This year December held an event even more anticipated than Christmas for me: the opening of The Force Awakens, the latest story it the Star Wars franchise. And to make it special, I took the family to see it at Universal City Walk at the Cinema Stadium AMC IMAX Theatre.
The movie shattered box office records its opening weekend grossing $238 million, securing it a place as the largest opening weekend of a film ever, according to the LA Times. That came as no surprise considering the hype, and the fact that it took me two hours and a lot of patience with the Fandango server that kept crashing, to get tickets when they first went on sale. We pieced together some costumes and got ready to join hundreds of fellow fans in what for some of us was the biggest event of the year.
It’s hard to explain Star Wars fandom to others. I know people who have extreme collections of memorabilia. I know others who are able to work hard at morphing their body to fit into super expensive, specialized costumes and then visit children in hospitals—as well as appearances at comic fan shows. For those people, Star Wars has a deep and personal meaning that’s just tough to explain. For someone my age, Star Wars just always was, the first movie having been released when I was a toddler.
The story, and accompanying merchandizing blitz I’m sure, captivated me, and became a very real universe. It was a universe I introduced my children to at a young age as well, so they were thrilled to be seeing the latest story almost as much as I was excited to see it.
We stayed at the Universal Hilton overlooking Universal Studios and the City Walk just to amplify the excitement. We went to an early show so that we could experience the City Walk, an area outside of Universal Studios, which boasts restaurants, shops, and entertainment. It was a little intimidating for us to dress up as movie characters, because that’s not something that we’ve done before, but it didn’t take long before we were in good company.
Our hotel was a short walk away. The minute we pulled up, a valet was on the scene taking our bags and costumes. “Now this is a hotel,” my youngest, Sebastian, said.
The boys watched outside of our 14th floor window calling out every time they saw a costumed fan. “I see a Sith!” “There’s a guy dressed like a Jedi!” “This guy has a lightsaber!” One of them would call out every few minutes.
After some last-minute nips and tucks to costumes, we hiked a few minutes from our room to the City Walk—in full costume—and then to the theater, where we found several like-minded Star Wars fans. It was incredible to see the variety of costume expertise. There were several women, dressed in regular clothes but sporting Princess Leia’s double braided buns ala Star Wars: A New Hope. We saw a man dressed in the ultimate geek chic: a bow tie, with a button down shirt with tiny TIE fighter aircraft on it. His two 7- or 8-year-old boys were wearing similar outfits along with suspenders. Too cute!
Then things began to get a bit more interesting. There was the high-heeled, long, black haired-Darth Vader, and the Princess Leia in her long white robes—and my boys even saw a male Princess Leia. There were a lot of Jedi, several of which decided to have a lightsaber battle in front of the theater for several minutes before security eventually broke it up for safety reasons.
The Universal City Walk IMAX Theater actually played the show about every hour during the opening weekend and we chose midday. Afterward, we decided to take in the City Walk atmosphere. We took the kids to a family friendly and very pricey dinner at Hard Rock Café, followed by a bucket of freshly made mini doughnuts at Sparky’s.
Universal City Walk is one of our favorite LA visits and so having gotten their fill, our kids were ready to call it an early evening and hit the pool back at the Hilton.
Along the way we got a lot of “May the Force be with you” comments. And my Han Solo costume even caught the attention of a guy in a Pokémon cosplay outfit who enthusiastically complimented me on my nice “outfit.” Geek praise is high praise indeed.
Contact Editor Shelly Cone at scone@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 24-31, 2015.