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I spent 22 consecutive hours watching the 9 main Star Wars movies, collectively known as the Skywalker Saga, and I wanted to recap my experience.
TLDR:
Star Wars I-III were much better than I remembered. Episode IX (The Rise of Skywalker) might be the only Star Wars movie that I still hate. The original trilogy is still fantastic, but the added edits and CGI really is as terrible as we all remember them to be.
The Details:
The movies were shown at the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco and played in the order they occurred within the SW universe, starting with episode I and ending with episode IX. It was a flat $90 fee, with rules clearly stating, “if you’re late to the beginning or if you leave the theater, we reserve the right to offer your spot to someone else without a refund.”.
We started at 8pm on Friday night, and ended at 6pm on Saturday, May the 4th (aka #StarWarsDay). Tickets were $90 each, and at least ten folks dressed up in costumes. I’d estimate that there were 300 people at the start, but by the end of episode III (around 2:30 AM), that number was down to 100. About 12 hours later, that number was down to about 50 of us.
The winner of the costume contest received a Jar Jar blanket
About 20 hours into the marathon, this is what the crowd looked like right before the final movie
food and drink are always special at the Alamo Drafthouse.
The MC of the event did a great job bringing energy up between films.
My opinions before the Marathon:
I like the Star Wars movies. I’m 46, so I grew up with the original trilogy as a very important part of my childhood. I still like those three films and have probably watched them 20 times each by now. I’m not hardcore into Star Wars, but I did make a whole-ass comic book about the Star Wars universe, so I still carry a strong love of the series.
When the prequels came out, I think I camped out for tickets or something like that. I remember a group of us sitting in lawn chairs as we waited to get in, and the folks around us had brought actual tents, so it must have been an early viewing of episode I. I was so excited to see it, but like many folks my age, I hated all the prequels. Possibly because our expectations were impossibly high. I still saw the next two films on opening day, but never watched them again after that. I thought they were bad. I didn’t HATE them, I just didn’t need to watch them again.
I also watched the postquels (episodes VII-IX) when each of them came out. I liked them much better than prequels, but still never watched any of them beyond their theater release. I LOVED the new characters like Rey and Fin, but thought their character arcs were handled poorly. Especially Fin, who had so much potential. The thing I remember the most about the postquels was how angry I was that episode VIII seemed to be shitting on everything exciting from episode VII. I really remember Luke throwing the lightsaber over a cliff and thinking it was a perfect metaphor for how one director set up an interesting world, and the other director just threw it all away.
If I could sum up my key complaint about the last three movies it would be: I’M TIRED OF HEARING ABOUT THE SKYWALKERS. It felt like there was a whole world of new characters to explore, but in the end it was all just about a handfull of people named Skywalker. It felt like nothing else anyone did mattered, because it was all about fate.
Here I am in my homemade Darth Vader sweatshirt right before watching 22 hours of Star Wars.
My opinions After the Marathon:
Like I said before, I hadn’t watched the prequels since they were originally released, meaning I’ve had about 20 years to get over the hype and disappointment of my first viewing. I’m glad I got to see them again because I felt like they’ve gotten a little better with age. There are parts that I still dislike, like “midichlorians” and Anikin’s immaculate conception, but I can better understand why folks would enjoy these films. Especially younger viewers.
The dialog and acting in episode I is extremely stiff. It’s slow and unnatural. It’s a little better in episode II, and almost totally fine in episode III. There were several parts in the prequels that felt poorly dubbed. I’m not sure if they were actually re-recorded in post-production, but the scenes with Darth Maul or anyone from Trade Federation (which used animatronics) felt disconnected from the audio.
Jar-Jar wasn’t as annoying as I thought, especially in II and III. His parts in episode I are still the worst parts of that movie… and that is so much of the movie.
The computer graphics in the prequels aged well. Since it was the early days for CGI, I thought it would look pretty bad, but it all felt nice and consistent. The fight scenes were well done. I keep trying to think of good things to say about the prequels, but I can’t. They aren’t as bad as I remembered, but I still can’t understand why some people like them better than the rest of the Star Wars films.
The original Star Wars trilogy started playing at 4am, so I was low on energy at that point. The film copies they played during the marathon were the newer editions, with the added CGI. The moments when some computer graphics appear on the screen have not gotten better with age. The original movies look so good, and then you see some CGI spaceship or creature walk onto the screen and it rips you out of the experience. I think they did a great job remastering the film, but I sure wish you could find copies of the original trilogy without all the new edits. Speaking of edits, in the version of A New Hope we saw at Alamo, Greedo and Han shoot at the exact same time. The original movie had Han shoot first. A later edit had Greedo shoot and then Han shoot back, but this version was simultaneous, which I guess is one of the edits in the newer 4K edit. Why can’t we get a high quality copy of the original trilogy without all the weird changes?!
My favorite Star Wars films are IV, V, and VI, in that order. Over the years, I started to think that episode VI, Return of the Jedi, was nowhere near as good as the rest of the original trilogy, but I liked it a lot during this marathon showing. Maybe that’s when I started to feel awake again and excited about the overall experience. Either way, I found a new appreciation for Return of the Jedi, Ewoks, and all.
The postquels, episodes VII-IX, looked fantastic. There’s no denying that. they look gorgeous. I love Rey, Fin, Rose, Poe, and many other new characters in these films. I got really excited to see whole new characters and storylines appear, but all that excitement goes away when you start to realize we are still stuck covering the actions of a few Skywalkers and Palpatines.
Episode VII is a good movie on it’s own. I love Rey and Fin and was excited to see how they developed together. Great costumes, ships, special effects, and everything else. It did feel weird that Fin and Rey were able to use a lightsaber with ease, but I figured that would be explained in the next film. There is not much more to say about this film.
I mentioned earlier that I thought episode VIII was trashing the work done in the movie before it, but it didn’t feel that bad watching it this time around. I still feel like they wasted Fin’s potential as a lead character, but it was nice seeing the director try something new in the universe. The parts that were worse than I remembered had everything to do with Poe. Poe just does a bunch of bad things that end up causing more and more harm, yet somehow he is still portrayed as some sort of hero in episode VIII. The first thing he does is cause the rebels to lose half their fighters, the next thing he does is some stupid plan that leads to the First Order discovering the Rebel’s secret plan of abandoning ship and hiding in a secret fortress, then mutinying. He literally leads an armed mutiny to take control of the ship… and he never suffers any consequences for any of that. It’s so confusing to watch, because Poe was rad in episode VII and then he’s a total fuckup in VIII.
All that being said, I still didn’t hate episode VIII. It had nice action, looked great, had good actors, and some great new worlds to explore. I hate what they did to my boy Fin, and I don’t understand why Poe wasn’t spaced for any of the times he ignored his orders, but overall, it’s a fun movie. I can’t say the same for episode IX.
Episode IX, the Rise of Skywalker, is the only Star Wars movie I still hate. If I watch it again in twenty years, maybe I’ll finally like it? I sort of expected to like it during the marathon. My energy was up, I had a fun time, and I had ended up liking the rest of the films, so my hopes were up as the movie began. I think the reason I hate it so much is because it feels like nothing has consequences anymore… As an example, we had been told that Rey came from a family of “nobodies”, which I thought was pretty cool. Finally a character that isn’t part of some mythical blood line, but then this film says “uh, nevermind, she’s actually a Palpatine now.”
As the final Star Wars movie ends, things get wilder and wilder, like a kid making up a story that has no rules. With no explanation, we find that “somehow, Palpatine returned”. It’s never explained how he came back or how he’s been such an important figure without anyone else knowing about it. He raises his hands, and a million ships float out of the water, a few minutes later, a million rebel ships appear out of nowhere, and then Palpatine shoots lightning out of his fingers and knocks the rebel ships out of the sky. I used to hate the prequels, and thought the director of episode VIII was pissing on all the lore that came before him, but after watching all 9 films in order, the last Star Wars movie is the only one that I think is just awful.
Was it A day Well Spent?
I have a lot of experience with 24-hour challenges. I’ve participated in the 24 Hour Comic Book Day challenge about a dozen times, only failing to succeed on two of those times. For the 24HCBD, the goal is to stay up and draw a 24 page comic in 24 consecutive hours. It’s hard work and the chairs are nowhere near as comfortable as the ones in a theater, but at the end of the day you’ve had some great conversations with new friends and you’ve created an entire comic book that you can re-read years later.
This event felt a lot like a 24 Hour Comic Day challenge, but less fun. I was never that enraptured with the films or the experience, the only thing that really kept me in place was the thought “I’ll never have another chance to do this again”. It was a comfortable space and the movies looked great on the big screen, but I can’t say I’ll look back on it with the same way I’d look back at most other 24 Hour experiences. Hell, I remember working a few 24 hour shifts at Waffle House when I was a teen and having more fun memories than I do from this event.
Watching the movies in their intended order didn’t add much to my interpretations of the series. It did give me an excuse to try out movies I had previously hated, which turned out to be a good thing. The biggest takeaway I had was watching some of these films for the first time in 20 years. Having lower expectations allowed me to see them from a fresh perspective. That was a real blessing.
The showing started at 8pm, which meant I had already been awake for 13 hours, and I didn’t go to sleep until around 9pm on Saturday, so I guess I was awake for 37 hours. To be fair, I did doze off a few times during the prequels, but never longer than 10 minutes.
If you are a bigger Star Wars fan than I am, you probably watch these movies all the time, so I don’t think watching them all in 22 hours will give you any deeper understanding or love than you already had. The only thing that changes is you get to say “I stayed up for 22 hours to watch the Star Wars film in order.”
