On June 6th I went to a concert with my good friend from way back in our Air Force days, Tresha. She was the friend who convinced me to go see the first Star Wars movie when it was released back in 1977. We saw it at the Cine Capri theater in Phoenix. All my misgivings about a “dumb space opera movie” were shelved. It didn’t matter that it was basically a dumb space opera. It was FABULOUS!
And of course, over the years, I’ve seen all the other Star Wars movies — often in spite of all the criticism of them. For those, the special effects made up for other flaws. But I saw all the sequels (in Bryan) and re-releases (in Kentucky) and prequels (back in Bryan) with one or the other of my ex-husbands, or my brother. The concert was an early birthday present from Tresha.
We got to the arena early to see the exhibit of movie props that were part of the show. There were costumes, a couple of people in “storm trooper” garb posing for pictures, a blinking, burbling, squealing R2D2 replica, and a lot of screens showing clips of art work and special effects processes. It was awesome. A lot of attendees were dressed in their own versions of some of the costumes — mostly kids. There were a LOT of kids. A lot of them, of course, had never even seen the original movies at the theater (I almost said “on a big screen, but considering the size of some t.v.s these days, that would probably be wrong to assume).
The concert was all the original sound track music by John Williams, played by the Star Wars Orchestra, and introduced by Anthony Daniels — the only actor to appear in all six movies, as C3PO. The music was played around themes from the films — the Empire theme, the Old Republic theme, the Rebellion theme — and accompanied by film clips shown on a huge screen behind the orchestra. During the intermission, we overheard someone sitting near us comment that this was the best way to see the Aniken Skywalker episodes — watch the best highlights without all the “awful parts.” Be that as it may, everything we saw and heard that day was epic. If you get a chance to go and see this show, don’t pass it up. Or at least go to the website and watch the trailer.
