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Star Wars and How to Waste a Convention Center
So we went to Star Wars Celebration IV on Saturday with Jeeves, Sarah, Patrick, and Jason. It was the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars. It should have been a big deal. Instead, it was an exercise in seeing just how much money you can charge fans before they implode. I guess they don't call it a "con" for nothing.
Jeeves has already given a
pretty good run-down of the event on his blog, which I'll quote large excerpts of, but there were some things he didn't mention that I'll go into here. He does have some cool photos and video clips that you should check out though.
First off, we head to the main entrance in South Hall. Someone outside was handing out T-Shirts for the upcoming movie Daywatch (sequel to Nightwatch), which the guys went ahead and grabbed. I have enough free T-shirts and I didn't feel like carrying it around all day, so I passed.
So we walk in (There's even a sign pointing in that direction) and look for the registration tables. There's a bunch of booths on the left for will call, fan club members, etc., etc. None of them appear to be general admission and there isn't any place in sight. Patrick starts looking for girls in slave Leia costumes, but for the first part of the day, Sarah is actually the one to spot all of them, and then they disappear into the crowd before Patrick gets to see. Serves you right.
We have no idea what to do, so we keep moving towards the hall, and around the corner we find the line for admission, completely out of sight from the main entrance. We make our way over there, and then they tell us to go outside and wrap back around. Ok... We go outside and it looks like a Japanese store with a new shipment of DS Lites; people are wrapped all the way to the back of the building and into an empty parking lot. At this point, we start to think it might be quicker to go back to the car, drive to my house and order online, but we're told that even if we can order online, we'd still have to wait to pick them up, so we begrudgingly wait, missing the first Robot Chicken panel going on inside.
After an hour in line and literally a few yards from the door, they start sending people out to the line to sell adult tickets to whoever will take them. We grab ours and go inside.
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From Jeeves:
This is also where you find out that, to be a part of the "Conversation with Carrie Fisher" you have to pay for a separate ticket... something that was never mentioned anywhere, to my knowledge, in the information I read about the event. That's okay, though, we thought, let's check out the store! Which we did... to find a few booths crammed up into the first half of the room... most of them independent sellers pushing the same old Episode One Anakin "Ani" Skywalker action figures. Lame. The Lego area was pretty cool, though...
They also had a cool life-sized Chewie, and a badass new Millennium Falcon that's coming out; one that's closer to scale to the minifigs -- and the largest set ever sold by Lego. They had a drawing to win some of them, but we missed it. Feh.
The back half of the room had a few lines leading to hidden areas where you could get signatures from the stars(most notably Peter Mayhew and - if you can believe the balls on this guy - Jake Lloyd, hahah)... for a price, of course. Heh. Surprise.
We ate some tacos on the floor, since they only bothered to put a handful of tables, then headed upstairs for a Robot Chicken writers panel, which was pretty cool. I had no idea, but they're coming out with a half-hour long Star Wars special in June. They showed some clips of that, but spent most of the time answering fan questions.
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From Jeeves:
we headed downstairs to join a game of Star Wars Lazer Tag(or, as everyone else calls it, Lazer Tag)... only to find that you had to pay - again - to get into that as well. Gah!
Okay, at that point we were pretty bummed. Still, we hadn't been to the official store yet, the one that had all of the official Celebration IV merchandise... so, we wind our way through several ill-planned hallways, and then through a deserted line that wrapped around that whole section of the center TWICE to find... a nearly empty room. I mean it! Some tables lined across the back selling mugs and a few t-shirts... two square tables out on the floor... and that's it. Big room... with nothing in it. Nice.
Seriously, having been to five E3s, this was the biggest waste of space and money I had ever seen. The area usually occupied by Sony and Nintendo, showing literally hundreds of games, as well as about 20 other publishers packed-in, was now simply empty. As we walked by the curtains, we could see that they expected a huge line. They expected thousands of people to line up for a bottle opener that said "Star Wars Celebration IV" Or an overpriced jacket with Chewbacca's face, but the whole place with its line of 45 cash registers was entirely deserted. The merchants back in South Hall, who actually put some effort into their booths, did not have this problem.
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From Jeeves:
By this point, we were all pretty much disgusted. What had our $45 tickets bought us? For the most part, it bought us... a chance to pay for more stuff, that's what. That, and a chance to look at nerds in homemade costumes. What a waste. Honestly, had I known that, once you pay once for the luxury of walking inside the door, that you have to pay again to play lazer tag, and again to get autographs, and again to see Carrie Fisher speak... no way in hell would I have gone. What a ripoff. Thanks George. Thanks for not even being there, but for filming a video telling us how much you hope to see us at the 40th and 50th anniversaries. I bet you do. Thanks for making this NOT a celebration of thirty years of Star Wars, but a celebration of thirty years of preying upon the love and adoration of fans around the world, and suckering us into buying more of your crap.
Since there wasn't much else to see, we then got into line to see the Family Guy presentation. Despite having that gigantic, empty, air-conditioned room just across the hall, they have us line up outside in the heat. Probably to try to force us into buying drinks. In line, we got to see quite a few more people in costume, and Patrick got his fill of Slave Leias. There were overweight Slave Leias, a Slave Leia in her mid-30s pushing strollers, and a two-year old Slave Leia (that's just wrong) wandering the grounds. We also saw a group of guys dressed up as Batman, Robin, and the Joker. Perhaps that morning, they thought it would be a good prank to pull, but when we saw them, they looked entirely depressed and disheveled. Maybe the now-smeared face paint was a bad idea or maybe too many Star Wars fans had flipped them the bird. Who knows.
We sit down for the Family Guy thing. Guess what? They're doing a Star Wars parody special too! At least it's a few months after the Robot Chicken special. It was cool though. I'd never seen Seth MacFarlane speak before, and he seems like a pretty genuine guy, even if his sense of humor is a little crude for my tastes at least once an episode. He brought a classic Dagobah playset, sealed in glass, to give away to a fan that could answer a bit of Family Guy trivia, and even though the kid that went first missed the answer, he gave it to him anyways. We got to see several hilarious scenes from the upcoming show, easily making the presentation the best part of Saturday's events.
At that point, we looked at the schedule, and didn't see much. There were some fan films being shown in the theater, but apparently everyone else already figured out that was the only cool thing left because the place was packed to the walls. We went back to South Hall, and found another section that was largely related to fan projects, and was thus infinitely cooler than anything the convention itself had coordinated. There was an odd-sized X-Wing there - life sized-cockpit, but short stubby wings - an on-stage jedi training regimen for the kids; some guys playing Star Wars tabletop games; custom Lego creations; cars modified to look like an A-Wing and the Milennium Falcon, and several communities of guys who like to dress up as Boba Fett or a Storm Trooper.
We took one more run through the merch booths, spotted a life size Jabba statue with a Slave Leia posing for pictures with nerds, and then took off to get some pizza at Nova Express.
Topic: LOL Star Wars Convention (Read 1574 times)
