Yes, I saw Star Wars, Episode III. But that’s not the war I’m talking about.

Episode III

My daughter and I went to the midnight showing of “Revenge of the Sith”. (Quick review: Yes, worth seeing; no, Lucas still can’t write a love scene.) But this blog is not about the movie, it’s about the event.

Imagine this picture… You are in a room full of Star Wars geeks, many of whom are dressed in elaborate costumes with expensive (as in over $200) light sabers. You have been waiting for hours for the show to start, and have suffered through the trailers. The obligatory “Please turn off all cell phones” and “Remember our concession stand” message are now playing and the movie event of the year is just seconds away from starting.

Pause now with this picture in your mind and think about how the Star Wars movies always start. I know you’ve seen them. The big STAR WARS logo flashes on screen, the brass fanfare sounds and the words “In a galaxy far, far away” start scrolling on the screen.

Also remember that if you are at the midnight showing, then you are there not only for the movie (which you will probably see several times over the next few weeks), but for the experience, the event! The final movie is showing and you just want to drink in the experience and feel the mood.

And then seconds before the movie starts… the projector skips a beat and the frame gets out of synchronization with the projector. The top half of the screen is now showing at the bottom, and the bottom of the screen is at the top. The logo was split across the screen so that it read:

   WARS
  -----
  STARS

The room was in an uproar! Chants of “FIX IT” and “RESTART” echoed throughout the theater. The crowd reacted as if the projector malfunction was ruining the whole experience. Someone in the back of the room stood up and blocked the projection beam so that the picture could not be seen … and the crowd cheered because they did not want to see a flawed first performance (why shutting one’s eyes was not sufficient was never clear to me).

The theater staff was not exactly helpful. At first someone came out and said that they would get it fixed shortly and would restart the film. And they did get it fixed within a few minutes, but didn’t restart it. It didn’t matter, the crowd was so upset that they kept chanting “RESTART” after the picture was fixed. Finally the staff came out and said that weren’t able to restart it (never sure just why), and that the problem was in all the theaters (Really? In all 20 theaters in the movieplex? In what way are the theaters linked so that the same problem happens in all them at the same time?)

Finally it was obvious that they weren’t restarting it, and the crowd settled down and we could begin to watch the show. At that point, we were in the middle of a space battle (I’m not quite sure who was fighting who), and there were little drilling droids on Obi wan’s fighter. Oh well, it was Star Wars and we settled in to enjoy it.

An aside: You got to believe that a significant portion of that midnight showing crowd was planning on multiple viewings of the movie. Lets say two-thirds were planning on seeing it more than once. With 20 sold out theaters with 200 to 300 people per theater makes (around) 5000 people there that night. Now if two-thirds of 5000 were going to pay to see the movie twice, but now have a free pass, that right around $30,000 that was lost that night. Wow. That’s an expensive mistake.

Oh, and I have one other piece of advice to those going to midnight Star Wars showings. If you are going to go in costume, go all out and do it right. If you show up with a Darth Vadar helmet that looks like it came from a K-Mart Halloween costume rack, and the Darth Vadar standing next to you looks as if he just stepped off the movie set ... well, you look pretty silly.

Just go see the movie and enjoy it.

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