STAR WARS: EPISODE VII—THE FORCE AWAKENS Jim Jarmuschs latest appears to be quite a departure!
  • STAR WARS: EPISODE VII—THE FORCE AWAKENS Man. Jim Jarmusch's new movie looks weird.

A little movie called Star Wars—MAYBE YOU'VE HEARD OF IT—is opening next week. A week from tonight, in fact. Here on Blogtown, we've been pretty quiet about it, because every single other place on the internet won't shut up about it. That said, hold tight, because next week, we're going to have a couple of great pieces about The Force Awakens.

In the meantime, if you're thinking about seeing this small independent drama in its first few days of release—which puts you in the company of, oh, I don't know, every other person on Earth—keep a few things in mind.

(1) Settle down, nerds! Sure, some people (me) got their tickets months ago for this goddamn thing (and yeah, there's already at least one line outside a theater), but even if you don't get advance tickets, you're going to be able to see it opening weekend, no problem. There's pretty much no way this movie isn't going to decimate box-office records—but theater owners know that, and they'll be playing this movie as much as possible in order to take everyone's money as fast as they can. If you're thinking about just walking over to your nearest multiplex and seeing a matinee next Saturday afternoon? You'll be able to do that. Unless you're planning on going opening night, getting tickets isn't going to be an issue—and even if it is an issue at one theater, you'll likely be able to go right over to the next theater and see it there. Which leads us to....

(2) SO MANY THEATERS are going to be playing this. Regardless of how good the actual movies are, Star Wars is a license to print money—so all the big chains (like Regal and Century) will take full advantage of their creepy corporate powers to play it on as many screens as possible. If we were living in some other city, one of those soulless multiplexes would be your only option to see The Force Awakens (or any movie) on the big screen. Thankfully, we're in Portland—where, even when we feel like watching giant blockbusters, we can do so at theaters with better picture and sound, cheaper prices, and fewer assholes. So:

(3) Skip the chains. Instead, hit the Bagdad (that's where I'll be opening night, possibly in my homemade Ahsoka Tano costume), the Roseway, or the St. Johns Twin. All three of those are cheaper and nicer than Regal or Century theaters, and there are other benefits, too: At the St. Johns Twin and the Bagdad, you can enjoy a reasonably priced beer alongside all your interstellar warfare, while at the Bagdad and the Roseway, you'll find some of the best picture and sound that Portland theaters have to offer. Hell, you've got other options too: At Cinetopia Vancouver Mall 23, you can pay more to hear John Williams' score in Dolby Atmos, where the "sounds of the onscreen story move all around you in three-dimensional space, so you feel like you’re inside the action." *shrugs* Maybe that is a thing that matters to you!

(4) Don't get suckered by IMAX. According to Portland's chain theaters, we've got a few IMAX screens in town—but THEY ARE LYING. True, those auditoriums bear the IMAX brand name (and the hefty IMAX ticket price), but those screens aren't nearly as big as IMAX's reputation would lead you believe. [Insert dick joke here.] There's a whole history with this bullshit (the short version is that real IMAX theaters, with giant, six-story-tall screens, are expensive and hard to build, so the company just started slapping their logo on marginally retrofitted multiplex auditoriums), but the important thing is that in Portland, IMAX is a ripoff. If you're looking for the best picture on a good-sized screen, hit the Bagdad.

(5) Don't get suckered by 3D. This week's In the Heart of the Sea is one of the lousiest 3D experiences, featuring bright, sunlit scenes that've been dulled-down to dim shades of gray. Presumably, Disney will make sure Star Wars: The Force Awakens' 3D screenings won't look that bad, but 3D is still a crapshoot, and almost never worth the extra price. (I've seen a lot of movies in 3D; I can think of three where the 3D version was the better version.) If nothing else, The Force Awakens promises to be a blast to look at—all dazzling and bright and full of lasers and lightsabers and vibrant alien worlds. The last thing you should do is watch it through sunglasses.

(6) It's fine to wait. Star Wars is gonna be a whole thing next week, with the kind of hype and chatter and lines and buzz and horrible local news stories about terrible parents naming their unfortunate children after BB-8 and Kylo Ren. It's gonna be a pop-culture shitshow like we haven't seen since The Phantom Menace. Even if you want to see this new one, it's okay—hell, its probably smart—to sit all this out and wait a bit, even until the movie hits Portland's great second-run beer theaters like the Laurelhurst and the Academy. Don't get me wrong: There's something legitimately cool about movies this big, in that they allow us to have the sort of cultural conversation that rarely comes up these days. But it's not like Star Wars is going away. Disney's plan is to shovel a new Star Wars movie out the door once a year until the heat death of the universe. So whether we like it or not, we'll all get a chance to do all this again in *checks calendar* about 11 months.

And then after that, we'll get a chance to do it again. And again. And again. Until Star Wars movies become so common we won't even be able to remember a time when one coming out felt like a rare thing, like a cool, fun thing, like a thing we got excited about.

NOW IF YOU'LL EXCUSE ME THIS AHSOKA TANO COSTUME ISN'T GOING TO SEW ITSELF