Got my tickets sorted for the first weekend - Friday morning by myself, Saturday morning with my girlfriend. I wanted to go to the midnight showing but it turns out I can't be bothered. I'm a big Star Wars fan and I'm excited for this film but I'm just not pulled in by those sorts of events. I like to actually watch a film when I go to see it - that way I can digest it properly and sit with it, not sit in a room with hundreds of people laughing and hollering at the screen. I'd honestly rather sleep well through the night and watch it during the day by myself when I'm fully rested.
Having said that, this franchise has come to mean a lot to me in the last eighteen months and I am excited to see how it all ends. I've always been a casual Star Wars fan - I saw the original trilogy on VHS more times than I could count when I was a kid, I'm not a big fan of the prequels but I've watched them all at least twice, and I've really enjoyed the sequel trilogy thus far - but this might be the first Star Wars film that I'm actually anxious and prepared for. I was excited for The Last Jedi but that was mainly because I liked everything Rian Johnson had done up to that point and was excited to see what he would do with the story (spoiler alert: I really liked what he did with the story).
Things are a bit different this time.
About two and a half years ago I met my girlfriend, and around the time we got together she told me she'd never seen any of the Star Wars films, except for the first half of A New Hope. The first friends of mine that I ever introduced her to are both big Star Wars fans, so at the start of 2018 I came up with this idea. The four of us started a podcast together where myself and my two friends took my girlfriend through all ten of the films in release order - one expert, two casual fans, one complete newbie. She really liked the originals (Return of the Jedi turned out to be her favourite of those), she came to think the prequels were okay (Revenge of the Sith was her favourite), she's loving the sequel trilogy thus far, and she generally liked the spin-off films.
Literally a week after we did the final episode on The Last Jedi (which was in June 2018), she finished university up in Manchester and moved back home to London to carry on her studies. I sort of hoped against hope that she'd have found a job and moved back up by the time The Rise of Skywalker came out, so that the four of us could all go see it together and record another podcast episode about the film - to "complete the set" and brings things full circle as it were. It never really felt likely but I hoped all the same. Meanwhile the podcast covered Pixar's films and started to cover the Harry Potter saga, and we just had guests on in her place while she was away.
Well, back in August she landed a job in Manchester and three weeks ago she moved back up here, started the job, and now she lives with me. So eighteen months after we lost the original line-up of hosts, we're going to be back together as a foursome, seeing the culmination of this saga that formed a large part of our friendship in the early days. It's hard for me not to get a little emotional when I think about everything that's happened to me in the last eighteen months since she moved away (stayed in hospital a couple of times, health hasn't been in the best shape) and realise that while my health problems go on and on, I can take some time out and see this movie with my closest friends.
Disney will kill this franchise for me eventually, what with the Mandalorian show I'll probably never watch and all the Old Republic films I won't have much stake in, but they're not taking it without a fight.