The end is here, sort of. The final Star Wars film was released at 12:01 AM on Thursday May 19, 2005. There are so many emotions: joy, because Star Wars has always been the happiest of happy places for me (since I was 5, anyway), sadness, because this is the end of the movies, more joy because the movie was fantastic. Granted, I’m always thrilled the first time I see a Star Wars movie in the theatre. Seeing the movie surrounded by the people who can appreciate it most was great. Some were in costume, others not.
This should describe a little of how it was. Jon has been counting down the hours until the start of the movie for a week. I kid you not, I have a saved text message which reads: 187 hours and 38 minutes! All day Jon would ask the time, then do the quick calculation and shout out the remaining time before the movie started. Everyone would then yell “Whoo” (the premise was to reenact the scene from Empire Strikes Back when the “first transport is away”). This continued long into the theatre where we also did a chant for JarJar and sang Happy Birthday to some random dude.
Once the film began, there were cheers of course (and tears from me, that damn 20th Century Fox logo followed by the Lucasfilm logo is like a Hallmark ad, gets me every time). After the initial cheers the packed theatre was so quite at times you could hear a pin drop. It was almost as though everyone would react as quickly as they could and then quiet down again so they would not miss what happened next.
The movie had a faster pace than the first two prequels. It went right into the action and stayed there for a while. I’m reluctant to write too much about the film before seeing it again. I really enjoyed it. It’s currently hovering in my top three for placement, possibly in the top two. While there were things I wish had been included into the movie, there is nothing I can think of that I’d remove. Then, more screenings may change my mind, so that’s why I’m holding back.
Here’s my waking hours: Sleeping in to 11 AM (Jon’s at the theatre), taking my time getting ready, going to Novi, hearing a friend on the radio, arriving in Novi, getting photos for the press, hanging out with friends, taking photos and notes, seeing the midnight showing, going to Denny’s for food and discussion, driving to downtown Detroit, getting lost (convinced I’d never find my way to where I was going), having a kind costumer who works in Detroit give me good directions, getting to the TV station, trying to put my hair in buns with hands still shaking from being lost in Detroit, getting the buns in and realizing I was about to be on TV, freaking out again, going into the studio and realizing that the cameras are controlled from another room and the studio is really small, being asked a not-so-easy question and trying not to show panic on air, chatting with the nice TV people, getting changed and following Jon to another theatre where his co-workers were going, getting the newspapers and reading the articles and looking at our photos in the paper (for the second day in a row), getting into the theatre, sitting, movie starting again (yay), waking up when the guy next to me cheers, waking up when Jon nudges me, realizing I’ve slept though about an hour of the movie and feeling all sorts of sick from lack of sleep and crappy food and too much excitement, going to the bathroom (feeling pukey, but OK), going to my car, trying to take a nap and waking every five minutes because someone drives by blaring Star Wars music, waking up when my phone alarm goes off, meeting back up with Jon (who also dozed, but didn’t flat out leave the theatre to nap in his car), going to work, talking about my celebrity status, talking about the movie, talking about the cameras that move without people in the same room controlling them, confirming that I did not sleep, “working”, driving home fighting to stay awake, going online, talking to Jon to make sure he arrives home safely. Goodnight.