China has screened the original Star Wars movies for the first time almost four decades after George Lucas’s space opera helped usher in the Hollywood blockbuster era.

Star Wars, from 1977, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983) all got an outing on 14 June, with an official Shanghai international film festival screening of the first film in the series taking place on 16 June. Reaction was mixed, with local Disney reps citing “huge buzz and excitement” from filmgoers in the world’s most populous nation, but some viewers complaining that the original movie was not, in fact, much cop.

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“The visual effects are amazing for 1977,” wrote filmgoer Xiaosi Buxiang on the Chinese website Douban. “But the character design is weak, the leading actress is not beautiful, the leading actor is not handsome and action scenes are like children fighting.”

Overall, the film picked up a rating of 8.3 out of 10 from viewers, as well as more than 35,000 comments. Another user, posting as T-maxdo, suggested the film should be viewed through a “comparative perspective”, writing: “In 1977, the United States already had such stunning imaginative creativity and movie special effects, while China had just ended the cultural revolution period and its people had just emerged from a dark era.”

Hollywood films were rarely shown in the country in the 1970s, when mainly Chinese-produced movies were sanctioned for public screening. The number of screens on which to project them was also small – as recently as 2002, China had only 1,300 cinemas. There are now at least 10 times that figure, and China is on course to overtake the US as the world’s largest box office before 2020. That transformation has come about in part through a huge program of cinema building and following the introduction of an annual quota system allowing foreign films to be shown. In 2013, this was increased from 20 to 34.

At the 16 June screening of Star Wars at a central Shanghai cinema, John Williams’s famous theme played in the lobby and fans wearing C-3PO and stormtrooper-adorned clothing flooded into an almost sold-out show. Many had already seen the movies via illegal download, while others were more familiar with Lucas’s later, oft-derided prequel trilogy, but all were keen to see the older film on the big screen.

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“This will be the first-ever theatrical screening of the original trilogy in China,” Disney China’s Kerwin Lo told AFP before the screenings. “The huge buzz and excitement generated is going to be great for the Star Wars franchise and the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”

It was not clear whether the festival screened the original, CGI-less versions of Lucas’s movies or the much-criticised 1997 Special Editions. Nor at this stage was it therefore obvious whether in China, Harrison Ford’s Han Solo shot bounty hunter Greedo first.