TWOK may have engendered some "spirited discussion" in some Star Trek clubs or something in 1982, but it wasn't one of the biggest releases of that summer and there wasn't much buzz about it among the general public. The skiffy movies that got most of the attention that year were E.T. and Blade Runner.
In the domestic market
TWOK was the fourth highest grossing film of summer 1982 and the sixth highest grossing film of the year.
Blade Runner was #27 for the year, although its reputation and influence have grown over the years.
TWOK was also notable for having the largest opening weekend gross of any film up to that point ($14.3 million) and of any film that year, 1982 -- even
E.T. which went on to become the highest grossing film of all time (until
Jurassic Park dethroned it). At the average price of $2.94 a ticket,
TWOK sold approximately 4.9 million tickets that weekend at only 1,621 theaters. Remember that there were far fewer multiplexes in 1982.* That's an average of about 3,000 people watching
TWOK at each theater from June 4th-June 6th, 1982.
STID is looking at a $70.6 million opening weekend. At an average ticket price of $7.94, that's 8.9 million tickets sold at 3,868 theaters on an estimated 10,100 screens. That's 2.4 times the number of theaters, yet it only sold 1.8 times the number of tickets as
TWOK did in 1982. That's 2,300 people watching
STID at each theater from May 17th-19th, 2013.
* I have no idea how many movie screens
TWOK was on in 1982, but there were less than 20,000 indoor screens back then in the U.S. and today there are approximately 40,000.