'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' premiere left the first audience to ever see the movie visibly stunned
Cheers, chills, and Chewbacca, too.
Star Wars: The Last Jedi is a movie of massive moments, jaw-dropping decisions, and megatons of involuntary audience participation. There is no fighting it: Every crowd -- not just the first to see it -- is going to devolve. Loudly.
"You guys are the first audience ever to see this," director Rian Johnson said from the stage, where the entire cast -- even flight-dayed John Boyega -- had assembled on Saturday night. "You ready to see a Star Wars movie?"
The roar of agreement was as deafening as the engines of a Star Destroyer.
Episode VIII premiered at the Shrine Auditorium on the USC campus in Los Angeles, where an audience of some 6,000 stumbled bewildered from the massive screening -- a stunning display of state-of-the-art sight and sound by Dolby, quite a feat given the sheer size of the room -- and into the Canto Bight casino-themed party. There, among the endless blackjack and craps tables and photo opp stations, the luckiest moviegoers in the galaxy would begin to attempt to discuss what they had just seen.
Its magnitude was palpable everywhere. For the next few hours, there were no raging wildfires, no Trump tweets, no harassment scandals to even consider talking about. Every conversation, every thought even, was Star Wars, nothing but Star Wars, wherever you are Wars, all of the time.
The Shrine is a big old barn of a building, and Disney blasted it with Star Wars stuff from the red carpet to the rafters, including a four-story First Order walker that loomed over arriving dignitaries.
While not quite at the level of scale and ambition as the 2015 Force Awakens premiere that swallowed up Hollywood Boulevard, the Last Jedi party had something its predecessor did not: a film so stacked with surprises that nearly everyone there was visibly stunned.
Reviews are embargoed for Tuesday, and our prediction stands: The Last Jedi will be the best-reviewed Star Wars film of all time.
One thing's for certain: It will be the most talked-about.
Adam Rosenberg is a Senior Games Reporter for Mashable, where he plays all the games. Every single one. From AAA blockbusters to indie darlings to mobile favorites and browser-based oddities, he consumes as much as he can, whenever he can.Adam brings more than a decade of experience working in the space to the Mashable Games team. He previously headed up all games coverage at Digital Trends, and prior to that was a long-time, full-time freelancer, writing for a diverse lineup of outlets that includes Rolling Stone, MTV, G4, Joystiq, IGN, Official Xbox Magazine, EGM, 1UP, UGO and others.Born and raised in the beautiful suburbs of New York, Adam has spent his life in and around the city. He's a New York University graduate with a double major in Journalism and Cinema Studios. He's also a certified audio engineer. Currently, Adam resides in Crown Heights with his dog and his partner's two cats. He's a lover of fine food, adorable animals, video games, all things geeky and shiny gadgets.
