Thursday, December 14, 2017

The Last Jedi Opening Night at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood

Tonight, R2 joined Gordon Tarpley as C-3PO, along with other characters, to help usher in Opening Night for The Last Jedi at the historic Chinese Theater in Hollywood, CA. We were there supporting liningup.net, which raises money for the Starlight Children's Foundation.



The first order of business was participating in a ceremony, at which Carrie Fisher's brother spoke.



After that, I took the very rare opportunity to line up the droids and Darth Vader, to have them stand in the same footprints that were created back in 1977. I am guessing that this is the first time since then that these three characters have stood in those exact footprints together.




Afterward, the droids posed for pictures and interacted with fans in front of the theater. Thankfully there were barricades, or we would have been overrun.





I had never been inside the theater before. It's quite beautiful, and they had me park R2 inside before the crowd arrived, to have him as a guest of honor during the movie.




(The second pic courtesy of Gordon Tarpley.)

Back outside, Greg Grunberg, who played Snaps in The Force Awakens, was on hand to greet fans and pose for pictures.



Before the show, we had a surprise visit from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson, so that was pretty neat. He helped Sideshow Collectibles give away some valuable Star Wars collectible items. I was hoping to score their premium format R2-D2, but as they were only giving out 4 to a packed house, the odds weren't good.



We all watched the movie, and when it let out, more pics with R2.



It was at that point that one of the Sideshow reps saw me with R2, and she had one of their R2 collectibles left. She asked me if I wanted it, and of course I said yes! :)

William Miyamoto and his cos-playing BB-8 joined me at the after-party.



After the after-party, William's BB-8 took up residence in a display case in the lobby of the Chinese theater, where it will remain on exhibit with other fan-made costumes through early 2018.



It was a cool experience to watch the movie in such an iconic theater, and I really appreciate my new display piece.


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