The big trooping Star Wars: The Force Awakens post

I've barely survived some crazy Star Wars times, but it's been wonderful. It's well worth it sitting her with giant blisters on my feet and a bit of sleep deprivation.

I'm not going to post any spoilers in this post, it's going to be about me and what I've done in connection to Star Wars during the last two weeks. At the end I will give my score for the film, but not say anything particular about the plot.

I've been contacted by quite a lot of media as well leading up to the premiere of The Force Awakens. The Monday before the premiere I went down to Stockholm and me and Andrew talked Star Wars with an internet show connected to one of the major papers in Sweden. They asked me to come in costume, so I was dressed as classic Leia. I did the ESB end hairstyle though, with just a single bun on the top of the had, rather than the cinnamon buns. I got to talk about my gold handmaiden a bit as well.

The program is available here: Star Wars Deluxe

I was in the local radio, and they actually tested me with quite a funny quiz. I had to recognize if a line was from either a Star Wars film or the European Parliament.

The local paper also made an article with me in my costumes. DT - Johanna syr sin egna dräkter

On Tuesday the 15th the Nordic Garrison and Nordic Base had gotten invited to come in costume for the preview of the film. So we dressed up and stood on the red carpet watching the Swedish celebrities pass by. I managed to not see anyone I recognized except for the Swedish astronaut Christer Fuglesang, but there were a bunch of people there.

 Here we are doing the thumbs up for the film on the red carpet. We had time to get out of costume and then watch the film for the first time.

The next morning I had to get up really early to be on SVT Gomorron, the national morning TV show. I didn't go in costume, I felt that a lot of my media appearances have been so focused on costuming that I wanted to show that there are other sides to being a fan as well. I wore my new Death Star maxi dress though, together with my R2 pearl necklace. I don't have any photos of that though, but a friend took a screengrab, unfortunately I'm sitting down so you can't see the Death Star properly.

The other person was a collector that had brought part of his collection with him and talked about that. I got a bit annoyed when he said that it had gone too far when they started to put Star Wars on make up. (male stuff is apparently ok but not female stuff). I tried to focus on the fact that there are a lot of female fans out there, and that there have always been a lot of female fans as well.

Then it was off to see the film for the second time, when it had its official premiere at 10 am. Both the preview and the premiere was my first experience of watching a feature film in IMAX 3D, and I must say that was pretty cool.

After lunch it was off to the next cinema, Filmstaden Sergel, where they had asked us to troop the evening. A good thing with having seen the film was that I could correct my hairstyle into something a lot more accurate. I will try to make a post about the costume notes that I did, but that is for later.

It started off fairly calm, and at this point I was quite tired as well. We walked around met people, nobody wanted pictures with me though. They prefer more recognizable characters.

From the early evening showing we started to march in just before the film started and present it for the audience. That was great fun to hear their cheers.

We also got to see the film a third time. The third time was actually the funniest. The audience was a lot more energetic and by now I could sit and it was just as fun to sit and wait for the audience's reactions to certain scenes, as it was to watch them

After the third viewing I started to go into a bit of overdrive, due to lack of sleep, but it was really fun to run around and stage photos.

TFA characters stay together of course.

 Playing hide and seek behind the movie posters.

 I think this is actually one of my favorite photos of my Leia costume.

 I feel like a proper rebel leader giving orders to the pilots in this photo.

It's not easy walking in stairs in armor.

 Most of the gang that was trooping in a serious mode

And in our more normal state?

After that it was time to head to Uppsala for me to catch some sleep before taking the morning train back to Falun.

In the 40 hours before this photo I had slept 4 hours, but seen TFA 3 times, and been in costume for 7-8 hours.

It was a very special experience to be part of the whole thing and I feel very privileged to have done it. I can only hope that there will be something similar for the coming films.

As for the film itself. To be honest I'm not quite as overwhelmed as most people seem to be. If you love the original trilogy, but don't like the prequels, then you are going to love this film. For me it ends up in the middle though in the 4th place of my personal ranking of the Star Wars film. It made me laugh, I even cried a bit, but it's no Empire Strikes back or Revenge of the Sith.