Errrhhglllghhlghh.......

I'm tired.

Wednesday night was the big premier/standing-in-line-party/riot for Star Wars III: Revenge of the Sith. Two days later, and I'm still exhausted, trying to recover from the event. You wouldn't believe how many people showed up unless you saw it for yourself. When these people started showing up in tents last friday, I knew it was only going to get worse, but nothing could've prepared me for what it all actually amounted to at it's height. My shift was from 4:15pm to 12:15am, but I ended up staying later. For the first 5 hours I mainly did theatre checking, and stayed inside of the building, where it was suprisingly quiet. Later in the evening, at around 11 pm, Ben, Kyle and myself had the pleasure of admitting all 2,000 Star Wars fans into the buildng, who had just camped out anywhere from 18 hours to 5 days in our parking lot. I was surprised to see so many familiar faces from various places such as my current school, high school (people I haven't seen in almost a year), and even some high school teachers (Mr. Bailey, Ms. Catlyn (sp?) and Mrs. Neuman).
I did everything from theatre checking to building/maintenence inspection, crowd control, setting up/breaking down lines and caution tape, and even backing up concessions (the busiest concessions I've ever seen) for a period of about 45 minutes. At one point, every cash register at the concessions was open, and the line for each register stretched out of the doors of the building. From about 9pm onwards, I was literally running around for the rest of night trying to get certain taks accomplished, and I'm sure Ben and Kyle had even more fun dealing with the multitude of fans on the outside while we prepped on the inside. At around 12:30 am, after mass hysteria and dealing with 2000 rabid star wars fans, we clocked out and went in to actually watch the movie (for free, without having to wait days in a tent in a parking lot).

So what'd I think?

Well, forget everything you think about Eps 1 and 2. This story brings everything full story, provides the smoothest transistion from new to old I could possibly imagine, and almost even makes up for 1 and 2's mistakes. I've seen it twice since it opened, and it was better with a repeated viewing (perhaps because the second time watching I wasn't sore all over and dead tired). While not quite as well done as the original, as far as the quality of the plot, this new movie comes as close to the originals as possible. My only gripes come from a handful of cliche' lines here and there, and a 20 minute piece of movie in the center that could've easily been shortened to 15 and had the same effect. Otherwise, this is a great movie. It's what we've been waiting for since Return of the Jedi: another Star Wars movie that is actually quite impressive.

Go see it now.

(Just not at Edwards. We have enough people to deal with this weekend already.)