Ready, Set, Glow!

A short time from now, in a galleria not far from you...the creatures will assemble in a movie-plex queue so long it might seem computer-generated. Guys as tall as Wookiees with Ewok-size children in their backpacks. Teenage girls dreaming they can be Queen Amidala, if only they had her Faberge-egg earrings. The Anakin-young and the Yoda-old, the dutiful moms and the punks with their Han Solo 'tudes--all the children of Star Wars will be waiting for magic to strike in '99, as it did in '77.

What was, will be. On May 19, Star Wars: Episode 1--The Phantom Menace opens on more than 2,500 screens. Moviemakers like their pictures to have "want-see" (tradespeak for marketable elements), but who doesn't want to see George Lucas' first of three prequels to the most popular trilogy ever filmed? Last November fans paid full ticket price to watch the film's 2-min. trailer, slept through the 3-hr. Meet Joe Black, then watched the trailer again. Internet rogues have mined many details from the script, invented the rest and splashed it on their websites. Every magazine but the New England Journal of Medicine has already put the movie on its cover. At midnight on May 3, kids will drag their parents, or vice versa, to Toys "R" Us and fill their shopping carts with Lucasian action figures. Want-see? Just try keeping them away.

But for the Starwoids--the trilogy cultists who live in the world Lucas created--this anticipation may be too fevered. It sends a little shudder through the 54-year-old gent who wrote the script alone and, for the first time in 22 years, directed a movie as well as supervised it. "Expectations are so high that no matter what, for some people we'll never make it," he says. "Everybody is trying to steal information. But if we bring out the Episode 1 book early, people get upset that we're giving the story away." Mirthless laugh. "No matter how you do it, you can't win."

Lucas is not alone in wondering if the $115 million film on the screen will be able to top the spectacle outside; one imagines rampant ticket scalping, if not pitched light-saber battles. Can Lucas keep his huge, devout constituency awed while gently reminding them that it's only a movie? Or has all the promotional percussion deafened the audience, spilled the best secrets? Maybe moviegoers who have read stories like this one will have a slumping sense of deja view when Episode 1 is finally revealed.

Think that, and think again. You needn't be Return of the Jedi's evil Emperor, pregnant with prescience, to foresee smiles of delicious anticipation as the 20th Century Fox fanfare blares, the Lucasfilm logo fades and the sacred text appears: "A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away..." You needn't be a Hollywood accountant, mopey about this year's stagnant box office and praying for a Titanic-size hit, to forehear the cheers that will surely erupt halfway through the film when the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn (Liam Neeson) casts his laser stare on nine-year-old Anakin Skywalker (Jake Lloyd) and intones, "May the Force be with you."