Diane and I went to the movies bright and early this morning; the IBM Club had bought the Century 21 Theatre for a special showing of Revenge of the Sith. We got there too late to get great seats, but we weren’t forced to sit at the very front of the theatre, so it wasn’t too bad.

There was one interesting byproduct of going to a private showing — no commercials and no trailers. The first thing on the screen was the Lucasfilm logo, followed by those magical words: “A long time ago in a galaxy far away…”.

It’s a shame nobody can tell George Lucas when he’s going overboard — I thought that the battle scenes went far too long, and the first hour of the movie dragged a bit. But eventually, I got into it and quite enjoyed the last 75 minutes. I was pleased that George took care of the loose ends (like C-3PO’s not remembering Tatooine in A New Hope), even if he was less than subtle in a few places.

We’ll probably go back and see it again — I want to watch all six movies in order, and I’ll be very surprised if there isn’t a boxed set available in time for holiday buying. And a rewatching of Spaceballs and Hardware Wars is in order, too.