The Force Was With Me

Marathon, FL

I wanted to see the SF movie, The Martian.  Libby is not a big SF fan, so a reasonable compromise was for me to go alone.   So, last night I walked up to the theater for the 1900 movie showing.

When I got there, I was surprised.  The Martian was gone and in its place was the new Star Wars movie.  It was the premiere day for that movie and according to the news, was sold-out nationwide for weeks to come.  Uh Oh.  But I persisted, and to my surprise there was no line.  I just walked up and bought a ticket 15 minutes before show time.  Marathon could have been the only place in America where I could do that.

The crowd inside was fun.  There were lots of kids, as you might expect.  There was even a crying baby.  I'm pretty sure that I must have been the oldest person in the audience.   Before the show, a man walked in with an Obi-Wan-Kenobi outfit and a light saber.  The kids loved that, and they all crowded to get pictures of themselves swinging the saber.

As soon as the lights went down to begin the show, the crowd went wild.  Throughout the movie, they cheered, laughed, cried, and clapped.   Especially, when each old character, man/woman/bot, from the original movie appeared.  I've never seen such an enthusiastic audience.

So, how was the movie?  Well, I was not impressed.  It was a downer to see the classic characters all apparently older than me (Wookies and bots excepted). Even the audience seemed to be quiet during the action, and to come alive only at the appearance of their beloved classic characters. Indeed those initial appearances seemed to be the whole point of the movie. The only thing worse would be a Rocky remake with Sylvester Stallone in his 80s.