1999 All Over Again

"The Force Awakens" opens in the cinemas tonight, and LC and I have tickets to a midnight showing. Which is all rather exciting - as is so often the case, it seemed ages away when it was first announced, then it gradually crept closer, then the tickets went on sale, and then it was suddenly here.

This will be the fourth Star Wars film I've seen on opening day: I was too young for the first three, but in 1999 I left work early to see "The Phantom Menace" as soon as possible, I went to a midnight showing for "Attack of the Clones", and then just went to a regular evening showing for "Revenge of the Sith". (I've also only been to two midnight showings before: AotC as mentioned, plus the first "Spiderman", which I actually saw in an advance screening, which was nice.)

Part of the reason for going so soon is simple impatience - I want to see it as soon as possible, and anyway my next viable opportunity would be Saturday which is a veritable age away. But part of it is also a desire to avoid spoilers, which will become increasingly difficult as time goes on.

Indeed, I've even avoided reading any of the reviews of the film for this reason - one of the reviews of AotC dropped a massive spoiler in the text with no preamble, about which I was not best pleased. But the other part is that I don't trust the reviews to be accurate anyway - as with any J.K. Rowling novel, or a new season of Game of Thrones, or similar, I suspect many of the reviewers are reviewing the name "Star Wars" and not the merits of the movie itself. Indeed, they could probably have written their reviews without bothering to see the film.

Today is in many ways like that day back in 1999 - a new Star Wars trilogy is beginning, a new hope that this time they might have gotten it right. And, if only for a brief moment I'll be back to those Saturday mornings where, week after week, we'd get up early to watch the first film (on Betamax no less!). It's going to be weird having the Disney logo instead of the 20th Century Fox fanfare that nature intended, but then we'll be off on the adventure...

But, mostly, I still trying desperately not to get my hopes up. After the crushing disappointments of the Star Wars prequels, and "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", and the Lord of the Rings prequels, and SPECTRE, I've found it's best just to assume everything will suck until I've seen it.

Which is probably wise, but I can't imagine it will survive once the text "A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away..." appears on the screen. And we'll be back to 1999 all over again.

Please don't suck...