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Oddly enough, Jedi was a similar experience for me as Empire was for rod.
It wasnt opening night, but i was 7 so that wasnt really a consideration back then. We lived in Indiana, and i had been dying to see it. By that point i had seen the first two several times (An advantage of growing up on military bases was that you sometimes got to see movies that had been out for years in the theater) and was dying to find out what happened to Han. When i saw Empire the first time, i think it was the very first time i had ever seena movie where at the end i thought "There is going to be another one, there has to be".
I had already seen adds for toys, we had the dixie cups in the bathroom for when we brushed our teeth. i had even seen a little bit of behind the scenes stuff on Entertainment tonight or somethign like that.
My parents got my sister and I in the car and drove out to Peru, whihc was about 20 minutes away. We got dinner at mcdonalds, then ended up in a crappy looking theater parking lot. We waited for a while, then my parents got us out of the car and told us we were going to see a movie. Now i have been a movie buff ever since i saw my first (For your Eyes only, at a drive in, but that is another story), so i was excited anyway. The theater was a little scary, the ticvket booth had a bullet hole in the window if that is any indicator, but we got our tickets and went in.
They never made a peep about what we were going to see, but once that music started up, i godamn near jumped out of my skin. the next 2 hours were nothing but lightsabres, dogfights and Carrie Fisher in a metal bikini.
That night always stuck with me, and i get those same goose bumps when i go to a theater to this day. My reaction was quite a bit less excited by the end of the last movie i saw in a theater (Doom....)
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