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A STAR WARS "SHILL"-EBRATION by Cliff Stephenson George Lucas and Lucasfilm Ltd. hosted the first annual Star Wars Celebration convention April 30-May 2. Our intrepid guest reporter Cliff Stephenson attended the much-anticipated event, though we'll leave you to judge whether the Force was with him or not. Some captions for the photos are provided for you amusement.
This past weekend, Denver, CO was touted as the center of the Star Wars universe. All I can say about that is, the center was the last place I wanted to be. For countless numbers of you that were disappointed that you were unable to attend the Star Wars Celebration in person, don't be. This event was about as much fun as standing in the rain all day. In fact, that pretty much sums up the entire event, literally. (I guess I should have known the day would be fraught with confusion and disbelief when I saw the 2 men dressed as Klingons arrive to the bewildered looks of the crowd.)
This event was promoted as the Star Wars event to be at. What followed has got to be the biggest example of disorganization, combined with an utter lack of imagination, the world has ever witnessed. I'll give you a rundown of the events as they happened... The weather in Denver was extremely rainy most of the weekend, not exactly ideal by anyone's standards. Luckily this event was indoors, at least that's what I thought. The list of events promised by Lucasfilm and the Star Wars Insider seemed to be a fan's dream. On display, got example, was a life-size X-wing fighter. This brings us to disappointment #1. This thing looked like it was sculpted out of plastic in someone's back yard. They were to have costumes and props from the new movie as well as the classic trilogy. Well, I saw models for 4 of the original ships and the rest was for Episode 1. Kind of hard to get excited about the new Jedi fanny pack since I haven't seen the movie. There was a Star Wars timeline display. This looked an awful lot like one of those walls you'd see in an elementary school when the third grade class does some sort of "theme" project. Not exactly blowin' my skirt up yet, and the worst is yet to come.
Now the bulk of these next irritants stem from the same problem, people. They sold WAY too many tickets to this thing. In the rear corner, they were doing a home THX demonstration using the Smithsonian video "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth." My friends and I decided to check it out. We got in line about 20 people back and within minutes they opened the doors and began seating. They quickly stopped about 5 people in front of us as the man at the door tells everyone that the next show will be in 1 hour. "?????" It was only a home theater set up and the room wasn't very large, so they only let 15 to 20 people in every hour. So only about 400 out of 30000+ got to see this. Why even do it if only 1% gets to be involved? We next spotted a huge line about 500 people deep, along the inside of the hanger. I'm thinking, "It's got to be to get into one of the big celebrity presentations." Oh no, just the line to get into the celebration store. I convinced my friends to get into line with me, hoping the line would move fast. Which it did until we were 25% through it. The reason for the stoppage? Their credit card line went down and they were doing all transactions over a cell phone. My friend, Jason, even left to go outside to the tent set up for the private dealers and was gone nearly 40 minutes without much line movage from us. Apparently, things weren't any better outside. The dealers were all pissed because the tent had an inch of rain on the floor and the roof was leaking all over their posters, comic books, toys, etc.
One of the organizers was panicked because one of the Star Wars "pseudo-celebrities" was supposed to be on stage but hadn't arrived yet. No one seemed to know where he was. Any way back to the line. I got so tired of people asking me, "What's this line for? " that I swore I would tell the next person who asked, "They're showing the new movie!" just to watch their gleeful reaction as they ran to the back of the line. Unfortunately, no one else asked. As we finally approached the door at the front of the line, some 2 hours later, we were smacked in the face with reality. "Oh no. This line goes outside and you have to wait in the rain for another hour to get into the store." To quote Eric Cartman, "Screw you guys, I'm going home!" During the pilgrimage I now know as "the line," I dared make the mistake of having to go to the restroom. The men's room nearest to me had what looked to be about a 45 minute wait. I scurried around looking for another one, eventually find it. However, this particular men's room had a piece of paper over the door that read, "Women." I hesitantly asked the guard standing nearby if the room with the line was the only one. Of course it was! A 6-person capacity men's room for 15,000-20,000 men seems perfectly reasonable, doesn't it? I could use the temporaries set up outside, but only if I didn't mind waiting another hour in the rain to get back in.
How, you may ask, does any of this relate to DVD? Well, producer Rick McCallum did say that WHEN the trilogy does come to DVD, it will be "something special." Tell me you didn't know that before today. (Editor's Note: Later at the convention, Mr. Callum is reported to have spoke and stated the Star Wars DVD releasewas mostly like "in a year and a half.") I'll give you one final example of the disappointment this event handed me. As we were leaving, we decided to grab something to eat. We entered what was promised as "a very special Star Wars food court." A tent serving Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and KFC. Nothing more. I had envisioned perhaps a cantina setting with the alien band playing as you ate. Instead, it was set up like your local state fair eatery. I feel especially bad for people who traveled long distances to attend this. I spoke with a couple from Wisconsin as they tried to stay dry under the wing of a plane outdoors. They sort of halfheartedly said, "Yeah, it's pretty fun" with no such look on their faces. That seemed to be pretty much the case. People who dropped a grand to fly out and stay in a hotel are trying to convince themselves that it was all worth it. I only lost $34 and a half-hour drive. I'm sure there were people that had a great time, I'm just not somebody that gets real giggly about seeing the new Darth Maul cookie jar 4 days early. Did I mention that all this happened within the first 4 hours on the very first day? Needless to say, I didn't go back on Saturday, but I heard it was worse. Bring on Sunday. Well, the sun finally came out for a little while today, but don't you go getting the idea that it was any better. Had they learned anything from the previous 2 days? Not at all, in fact they got worse. The lines were all the same, the crowds just as bad. Bottom line, the folks that put on this event fell very short of what they promised. You can't blame them for the weather, but the people from the Insider live in Colorado and know the weather can be sunny and 72 degrees today and 28 with snow tomorrow. They didn't plan for that.
They also seriously oversold this thing. When we arrived to register on Friday morning, we were told they had already run out of the welcome packets with information, schedules, and other goodies. Didn't they know how many they were going to need? When I asked again on Sunday, I noticed that they were STILL selling tickets for the day. That was at 3:30pm. When is enough?
Now here's the kicker. David Prowse, the man inside the Darth Vader costume, was actually in Denver this weekend at a different sci/fi function. Word came from there that he very much wanted to be involved in the celebration but wasn't invited. The reason why? Lucasfilm only wanted Episode 1 actors and no one from the original trilogy was wanted there. Thanks for nothing, Mr. Lucas!
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