Discussions went back and forth about the best way to get down there, who was going, whether we were staying overnight, who was going to look after Evie, etc, etc. At one point, it was turning into a mini family holiday, with my mum and dad coming with us to look after Evie while we attended the concert, us all stopping in a hotel overnight, then coming back the following day. In the end, Evie stayed at home and my folks looked after her, while Paula, Chris and I went to the concert by car, mainly because that was the easiest and (more importantly) the cheapest option. The 8+ hours of driving weren’t ideal, and we didn’t get back home until around 2:30am, but I coped better than I thought I would. The tiredness that I was expecting didn’t hit me until the following afternoon.

The concert itself was excellent. Anthony Daniels (yes, that Anthony Daniels*) was the narrator, and introduced the various musical sequences. While the orchestra was playing these, clips from the six Star Wars films were shown on a large video screen behind the orchestra. Some of the clips were silent, while others had dialogue and sound effects. Certain sequences worked better than others, but there’s nothing quite like seeing an orchestra and choir in full flow, especially when performing music that you know and love. Oh, and there were frikkin’ laser beams too!

We saw a couple of famous faces there (famous in Star Wars circles, at any rate): Warwick Davies (Wicket the Ewok) and Jeremy Bulloch (the guy in the Boba Fett costume). The only bummer from my point of view was that George Lucas apparently turned-up on the second night, hence we missed him. :O(

* Mr C-3PO, for the uninitiated.

It was bloody fantastic!

Really funny, probably moreso for the big Star Wars geeks, but I think that most people know the general story beats anyway so it would go down well with any audience. The capacity crowd (350 people?) at the Gateway certainly appreciated it!

The other cool thing was that as this was his last performance on the UK tour they had some people there from one of the costuming fan groups, dressed as stormtroopers, biker scouts, Jedi Knights… even Vader and the Emperor. The costumes were really impressive. Oh, and they had a remote control Artoo there as well! How cool is that?!

Apparently he (Charles Ross, not Artoo, duh) is due to appear in London sometime later this year. If you get the chance to go and see his show, then do: I guarantee you’ll enjoy it 

I’m kind of ambivalent about the whole Special Edition thing anyway: there’s stuff I like, and stuff I don’t. Obviously, the Greedo-shoots-first fiasco rankles, but I always found the inserted Jabba sequence much more annoying. Yes, we all know that it was supposed to be in there from the very beginning, but it’s so obvious that the 1997 addition was just a technical exercise. The scene is superfluous given the earlier (or is it later? It’s been a while…) dialogue with Greedo. You can have one scene or the other, George, but not both.

Only an idiot would claim that there’s nothing of value in the Special Editions, although their biggest success derives from technical embellishments to existing scenes rather than the addition of entirely new sequences. Updating the visual effects in the attack on the Death Star, adding windows to the corridors in Cloud City, showing a herd of banthas running across the Dune Sea: all of these changes work well. Incorporating a new musical number into Jedi’s first act does not.

The only question is whether they’ll bother to ‘digitally remaster’ the original theatrical versions. I hope so. It would be a real shame if they just slapped a crappy version of each print on the discs, replete with dust, scratches, colour-timing problems, etc. These films deserve better than that.