Scott writes:

I had purchased tickets to the 12:04 AM ROTS showing at the local theater, Showplace 16, in Rockford, IL, a few weeks in advance.

The night of the opening, I stood in line for over 8 hours; to experience what I had hoped would be a perfect showing of the last of the Star Wars series.

Everything started well, and because of my early arrival, I was the very 1st to enter the 12:04 showing. Just before the movie started, the manager came in and gave us all a pep talk on how good the movie was, as he and his employees had seen it the day before. The movie started, and within 10 minutes I knew that this movie was worth the wait.

Everything was going great, until the time for the scene I had waited sooo long to see. The moment had arrived, and right then, the screen cuts to a white background with the following sentence "THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING". Everyone sat in stunned silence as we were all shocked, then the yelling and swearing began as we all realized that the movie was still playing as we could all still hear audio. After about 5 seconds the movie comes back on. I yelled "What the hell just happened, and more boos followed."

At any rate the movie ended, and everyone in the theater agreed it was a great movie, but we all felt like our balloons had been burst because of the interruption.

What was even more upsetting was that there was no appearance made by the manager to apologize, or to offer coupons. Instead I had to hunt the manager down. Once found, a line of around 20-30 people formed to complain. The manager stated they didn't know what had happened; I asked if it was an employee having some fun at our expense. The manager could not say. She gave me a coupon, and then proceeded to tell me I could use it for any movie at the Kerasotes theaters, however, due to some contract with George Lucas, I could not see ROTS again until 4 weeks after the opening. Obviously I left very upset and what could have been a 10 out of 10 night was turned into an 8.5.