The words “Star Wars Celebration” conjures up visions of an experience like none other in, well, the Galaxy.
[You Listen here or watch this review instead of reading it over on YouTube, if you’d like. It’s pretty long, lol.]
The cultural impact of the George Lucas-created franchise cannot be overstated, in addition to its position as one of the seminal cinematic events of the motion picture age.
After the 2020 iteration of the Celebration event was canceled due to the recent unpleasantness, Disney/Star Wars partnered with ReedPop to hold the event again from 26-29 May, 2022, in beautiful Anaheim, California.
As expected, legions of Rebels, Imperials, Mandalorians, and Smugglers descended on temperature Anaheim Convention Center, ready to celebrate their Fandom.
But before I continue, I’d like to issue a disclaimer in that I’d never attended a Star Wars Celebration event before, so my frame of reference is that of a “regular” convention attendee, having covered events in Phoenix, Dallas, Las Vegas, Portland, and my home event in Salt Lake City.
It turns out that this event, much like San Diego Comic Con (SDCC) or D23, isn’t that kind event.
Sure, they still have row upon row of artists and vendors hawking their wares and feature some guest appearances like any other convention, but whereas “regular” conventions are geared more toward fan/guest interaction, SDCC has become primarily an industry event, designed for labels and studios to pimp upcoming IPs for rabid fanbases.
Disney’s D23 has always been that kind of event, and is one I hope to attend in the future.
Star Wars Celebration, though, presents itself as more of a normal event, though I wasn’t unaware of the fact there would likely be a high degree of focus on the concurrently premiering Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
None of that means there isn’t the expectation and reality of guest interaction, mind you.
So moving forward, we can agree that my coverage will reflect my expectations along with the realities of how the event performed its various missions.
First, let’s just talk about HOW the event came off.
*This is your reminder that I always–ALWAYS–look at these events as a fan first, an attendee, a paying customer, because that’s theoretically who “conventions” are for, right?*
This Celebration was run by ReedPop, a well-known brand in the convention business, so it’s not like this is some fly-by-night organization. That said:
- Pre-event communication was horrific. Guests weren’t announced until very late (within the last 30 days, mostly), and details on entry and organization were few and far between.
- Repeated references to “the App” (a phrase I am beginning to loathe, as applied to conventions, BTW) were pointless, as “the App” didn’t go live until the week of the event.
Not cool.
During the event (intra-event, if you will), the marked inconsistency of cell service and zero Wi-Fi (obviously, this is a problem at nearly every event, unless a venue was specifically upgraded to support that load… which the Anaheim convention center isn’t; ask the venders), trying to do anything but deal with previously download data (“panel” schedules and the like; we’ll get to that in a minute), once you were inside the building, access became sporadic.
Why is that important? Well, if you want people to use “the App” for everything, then “everything” should probably work, don’t you think?
Speaking of panels, the implementation of the Lightspeed feature to “win” spots at coveted panels was a shit-show.
I said it.
Nobody–not a single person–I talked to had a good experience with Lightspeed, and it was used for everything from the aforementioned panels to shopping opportunities in the Celebration Store Show (more later), to being able to browse the Funko booth (which was literally a “no ticket, no entry” scenario all weekend).
If you could connect to Lightspeed (refer to my previous discussion of “the App”), you were treated to a green bar that moved (if it moved) at a glacial pace as you moved up the waiting list, while being kind enough to tell you what WOULDN’T be available once you got in. Assuming you waited long enough to GET to the actual Lightspeed selection, the convenient drop-down would populate with the options that were left, with available times in the case of the Store, Funko, etc.
So, once you abandoned the pretense of trying to guarantee entry into one of the coveted panels or “The Mandalorian Experience” (which ran all weekend), you could either wander the show floor or take your chances in the good-old “Standby line” and hope openings would become available for whatever panel you were shooting for.
For the record, “camping out” and lengthy lines were ostensibly the reason Lightspeed was put in place… so there’s that.
Speaking of lines:
In terms of the omni-present photo-ops, those were scheduled and run by Epic Photo Ops, who are, it seems, the Gold Standard at events, and those ran pretty much on schedule, as Epic runs a Session/Group time slot system, which keeps everything kind of dialed in, provided guests aren’t late or oversold.
The autographs, on the other hand…
Also run by Epic (not sure if this is their norm or not, to be honest), they were a complete disaster. For example, I purchased an autograph with Temuera Morrison for Thursday, before times had been assigned. No problem, and I acknowledged the 5:20 PM time slot (not the first group, which is 100% fine) I was given and went about my day.
Imagine my surprise when, while sitting at the Salt Lake Airport Thursday at 7 AM waiting for my flight to Anaheim, I received an email informing me my time (and by extension, ALL HIS TIMES) had changed from 5:20 to 12:20. A full FIVE HOURS earlier.
Okay, I’m arriving in California at 9-ish, allow an hour to get to my hotel and drop off luggage, venue opens at 10 AM, but I still have to get through the how-long-will-it-take? “Health Check” where they will verify my Covid vaccination status (or negative test) before allowing me to go through the actual entry queue, complete with bag checks and metal detectors.
And put on a mask.
Doable, but a little less wiggle room, to be sure.
Fun fact: the Anaheim Convention Center is 2 blocks from Disneyland, which doesn’t require masks. Disney owns Star Wars.
Weird, right?
Anywho…
Shockingly, I landed early, had minimal traffic for my Uber driver, dropped my bags at the hotel, got through the “Health Check” and into the entry queue area (which is what seems to be the entire basement of the Convention Center, BTW… holy crap that thing is huge): all BEFORE 10!
At 10:20, the line started moving inside…
Somehow, the only line I need is already full: full through the overflow area and has backed into what on Friday would become Ewan McGregor’s autograph queue (not a small area itself, BTW. Obviously).
Turns out, he’s running over an hour late (after they bumped all his times up FIVE HOURS, mind you).
Fun.
At 2 PM, we leave his line, autograph in hand. Overall, not terrible once he actually showed up to sign stuff.
All of that is to make clear that, by the next day, autograph TIMES meant nothing. If you had an autograph scheduled for the day, you could basically get into the line whenever you wanted and wait it out. So that system didn’t really translate from photos to autographs AT ALL.
After successfully getting Temuera Morrison’s autograph, we decide to gamble on the Standby line for the Celebration Show Store for returning for a photo-op scheduled at 4:40.
If the Lightspeed portion of “the App” was an electronic shit-show, then the Celebration Show Store was the physical version of that.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a pop-culture convention, but generally speaking, you can walk up to the table or booth, see everything, point to what you want, they bring it to you, and then you pay and leave. Easy-peasy.
Apparently, they hired someone from traditional retail to organize their store, because it looked like an Old Navy on Black Friday. You walked through the store like a mall outlet, racks of t-shirts and hoodies all empty or blown apart, displays of the other branded chachkies (mugs, patches, pool floaties [fucking POOL FLOATIES?!], stuffed animals) spread in no discernible pattern.
So, with spending around 45 minutes in the line to get in, desperately searching for something–ANYTHING–we actually wanted and taking just over an hour to get through the checkout line that circled the perimeter of the space, we got a photo with Giancarlo Esposito at almost the time we were scheduled.
Upside of standing in the photo-op queue at that moment: the “Star Wars Celebration Live” stage (one of several “non-main” stage areas), conveniently located right next to the photo-op area, featured Ewan McGregor and Hayden Christensen plugging that night’s premiere of the Disney+ series Obi-Wan Kenobi.
And we got to watch it, so that was a cool 10 minutes.
Let’s circle back: since the 2020 event was delayed, we have been treated to The Mandalorian, The Book of Boba Fett, The Bad Batch, and now, during the event itself, the premiere of the long sought-after Obi-Wan Kenobi series.
I’m not going to recap all the upcoming titles Lucasfilm teased during Celebration; you’ve seen countless stories about them already, and in this wonderful technological age, you’ve even seen that most of the footage/trailers has found its way to the internet.
No, instead, I want to talk about what all that MEANS.
This is the Star Wars Celebration. This should be a chance for fans to indulge in meeting and reliving everything they love about that Galaxy far, far away…
And they kind of did. As fans, costumes abounded, those hard-to-find classic bits of merchandise could be had (for a price), and you could, if you pre-bought, meet one of the many folks associated with the franchise, actors, stunt-people, voice actors, etc.
It SHOULD have been awesome.
It really should have been.
But the entire time, I felt bombarded by THE BRAND. Screens on the stages, when not showing panels happening somewhere you couldn’t get to in person (and mostly couldn’t hear if you were watching from the floor areas because CROWDS), they were plugging one of the many major vendors hawking their newest, exclusive, BRANDED merchandise, which you could buy (if you could afford it, it wasn’t sold out already, or could even get into the vendor in the first place).
THE BRAND was everywhere.
Citizen watches had a booth with new, exclusive BRANDED watches.
A) most people who wear watches now wear smart ones, and
B) Citizen is not cheap, certainly not for showing off you fandom of THE BRAND everyday.
Look, I love merch. I do. I have entirely too much of it, to be honest, and I picked up one or two things that I wasn’t expecting to but come on. This was actually bordering on ridiculous. I mean, most of the “exclusive” is probably no longer exclusive or won’t be much longer.
Let’s not even mention the cottage industry of buying the exclusives and immediately re-selling them online at a huge markup. eBay had people selling the FREE, cheap-ass lanyards branded with Star Wars Celebration 2022 (from BoxLunch) and the fucking blue cloth (Star Wars Celebration 2022 BRANDED) wristbands that showed you’d made it through the Health Check.
People were selling those. What the hell, man?
Most of the panels weren’t about the Galaxy that we know and love, but rather were 10 minutes commercial plugs for what was coming up.
You know? Those aforementioned new games and shows like Jedi Survivor, Andor, etc., Or the continuing push for The High Republic-era materials.
Everything felt like a hard sell on what was NEXT. What you needed to buy/watch/read/CONSUME moving FORWARD instead of appreciating what has come BEFORE, what had earned your love and loyalty (and yes, dollars).
If The Rise of Skywalker felt to many like excessive fan-SERVICE, it’s possible Star Wars Celebration felt like excessive fan DIS-service.
Instead of fans asking, “what have you done for me lately?” it was the studio asking “what will you do for us next?”
George Lucas is widely credited with having created the idea of film branding in 1977. After this weekend, I feel as if I was confronted by the confluence of the long-establish Disney marketing machine and the most popular IP in existence.
And it’s not just me; countless other folks who’ve attended multiple Celebrations in the past, including a gentleman from Switzerland, say they were less than impressed with this iteration; Not that it simply “wasn’t as good” as previous events, but that they were actively disappointed in it.
Some folks outright blamed ReedPop, which surprised me, as my previous experiences with their events were generally pretty good, so I’m not sure where the disconnect is in this instance, but that disconnect is genuine.
Or at least it feels that way to a lot of the fans.
Oh, and remember that “masks” thing I mentioned earlier? Barely enforced for the first three days, then they made a half-hearted attempt to keep reminding people on Sunday.
So there was maybe a 50% success rate on that.
The guest list was great, including Ewan McGregor, Temuera Morrison, Ian McDiarmid were all on hand to sign and pose with fans, though Pedro Pascal and Hayden Christensen managed to show up to–surprise!–push the upcoming materials, but not interact with fans. Plus the voice actors and whatnot, it was a really solid list of folks.
I was personally excited to see many of them (though I couldn’t possibly have seen everyone I wanted to), and I completely understood why other folks were excited by the others.
But to break up the relentlessness of the event, I actually spent all day Saturday over at Disneyland and California Adventure, so it’s not like I dislike Disney or anything.
*By the way, Rise of the Resistance is a pretty fantastic ride, as is the Spider-Man ride on the new Avengers Campus.*
In the end, Star Wars Celebration (and its ilk) is for 2 types of people: those who want to be THE FIRST to know what is coming up, as if that somehow gives them a position of Fandom superiority (“Phantom Superiority” in this case?), or worse, they’re people who want to profit off those fans who can’t attend or aren’t lucky enough to get the freebies or exclusive merchandise by selling those selfsame freebies or exclusive merchandise after over-buying and then reselling (at a substantial markup).
Perhaps, when all is said and done, I’ll wind up sticking to more general pop-culture events instead of highly specialized ones, secure in the knowledge that the only shameless promoting will come during actual panels when someone asks a celebrity what they’re going to be up to next.
I still love Star Wars, though.