I can not believe it has now been a decade since 1999. That was a big year for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest for me was the first new Star Wars movie in 16 years. It was close to this time that the first teaser trailer for The Phantom Menace was released. I was in England at the time and I remember that the trailer showed up with The Prince of Egypt. I went to that movie just so I could see the trailer.
The teaser poster was cool in that it showed Anakin with his shadow being Darth Vader. Here is that poster
Also, Hasbro released a couple of sneak preview figures early on. I missed out on most of the Episode 1 marketing blitz, but Paul was nice enough to pick up one of these for me.
Marketers went overdrive with the Episode 1 merchandise, so even by the time I got back home a lot of it was on clearance. I picked up the main characters and the Naboo Starfighter, but other than that I didn’t go too crazy.
Below is the Teaser trailer for Phantom Menace.
Star Wars was considered the must see movie that year. Everyone knew it even other movie studios, so they even admitted it in their marketing. The tag line for the second Austin Powers movie was even “If you see one movie this year see Star Wars. If you see two movies this year then see Austin Powers.”
Here is the preview for that movie
Another little movie came out that year called The Matrix. 🙂 I can’t believe it is now 10 years old this year as well.