CHICAGO - Star Wars fever hit the United States Thursday as thousands lined up to see midnight showings of "Revenge of the Sith."
Diehard fans showed up 16 hours ahead of showtime at one Chicago theater, entertaining themselves by comparing costumes and breaking out into swordfights.
Sara Freeman even brought a laptop so she and her husband could watch the first two installments of the Star Wars prequels while they were waiting for the show to begin.
"It was lots of fun," the 19-year-old film student said as she waited in an endless line for refreshments. "I didn`t expect to see as many girls as I did. There`s not usually as many geek girls as geek boys."
Dressed in a head-to-toe brown Jedi costume, Freeman is proud of her geek status, though she says she isn`t a hardcore fan.
The movies mean something deeper to Kelly Badgley, 23, who spent two weeks working on her Princess Leia slave girl costume. Dressed in nothing but a bikini top, copper and leather wiring, and some purple fabric hanging over her hotpants, she waxed philosophically about the meaning of the intergalactic saga.
"As a kid I saw it and I remember the swamp scene and Yoda but I didn`t really understand it," she said. "The message is darkness against light. It`s good versus evil."
Not everyone in the audience of 2,500 was rooting for the good guys.
"It`s good to see a movie where the bad guys win," said Frank Copps, 24, who wore a black cape, boots, and shoulder pads over a white mesh shirt to show his support for the dark Jedis.
Unlike many of the people in the audience, Jackie Muir is old enough to have seen the original Star Wars films in the theaters.
The 42-year-old dietician was a bit self-conscious in her Darth Vader costume, complaining that the helmet was too hot to wear.
But she said the fun of getting decked out for a midnight viewing outweighed the awkwardness.
"It`s the last movie," she said. "It`s nostalgic."
Tickets for all 16 midnight screenings of "Revenge of the Sith" sold out three weeks ago at the downtown Chicago AMC movie theater which was offering shows around the clock. The situation was similar across the nation.
One analysis estimates the excitement over the new movie could cost US employers as much as 627 million dollars in lost productivity from people skipping work to see the film.
About 9.4 million people attended "Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones" on the first two days of its release in 2002 and consulting firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas said attendance is expected to be even higher for the third episode.
"Revenge of the Sith" is the last in the three-part prologue to the original "Star Wars" trilogy by director George Lucas, and brings fans back to the beginning telling how the evil Darth Vader moved over to the dark side.
The first "Star Wars" burst onto global screens in 1977, and was a revelation for cinema audiences with its pioneering use of computer graphics and advanced techniques to create a whole new galaxy.
05/19/2005 07:26 GMT