ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, February 1, 1997 TAG: 9702030049
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MATT CHITTUM AND MADELYN ROSENBERG STAFF WRITERS
``STAR WARS'' is back on the big screen, and you wouldn't believe how many people are lining up to see it - again, and again, and again ...
Joshua Torbert is about as morally centered as a 6-year-old can get.
"The force is strong in this one," Darth Vader might say.
So what if he approaches good and evil in terms of a landmark science fiction movie made 14 years before he was born?
In "Star Wars," there are the good guys, and there is the evil Dark Side.
Luke Skywalker is a good guy.
"In the X-wing fighter, he blows up the Death Star," Joshua explained as he stood in line with his mother and brother for the first Roanoke showing of the newly revamped "Star Wars" at Valley View Mall.
"He has three Lukes," said Joshua's mother, Beth Torbert, 31, showing off a purse full of plastic figures.
"Actually, he has four," said Joshua's brother, Justin, 8. "He lost one."
Gone over to the Dark Side, no doubt.
The Torbert kids got a break from their home schooling Friday to join millions of "Star Wars" fans all over the country standing in line for tickets to the first re-release showings of the 20-year-old flick.
The new version of the film, which boasts enhanced special effects and several new scenes, is the one director George Lucas said he would have made in 1977 had he had the money and the technology.
The first showing at Valley View was at 1 p.m., but tickets for all of Friday's shows went on sale at 11:30 a.m.
The line, which started forming well before that, included kids skipping school, parents skipping work so their kids wouldn't have to skip school, small children and 20-year-olds with Darth Vader walkie-talkies. They milled about like Ewoks, jabbering about Jabba the Hutt and yammering about Yoda.
"I've been waiting for this for three years," said J.T. Mudge, 23, who was second in line with his wife, Jodie.
Mudge's enthusiasm, however, was as lost on the guy selling tickets as a good jawa joke on a wookie.
"I'll take seven for seven o'clock," Mudge said as he approached the booth.
"Is that for `Star Wars'?" asked the ticket guy.
"No," Mudge said sarcastically. ``It's for `Meet Wally Sparks.'''
Kevyn Bowyer, 16, of Liberty High School and his friends, Shawn Smith and James Roberts, also 16, blew off class Friday and drove in from Bedford County to check out Roanoke's earliest showing of the movie.
"I figured it was better than math analysis," Bowyer said.
The trio are big "Star Wars" fans and have longed to see it on the big screen.
"We just have to turn up the TV real loud," Roberts said.
"And get real close to it," added Bowyer.
"Star Wars" fans in the New River Valley were able to get tickets a little earlier than those in Roanoke.
Tickets went on sale Thursday at 5:45 p.m. for Friday night's "Star Wars" shows at the New River Valley Mall in Christiansburg. By 7 p.m., all but two of the shows were sold out.
The line waiting for the box office to open wound through the mall and into the middle of Sears.
"I have never seen a line that long," said John Smith, manager of RC Theater's New River Valley Mall 11. Friday's two matinees did not sell out.
The movie is running in two of the mall's theaters, giving it 640 seats. The theaters will show "Star Wars" 10 timestoday. By Friday afternoon, those showings hadn't sold out, "but we're well on our way," Smith said.
At lunchtime Friday, people trickled in, studied the "sold out" sign on the window for Friday night's shows, and muttered their disappointment.
"Aw, man," said Dave Horne, a graduate student in English at Virginia Tech. "That stinks."
A few minutes later, though, he was scanning the marquee for a second choice. "I can wait another week," he said. "I've waited all these years."
Horne, 24, of Wytheville, was 5 when "Star Wars" first came to the big screen. "All I got for Christmas from the age of 6 to the age of 12 was 'Star Wars' stuff," he said.
Jana Schwarz, an aerospace engineering major at Tech, and Brian Veraa, an electrical engineering major, also went away disappointed. Both have seen the movie on television and video countless times, but never on the big screen.
"The effects are pretty good, even by today's standards," Veraa said, "but the story is just amazing. It could carry the movie without any effects.
"And the soundtrack - incredible."
Veraa, a trombone player in the Tech Symphony Band, has been practicing a "Star Wars" medley for the band's spring concert. (The Tech pep band plays Darth Vader's theme music during football and basketball games.)
At the Valley View 6 theaters, the 4 p.m. show was sold out and the 1 p.m. show was nearly sold out Friday. Lines formed more than an hour before the 7 p.m. showing at Salem Valley 8 cinemas. At both Salem and Valley View, Friday's 7 and 9 p.m. shows were sold out, said Richard Kobert, theater manager at Salem.
"I asked for this day off about four weeks ago," said Don Coonradt, a manager for Blockbuster Video in Roanoke who was at Valley View's theaters. He also asked off for Wednesday and Thursday of this week, in case there was a preview. And he has asked off for the premier dates of "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of the Jedi" in February and March.
"I saw all three on opening day when I was 9," he said. "I wasn't about to miss this."
LENGTH: Long : 104 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART/Staff. Fans wait in line at the Valley Viewby CNBMall theaters for the start of ticket sales Friday for the first of
the ``Star Wars'' trilogy. "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Return of
the Jedi" will be along in February and
March. color.