V. The last hour, May 19, 1999
While waiting here, we were much more comfortable physically, and being first, much more comfortable emotionally. We (especially Angel) made some new friends. A guy played games with Angel for a while, and a girl read a Far Side book to her. She had a lot of fun. For our group, there were only four people, and we had to save 11 extra seats, so we kept leaving to find our companions (desperately hoping for more bodies to fill seats). Eventually, we made a strategy to save seats (Each person is spaced out with two empty seats in between. The people on the ends save one seat on the outside, too.).
Inside, our plan worked to perfection, and the first show began. First act: filling the seats. We stood guard while waiting for Heidi, the Lindsay's (six people), and four from the other group. They finally got in the theatre, and I was just ecstatic to see that we had perfect seats. I warned them that it may be way too loud, and gave them napkins to use as earplugs, and we waited. Two guys came in dressed as Darth Maul and Obi-Wan Kenobi. They were very impressive-looking, and the crowd shouted them to the front of the theatre, where they did a pretty good mock sabre fight.
Before too long, three beach balls were out and bouncing around, and management was encircling the crowd trying to capture the balls. The highlight for me was when the ball fell to a child dressed as a Jawa near the side aisle. A manager was pretty close to him, and held his arms out, trying to talk the kid into giving the ball to him as he eased his way towards the child. The crowd started shouting "No! No!". The kid looked at the manager, and then at the crowd, and it was a very emotional scene, and it should have been in slow motion when the kid finally threw the ball as hard as he could out to the audience. We cheered loudly.
It was, of course, a high school teacher who eventually got the ball and threw it to a manager, ending the fun for the moment. He was booed mercilessly. But any moment, the movie would begin. The audience cheered when it started, cheered for the Austin Powers commercial, laughed at the pointless Titan A.E. commercial, cheered for the Fox logo, cheered for the Lucasfilm logo, cheered for the Star Wars logo, and then was silent as the movie began. Cheers arose again for certain key character introductions (especially R2-D2), and there were loud cheers when the credits rolled at the end of the movie.
There were no disappointments.
We got the same seats for the next show. Heidi and the Lindsay's left, and my Dad and step-mom came, and we enjoyed virtually the same theatre experience and cheers. If you haven't already, you really should try to see this movie with a packed crowd in a great theatre like the Continental.
