that changed filmmaking -- and prepares to try it again. He plans to follow up the re-release of this trio by releasing a trifecta of prequels. The digital enhancements to the two-decade-old "Star Wars" may be just a sneak preview of the wizardry to come.

(CNN) -- Movies changed in 1977. From the moment Han Solo's Millennium Falcon jumped into hyperspace, filmmaking would never return to what it had been before.Sure, plenty had gone on in George Lucas' "Star Wars" before movie-watchers peered out the Falcon's cockpit over Solo's shoulder and watched the stars fly by ... but the collective gasp of delight that echoed through every theater at that particular moment in the film underscored the finality of what Lucas had done. The age of truly "special" effects had arrived. Movie magic, once the domain of imagination, could suddenly make planetary warfare, unbelievable creatures, and hyperspace-jumping a reality, at least on celluloid.

"2001: A Space Odyssey" -- the premiere science fiction film before "Star Wars" -- was a drawing-room drama compared to the galactic expanse Lucas brought to the screen in "Star Wars" and its sequels. And while some might say the advent of such technological advances cost movies some of the magic of imagination, none can deny that Lucas' innovations dramatically affected the way movies are made. From the past to the future
Innovators, yes -- but George Lucas' technical wizards looked to the past for futuristic filming and used a film process discarded 20 years earlier because of its expense.

They turned to VistaVision, an innovative camera used briefly in the 1950s that turned 35mm film on it side give more exposure area in each frame for the image. Studio executives and theater owners at the time rejected the expense of retooling equipment to make use of VistaVision's product, but the technicians at Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) -- formed by Lucas in 1975 to create the visual effects of "Star Wars" -- resurrected the lost process and put the VistaVision cameras and their mammoth printers to use.

But they took the process leaps and bounds beyond its original purpose, using the expanded exposure area to film the expanse of space -- planets, the Death Star, vivid battles. To create those indelible images, ILM used both new techniques and old ones stretched to their fullest potential. ILM technicians moved beyond the traditional model construction materials such as wood, plaster and steel, experimenting with aluminum, urethane foam and plastic. For the sweeping scenes in space, models of star cruisers and X-wing fighters were filmed in front of a blue background -- a technique that allows relatively easy removal of the background later, to be replaced by stars and planets seen in the final cut of the film.

But a battle scene with dozens of spacecraft could not be shot in one take. Bruce Nicholson, an optical camera assistant on "Star Wars," said that "it was not uncommon to have 30 to 40 separate foreground pieces combined with a background piece" to create a final scene. To match all the movement precisely, ILM achieved breakthrough in motion control -- electronically controlling camera movement -- with the computerized Dykstraflex system, developed by John Dykstra.

Once the movement of each foreground element had been filmed, ILM's optical department could piece the disparate elements together -- a cinematic jigsaw puzzle. The ILM crew later built new cameras, based on the VistaVision cameras, and new film printers for the filming of "The Empire Strikes Back." Since "Star Wars," ILM has created visual effects for more than 100 films: "Raiders of the Lost Ark," "E.T. The Extraterrestrial," "Back to the Future," "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?," "Terminator 2: Judgment Day," "Forrest Gump," "The Mask," "Jurassic Park" ... and the list goes on.

Digital technology -- computer graphics -- has replaced much of the wizardry ILM produced for "Star Wars" on 20-year-old cameras. But Lucas' magicians have not stopped innovating. They've won countless awards, including 14 Oscars, for their efforts. One Oscar was awarded in 1992 for the development of the morphing technique to metamorphose one image into another. It's the advances in digital filmmaking made by ILM and others that brought Lucas back to "Star Wars" to take advantage of new technology to restore the 20-year-old film and bring it closer to his original vision -- "my ulterior motive," he said.

"A famous filmmaker once said that films are never completed, they are only abandoned," Lucas said. ""So rather than live with my 'abandoned' movies, I decided to go back and complete them." But ILM also counters criticism that its splashy visual effects have degraded the storytelling ability of movies. ILM technicians created simple color -- in a child's coat, the flickering flame of candles -- for a film with not one single dinosaur, no space battles or jumps into hyperspace: Steven Spielberg's otherwise black-and-white "Schindler's List."

(Writer/Director) ... has not directed a movie since "Star Wars," but later this year he plans to direct the first of three Star Wars "prequels." It's due for release in May 1999. Lucas, 52, wrote the screenplay and has done outlines for the other two. The "prequels" will show what the characters were doing in the years before the events in "Star Wars." The first one reportedly focuses on the young Anakin Skywalker (who becomes Darth Vader) and a female character who becomes Luke and Leia's mother. Thousands of child actors have auditioned for the roles. The three new movies will be "darker" and "more tragic" than the ones in the "Star Wars" trilogy, Lucas told Newsweek magazine.

MARK HAMILL (Luke Skywalker) ... is the voice of the Joker in both the Batman animated television series and the theatrical animated feature "Batman: Mask of the Phantasm." He also performs on CD-ROM games (including Wing Commander III and IV), hosts a weekly cable TV series (".com") about the Internet and has his own Web site. "The Black Pearl," a five-part comic book series he co-wrote, has been adapted to a screenplay. Hamill, 45, also has appeared in several Broadway plays.

HARRISON FORD (Han Solo) ... stars in two movies this year -- the drama "Devil's Own" and "AFO," a thriller -- adding to the dozens he's made, including the Indiana Jones trilogy. Ford, 54, has been in so many of Hollywood's highest-grossing films that in 1994 theater owners named him "Star of the Century."
He's also among several celebrities China reportedly has banned from traveling in Tibet because of their involvement with "Kundun," a film written by his wife, Melissa Mathison, about the exiled religious leader Dalai Lama.

CARRIE FISHER (Princess Leia Organa) ... returns to the screen later this year in the comedy "Austin Powers." In addition to dozens of film and television roles, the 40-year-old Fisher has written three novels, including the fictionalized memoir "Postcards From The Edge," which was made into a movie in 1990.

PETER CUSHING (Grand Moff Tarkin, the commander of the Death Star) ... died of cancer in 1994. He was 81. Despite a long career covering a variety of movie, television and stage roles, Cushing is probably best known for his appearances in low-budget British horror films in the 1950s and 1960s.

SIR ALEC GUINNESS (Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi) ... now 82, made his stage debut in 1934 and still plays occasional television and movie roles. He was knighted in 1959 for a long career as an actor, director and writer.

Guinness won an Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1957 movie "The Bridge on the River Kwai" and an honorary Oscar in 1980 for "advancing the art of screen acting through a host of memorable and distinguished performances". His 1985 autobiography is called "Blessings in Disguise."

ANTHONY DANIELS (C-3PO) ... appeared in the British-made TV series "Prime Suspect." He also used his falsetto C-3PO voice in the 1985 cartoon series "Droids." Daniels, 50, and other "Star Wars" actors have appeared at science fiction and comic book shows. The self-described world's expert on C-3PO also is said to be co-writing a comic book about the character.

KENNY BAKER (R2-D2) ... can be seen in the movies "The Elephant Man," "Amadeus," "Mona Lisa" and "Time Bandits." The 3-foot-8 inch English actor is 62. According to Premiere magazine, he tours with a one-man cabaret act.

PETER MAYHEW (Chewbacca) ... was a hospital attendant at the time he was cast, Premiere reports. Other than the "Star Wars" trilogy, the 7-foot-2 inch Mayhew has had just one other film role, in 1977's "Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger." Mayhew, 52, was a film editor early in his career and is now active on the "Star Wars" convention circuit.

DAVID PROWSE (Lord Darth Vader) ... now owns a fitness center in London and has not appeared in a movie since 1983's "Return of the Jedi." However, the 61-year-old Prowse recently reprised the Darth Vader role for the computer game Rebel Assault II, according to Premiere. Although he spoke Vader's lines as "Star Wars" was being made, Prowse says he didn't know James Earl Jones had dubbed his voice until the movie came out.

BILLY DEE WILLIAMS (Lando Calrissian) ... has a career as a painter as well as actor. Since 1991 he has had several solo exhibitions. Williams, 58, still works in movies (including last year's "Mask of Death") and has more than 50 TV and film credits to his name.

FRANK OZ (Yoda) ... is the director of "In and Out," a movie comedy coming out this year. But Oz, 52, is probably best known as the man behind Miss Piggy and other Muppet characters.

JAMES EARL JONES (voice of Lord Darth Vader) ... has played more than 100 film, television and theater roles, earning a Tony Award for his Broadway performance in "The Great White Hope."

Jones, 66, will appear in a made-for-cable movie this year called "The Second Civil War." Known for his deep, commanding voice, Jones titled his autobiography "Voices and Silences." It's a voice heard on television every day announcing "This is CNN

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