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Okay, as I've said a few times before, I plan on waiting several days until seeing Revenge of the Sith at the cinema, probably by Wednesday, mostly to guarentee getting tickets and letting the excitement die down to some degree.

Anyway, I was curious to know what was the conditions of the theatres and audiences for those who have already attended screenings of the movie, basically stuff like how many people were in attendence and how they behaved, as well as how well you could follow the film because of such factors.

Additionally, if any of you have any theatre or audience-related vents, rants, or horror stories, feel free to post them here.

I went to a late morning Thurday show, very easy to get tickets and no line to get into the theatre. Listening to the box office agent though the early afternoon shows were already sold out. I didn't see anyone dressed up which would have been fun. We had sort of a dead crowd, which was disapointing, some laughter during the movie but not much in the way of cheers or clapping. Myself and the three friends I saw it with all liked it although the mood after the end seemed pretty somber. I'm pretty sure I saw several people wiping their eyes at certain parts, mostly with the twin moon shot at the end.

I may see it again this weekend (will for sure see it again next week) just to try to catch a more lively crowd. (for some reason I love going to movies where the crowd is responding quite a bit, enhances the experience for me).

Although one guy who sat in front of me looked very much like comic store guy from Simpsons (down to the ponytail even) which was pretty funny.

I was at the first showing I could get with my bro at the UCI in Preston. I noticed several from my uni's sci-fi club get the same train as me. Overall, the cinema was packed for the 0031 BST showing on the opening night and there were many fans with lightsabres or dressed up and so on. The cinema was packed, but my seats were prebooked and very good surprisingly. There was no retarded applause as the Star Wars title came up (something American cinemagoers seem to do often) but there was plenty of laughter at several scenes e.g. with Artoo and obvious excitement at the action and twists. I was pleased that at the emotional scenes it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop. These were real fans afterall and there were no kids, so I don't know if this'd be so if I'd gone to my usual later showing a week later or so.

Both the midnight and 7 pm showings were sold-out, but I bought my tickets online, so it wasn't a problem . The midnight screening had a higher percentage of "hard-core fans" as one would expect. There were several people dressed up as Jedi, a bunch of young kids with Vader masks and lightsabers, and a red vs green lightsaber fight (good natured) broke out in the lead up to the movie.

There was some applause when the "Episode III" scroll appeared, and the croud seemed really animated during the beginning of the film. As Anakin was seduced by the dark side, I heard losts of sniffling from what I would assume were people trying not to cry (I was one of them).

It was an overwhelmingly positive experiance, with my only complaint being 25 goddamn minutes of trailers and commercials.

Haminal10 wrote:It was an overwhelmingly positive experiance, with my only complaint being 25 goddamn minutes of trailers and commercials.

I'll echo that; it was a positive experience when I went, but during the seemingly endless commercials I could feel the anger rising.

-palpatine- give into your anger. . . .

We had one kid in the whole theatre, and he was well behaved, as were his parents.

Our projector actually broke TWICE during the previews, which caused a little angst, but all was well.

Biggest laugh in my crowd was yoda thumping the red guards.

Darth Wong wrote: I'll echo that; it was a positive experience when I went, but during the seemingly endless commercials I could feel the anger rising.

Do you know, at the midnight showing we had one ad, which was just a quick Renault sponsors this trailer feature thing, and then we had a couple of trailers but for good films (War Of The Worlds and the first Narnia movie) and then that was it.

I guess it was like TV late at night, they know the ads won't be something people would want to put up with that late.

I was on thursday, in an original-version (read: in English) showing, it was relatively empty, at max half-full.
The audience was luckily quite silent, though the whole audience laughed at many scenes with unintentional comedy (like the Palpatine/Anakin scene after the death of Windu).

I was at noon showings today and yesterday. Well behaved audience both times, well attended but not filled to capacity.

I attended a 4:15 showing. The house was nearly packed, and there were some young kids who couldn't be pacified. There was a teenage brat behind me speaking up during the movie. At one point he almost shouted "ouch!" when Vader caught fire. I would've thwacked the kid if I had a plastic lightsaber.

I need to see the movie again, considering my experience, though. It was more of an issue concerning my bladder and a growing headache than audience problems.

Normally if I have bladder issues, it bugs me through the rest of the movie if I don't go. Yet, a faint twinge happened near the end, but I was so enthralled, I actually forgot I needed a whizz.

Bah, I have direct authority over my bladder control. No potty breaks for me.

25 minutes of trailers? fuck! The movie itself is 2 1/2 hours long, thats three hours in the theater.


*makes mental note to only buy the small diet coke.

Quite good. Place was packed this afternoon (thankfully we'd booked tickets before). No phones went off, no screaming children, nothing to disturb the film (I don't count the odd chuckle as a disurbance).

The theatre I went to was at less than a third of its capacity when I went to the 3:45 showing. The typical fanboys were nowhere to be found in any of the showings (I'd arrived to see the 12:30 people leave and the 3:15 people enter), and nobody had a plastic lightsaber. The behavior of the crowd was decent, and they did laugh at certain scenes.

Contrary to my expectations, the sound quality was not sub-par and the screen was pretty large. There wasn't stadium seating, but that was okay for me. Though, I did have a problem with viewing, because either the projector must've been out of focus or I must be myopic.

I'm glad to hear that I wasn't the only one with bladder problems. I had taken a .517 L bottle of water with me and five cough drops, so I wouldn't cough during the movie (I'm suffering from an allergy). That and the amount of fluids I'd taken in earlier forced me to leave right before the arrest scene. That combined with congestion and drowse-inducing antihistimines prevented me from fully enjoying and appreciating the film.

Thanks to some coolness on the part of a local radio station and my local gaming store, I was able to get free tickets to the 12:01 AM showing on Thursday... when we went into the theater there were these three massive lines stretching all the way to the back of the parking lot waiting to get into the next showings after that (this made the front page of the local paper--which doesn't sound like much until you factor in that this is the third largest city in the state of Missouri). Walking past the lines (after figuring out that they were not, in fact, lines I was supposed to be in), I saw several people dressed up, having lightsaber fights and the like, and as I went down this path between the lines, this group of like fifteen guys just started belting out the Darth Vader theme (in das and dums); that got quite a chuckle out of me.

Anyway, once I got into the theater, I saw that me and my mom (I had to take her, she drove me there ) had come pretty late (only two hours early), so we ended up getting... not the best seats (which Mom complained about for the entire two hours we were waiting), but not the worst either. The two hours went by pretty fast, other than my mother's complaining, what with the radio station being there handing out prizes to people who had little numbers under their seats (I had no number, so I won nothing) and these four funny guys sitting in front of us, making jokes about trekkies and quoting the Chappelle Show the whole time.

Finally, it was time for the movie to start, and the DJ who had been stationed on the roof of the theater for 24 hours to cover all this came down, went to the front of our theater, and tried to make us think that a severe thunderstorm warning (which there actually was at the time) had delayed our showing of the movie until 3... all of about 2 people bought it. All the radio station's people went and sat down in their little reserved row, the lights went down, a massive cheer went up from the crowd... and then the commercials started. But there was only one commercial, followed by three previews that actually made sense to stick with Star Wars (Fantastic Four, War of the Worlds, and Batman Begins... on a slight tangential note, is anyone else tired of seeing previews for romantic comedies, kids movies, and serious dramas before action and sci-fi movies?), and we all gave them the MST3K treatment anyway, so it was actually rather fun... then the little Wehrenberg animation started up, about half the theater got up and started dancing and whispered along at the end, and the movie started...

Now, when the Lucasfilm logo popped up, I for one was expecting a massive cheer... and there was nothing. Then "a long time ago in a galaxy far far away..." happened, and I'm sure they heard us in all fifteen other theaters. For the rest of the movie, massive cheers abound (pretty much anything R2 did, for instance, especially when he took out those SBDs), but all cut short enough to not interfere with my ability to hear the dialogue... God I love watching a movie in a theater full of fanboys.

While we were waiting for the 12:01 there were a lot of people having "lightsaber" fights and such. Everyone was excited, but quieted down once the movie started.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Normally if I have bladder issues, it bugs me through the rest of the movie if I don't go. Yet, a faint twinge happened near the end, but I was so enthralled, I actually forgot I needed a whizz.

The funny thing was that I didn't buy anything to drink. The only thing I had was a bag of Reese's Pieces.

If you wanted atmosphere, then the best place was London. They showed all of the OT and then the other two films before the premier of Episode III and had Lucas, McCallum, Christensen and McDiarmid appear on stage along with snippets by the London Symphony Orchestra playing all day. Lucas himself said London was the "home of Star Wars". I wish I could've gone there.

Admiral Valdemar wrote: I wish I could've gone there.

I contemplated getting the train down, going straight to see them, then heading back up straight after (to avoid accomodation costs). Alas, exams and funds meant it wasn't to be.

I only just made it back alive for my exam (train got in for 0600, exam was 0930) and that's because the train to the showing was at 2257 and the next one back was 0537.

My only two problems:

1)The trailers: We only had two, and one was a simply awesome looking one for Wardrobe, but the other was "Sharkboy and Lava Girl." That pissed me off.

2) The crowd: I didnt mind the hyper atmoshpere of most of the crowd (it was the midnight showing after all) and the lightsaber fights and reditions of "Star Wars Gansta Rap" were entertaining, but when the movie started, people should have calmed down. They didnt. Certainly, I wasnt bothed by applause and cheers at the beginning and end, as well as intermiant laughs of expressions of juvliation (even the snickers during some of the cheesier sequences didnt bother me) but the audience went way over the line. Every time R2-D2 even moved, or Yoda did anything, anything at all, they cheered. This could be expected, but they did it way too much in my opinion. The worst bit was the scene where Padme reveals she's pregnant to Anakin. When this happened, out of nowhere, half the audience did a spontaneous Jerry Springer'esque "No she didnt!" jeer. That pissed me off.

I went to the midnight showing as well. I went to a really big theater in Columbus, OH. I saw probably 100 people dressed up, it was really awesome haha. People in our theater were so excitable they let out huge roars in reaction to previews, such as Narnia. It was certainly an experience!

I was at an 10:30pm thursday showing. about 30 people in the theater. pretty quiet. There was noticable giggling when Yoda Pwn3d the two red guards, but that was it as far as noise.