A Totally Fun Thing That I Might Do Again (My Star Wars Marathon Report)
At some point in March or April there was this announcement that, in tandem with the 25th anniversary re-release of the Phantom Menace, there would be a 24hr marathon of all 9 Star Wars movies over the May the 4th weekend at AMC theaters. I found myself quite tempted by the idea, seemed like a good way to celebrate my birthday. When tickets went on sale I was surprised to discover that the marathon was only being held in about a dozen cities and Columbus was not one of them. Surely there was a theater’s worth of people in Columbus that would want to do this! But for whatever reason it was a pretty limited event. Oh well. Probably for the best, 24hrs is a long time to sit and watch movies…BUT one day when the marathon is buzzing around in my head again I check to see if there are any tickets available in Chicago, because, you know, why not just check? I check and there is ONE seat still available. This is my sign. I snatch it right up and, weeks later, I drive to Chicago to undertake this undertaking.
(Some might ask: What about Liz? Well this was very much a: “You go have fun doing that and text me a lot” event.)
After an amazing dinner at Supekhana, Mom and Dad dropped me off at the River East AMC a few blocks east of Michigan avenue, a couple blocks north of the Chicago River, and a few blocks west of Lake Michigan. It was a very “being dropped off for camp” moment. I knew nothing about what was or wasn’t allowed at the marathon so I brought one bag of personal affects (I would be very glad that I could brush my teeth the next morning) and a bag with fleece blanket that Grandma “made” for me and a pillow encased in my Return of the Jedi pillowcase from my Return of the Jedi sheet set from 1983. I had a few slices of nice sourdough bread in one pocket as well as a couple beef sticks. Of course I was tempted to arrive with all sorts of food on me but I didn’t know the rules or the situation!
Going up to the theater (it’s on the third floor or a building where there’s a bowling alley and a place that’s like Dave and Buster but isn’t Dave and Busters on the second floor) I saw a few other people definitely heading to the marathon (or planning on sleeping through Kung Fu Panda 4). In the lobby there’s a Boba Fett hanging out with a few Reys and Jedis as well as other Jedi-robed individuals milling about with all the other movie goers of a bustling Friday night. The marathon is to start at 8pm but I’ve gotten there at around 7:15, but I appreciate the time this early arrival has given me to get the lay of the land. At the door of our theater (Theater 11!) there is an AMC woman who seems like she’s from the AMC Special Events Squad and not your standard AMC theater staff member checking people in and crossing their spot off on a seating chart. She also gives me a copy of the film schedule and a great big rather nice Phantom Menace poster.
There’s already plenty of people in the theater settling in. I catch snippets of Star Warsy conversations. I find my spot (Seat H10) and set down my stuff.
A very important thing to note now is that this was a theater of recliner seats. I cannot imagine doing this marathon in a non-recliner environment.
As I’m going to be at the theater for a whole day, I go buy a soda cup. As an A-List manager, my medium cup is upgraded to a large for free. Throughout the marathon I try all sorts of 0-calorite soda combinations and find myself heading to the bathroom 2-3 times per movie.
Oh something else to point out! As I’m seated in the front of the back third of a stadium-style auditorium, I’m very close to a door out to the 2nd floor of the theater and there’s a bathroom right out there. It makes for a very quick trip.
When I return to my seat with my soda cup my neighbor has arrived. He’s a real nice recent college grad with a very deep knowledge of the Star Wars stuff I do not know a lot about, the new High Republic stuff in particular. We’ve got similar “I’ve never done a marathon before but I found an available seat” stories and really, class act guy. Throughout the night we’ll have conversations between movies and say goodbye at the end, it’s an ideal marathon seating buddy situation.
Finally it’s 8 o’clock and the lights go down. Trailers play! The Nicole Kidman commercial plays! Will there be trailers before every movie? NO! Just the first one. But that would have been wild if there had been.
8:00pm - Episode I: The Phantom Menace
Well the room is ready for it. There’s a guy with a very distinctive laugh that cracks up over everything Jar Jar says and does and it makes the rest of us laugh. We spend the movie just being Jar Jar fans and when the doors in the Theed hangar open revealing Darth Maul and Duel of the Fates kicks in the crowd goes wild. We’re off to a great start, movie flies right by and the Pod race was real exciting.
10:45 - Episode II: Attack of the Clones
I was interested to see how the movie that ranks at the bottom of many (most) Star Wars rankings was going to play. Well, it played great! Laughing at/with Jar Jar was replaced by laughing at/with nearly everything Anakin said and Yoda with a light saber still gets cheers. My neighbor claps and cheers for the appearance of Dexster Jetster, I should’ve joined his solitary tribute.
1:30am - Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
People start sleeping. Although I arrived at the marathon anticipating that I’d be sleeping (as indicated by the pillow and blanket I brought) I actually never do sleep – oh there’s some nodding off that I snap out of a few times, but I never sleep-sleep. I had thought of parts of movies I’d be willing to miss, but while watching the movies, I just kept wanting to see the movies. So I don’t tuck in and sleep – it really takes resolve to sleep during loud adventure movies, so if you don’t commit, it isn’t happening. Most people seem to wake up for the finale of the movie.
During the end credits AMC workers come in and cut the sound while the credits role to begin a trivia contest. OOOh boy the room gets MAD that they’re not letting us hear the music with the credits, particularly this one woman, she’s yelling that she should be hearing “Battle of the Heroes.” The trivia contest is interesting, you’ve got a room full of know it all’s battling it out for sequel trilogy posters and whatnot. I would not want to be the guy that said the name of the Ewok medicine man was Chief Chirpa – rest of the marathon everyone was looking at him like “that’s the guy who thought Chief Chirpa was the medicine man” but none of the questions really offer magnificent opportunities to flex deep Star Wars knowledge. Still, congratulations to everyone who won a poster or backpack!
Speaking of Star Wars swag, I should add that they were selling $50 R2D2 popcorn buckets in the lobby and people were buying them like crazy. Very hot item.
It’s 3:50 in the morning and we have an hour gap before Episode IV starts. Out in the hallway I investigate familiar noises coming from within the neighboring theater and see that the final battle of the Phantom Menace is playing to a crowd of 3 people. An overnight Star Wars marathon is one thing, but catching a 2am showing of the 25th anniversary re-release of the Phantom Menace? That’s really wild.
I go outside and walk to a 7-11 that’s a few blocks away. I was hoping to find a warm thing to eat, but nothing is on the rollers this late at night/early in the morning. I return to the theater re-energized for…
4:50am - Episode IV: Star Wars
The chance to see Star Wars on the big screen was a major motivator in my attending the marathon. Having been on my mission during the 1997 re-releases, I hadn’t seen Star Wars in a theater since the 80’s…I mean I probably hadn’t seen it in-theater since my dad took me to see it for having given a talk in Primary. And while I had to make do with this being the Special Edition version, I was just thrilled to be seeing it. The opening notes of the opening theme (which I had already heard 3 times that night) seemed absolutely supersonic this time and literally blew me back in my chair. (I’ll add that the crowd, no matter the hour or movie, always clapped and cheered for start of each Episode). A New Hope is my favorite Star Wars by a long mile and I was just in heaven for it. I think it was the most slept-through movie of the night, in my ideal audience we’d all be throwing popcorn in the air and cheering at the top of our lungs when the Millenium Falcon swoops in on Darth Vader’s TIE fighter at the end of Luke’s trench run–I mean for me nothing in the universe gets better than that–BUT at least people clapped and cheered the Death Star blowing up. At this point I had seen all I came for and everything else was a bonus. And we weren’t half way through.
I believe it was after Episode IV that we had another round of trivia and my neighbor won a Rise of Skywalker poster for knowing the name of Supreme Leader Snoke’s star destroyer (The Supremacy [which I also knew]) And there was a bit of a battle over if the Dark Saber counts as a lightsaber when we were asked if anyone could list every color light saber to appear in all the movies AND tv shows.
7:10am - Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back
The top of most lists! I had seen it at Lincoln Center with live music in 2017, which I now realize wasn’t so recent, but it felt like I had just seen it. Great, great movie. I don’t think I realized before that the end, when Luke and Leia and the droids are watching the Falcon fly away, they’re in Luke’s hospital room. Luke sure spends a lot of time in hospital rooms in this movie! OH that reminds me, the room’s reaction to Leia kissing Luke? We know too much!
9:30am - Episode VI: Return of the Jedi
People have begun to change out of their cosplay into comfier clothes. People have begun to leave, too. Turns out the show wasn’t entirely sold out after all and the seats just get emptier as we go along from this point. At the end I’d say it was as light as 2/3rd’s full in there. But anyway, I see a Dad and his son leaving in the lobby and it gives big “ok we agreed to stay overnight to watch the first five but now we’ve got to go home and mow the lawn” energy. Oh! Speaking of fathers and sons, earlier in the undertaking I learned from my friend Sarah that her dad, a friend of mine and my family’s and my parents’, was at the marathon (In Florida, I imagine) with one of his grandsons. That was just great news.
Anyway, I had seen Jedi last summer for its 40th anniversary re-release and really thought I’d be sleeping through it. Nope! Watched it all! Big laughs when Leia tells Han she loves Luke…as a brother.
Another break between trilogies. I go out into the sunshine and people and get a salad at Sweetgreen. It is so nice to encounter a vegetable again.
12:30pm - Episode VII: The Force Awakens
It is disappointing how much this movie is like Episode IV but it also has some great Star Wars moments in it—and Kylo Ren is an absurdly top tier Star Wars character, really the freshest and most compelling element of all the sequel trilogy. I was pretty jazzed watching it. Between movies I overhear a discussion whether or not bombs can drop in space as we prepare for Episode VIII – and someone applies 4th edition Star Wars roleplaying game rules on space travel to figure out how long it took the Falcon to get from Hoth to Bespin in Episode V.
3pm - Episode VIII: The Last Jedi
Surely the most divisive episode of Star Wars but the audience all seemed to wake up and rally for this one. Clapping and cheering was back as we entered the final stretch of the marathon. A weaker Brigham would have said he was good with the first VII and left but THERE ARE NO WEAK BRIGHAMS WHEN IT COMES TO STAR WARS and I hung in tight for those last two. I like to enjoy Star Wars movies with all their ups and downs and set aside some of my Episode VIII qualms as best as I could but I can’t clap for a force projection of Luke when I know he’s just a force projection!
5:45pm - Episode IX: Rise of Skywalker
Personally, there’s a lot I like about Episode IX but, a few years out, yeah, this is not the finale we were hoping for. So it’s just the little bummer that the marathon does not end with a movie that gets the hugest cheers out of us BUT it gets cheers out of us and I think we’re cheering for each other, too, because, wow, we watched all the Star Warses! Watching it there is stuff I really like and we all let out a big laugh at Poe’s now-infamous “Somehow Palpatine has returned” and I had an epiphany: Science Fiction? It can be preposterous, that’s okay!
Well, in exactly 24hrs and 5 minutes we finished the marathon – I have to give a lot of credit to AMC for sticking to the schedule exactly as it was printed. We all got pretty good at getting back to our seats with a couple moments to spare before each movie started as the night and day went on.
I left quite beat, having been awake for pretty much 36 hours straight, beat but not dead. Dad picked me up and I caught him up on my trip to Star Wars camp. I felt very “Well, I’ve done that so I don’t have to do it again” at the time (it’s a grueling thing! All you have to do is keep sitting and watching movies but still, it’s grueling!) but now, only a week later, while I might not be dying to watch any Star Wars movies just yet (although I might be open to watching Solo fairly soon) I can already sense that, yeahhh, someday, I might just do it again.