Over at Darths & Droids my friends and I are approaching the end of our treatment of Episode II: Attack of the Clones. Which means it’s time for us to sit down together and watch Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, so we can prepare for the writing ahead.

When we announced this on our Facebook page, we suggested that readers might like to join us in watching the movie at the same time, making it into a global event of sorts. Someone responded that we should host an IRC chat during the movie and, not being people to shy away from an intriguing idea, we decided to do so. (Not that this was intended to be an ad, but it’s at 09:00am GMT, Friday 5 March, on the Freenode IRC network, channel #darths, because I know someone will ask.)

It’s hard to say how many people we’ll actually get, but there are some fans making very excited posts about it. Now I’m stopping to consider what this really means.

We may have a significant number of people excited about being up at times like 1am (West Coast USA) or 4am (East Coast USA), on a Friday morning what’s more, to watch a Star Wars prequel movie. I’m not sure if that’s happened since 1999.

If you put your mind to something and share it with the world, it’s amazing what you can accomplish. Darths & Droids began as just something we do in our lunchtimes. We do it because we like creating something new and hopefully interesting out of the cultural legacy of Star Wars. We genuinely like Star Wars, and want to be able to say we did something positive for the community of fans out there, whether they be loyal and as enthusiastic as ever, or somewhat jaded and disappointed by recent(ish) additions to the canon.

Getting people excited about Episode III, either again, or perhaps even for the first time. That’s just cool.