"We've never had this kind of experience," says Helen Hutton, general manager at the Lighthouse Cinema in Dublin. "It kind of transcends gender and age."
She was speaking on Wednesday night as Star Wars fans began queuing before 10pm for midnight screenings of ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’, the first screenings of the film following its release. All four of the cinema’s screens sold out within 20 minutes of tickets going on sale.
In the hours before the film started, a pair of Sith Lords and a platoon of Stormtroopers patrolled the cinema, stopping frequently to pose for selfie-taking fans.
Ms Hutton said young children were among those going to a midnight screening and also “guys who are 60. I think it’s fairly cool actually”. She added there were “some crazy people downstairs”.
Brother and sister Niamh and John aren’t crazy, but she is dressed as a Jawa, a relatively obscure occupant of Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet.
She made the costume herself out of Ikea blankets, LED lights and pair of old sunglasses. It's simple but effective.
John is draped in fairy lights, but he says he left the guts of his costume inside when he came out to get popcorn. Apparently it involved a lot of coat hangers. Both are extremely excited for what they’re about to see.
“It’s going to be excellent,” says Niamh. “A lot of money has been invested in the film and it’s going to be great. I think we’ve shown our dedication over the years and this is a big night. A big night for us.”
High expectations are not common among the attendees. After what one fan calls the “absolute violation” of the more recent prequel trilogy, most people are cautiously optimistic but aware it might not work out.
“What’s the point of having expectations?” asks Shane, a young man dressed in the long, black cloak of a Sith Lord.
“It’s all in the future. It’s future Shane’s problem. I think this will be fine because they’re using real props, real devices to tell the story. On screen hopefully it’ll work well. We’ll know in two hours.”
Shane's girlfriend, dressed as Princess Leia, appears and hurries him into the screen. When midnight strikes, the cinema is eerily quiet, the only sound that of spilled popcorn being swept off the floor. You can almost feel a cinema's worth of hardcore fans holding their breath.
