This has been a point of pride, in the UAE, for months now:

Not only was a significant fraction of the first half hour of Star Wars: The Force Awakens filmed in the deserts of Abu Dhabi … the movie premiered for the public here yesterday, December 16, two days ahead of the North American release.

(Above, two Emiratis with someone dressed as a stormtrooper, ahead of a showing at Emirates Palace yesterday. Photo by The National)

And we saw it tonight, December 17, the day before anyone we know in the U.S. could see it.

So … hah!

I was expecting a bigger turnout at the cineplex’s big room, at the World Trade Centre, in Abu Dhabi, but 1) it was in its second day of showing on approximately a billion screens in the UAE, and 2) the country has a population of about 10 million.

So filling the theater at 9:20 p.m. on Day 2 of the local release … perhaps a bit ambitious.

And what did we think of the film?

Careful: A bit of a spoiler coming up after the break.

I will sum it up like this:

If you saw the first Star Wars movie, released 38 years ago … then you pretty much have seen the new one.

Apparently making any statement more specific than that, ahead of the U.S. (finally) getting a chance to see the movie,  is a breach of etiquette so severe that a person can be shunned for days, weeks, forever.

It was a late screening, and the theater had few (if any) kids in the audience. Instead, the crowd looked old enough to have seen the (often panned) “first three” episodes as they came out, in 1999, 2002 and 2005.

When the Star Wars logo appeared on the screen, the crowd cheered.

The only other outbreak of spontaneous cheering? When the distinctive, white-clad stormtroopers (formerly employed by the evil empire, now fighting for something called the First Order, also evil) first appeared on the screen.

Go figure. I guess stormtroopers are the face of the franchise.

I am old enough to remember the first movie in the series. The impact it had, in 1977, with all its breakthroughs in special effects, was enormous.

The opening sequence, back then, with the narrative printed on the screen and receding into the distance, followed by a small spaceship being chased by a huge interstellar battleship that steadily filled the screen from the bottom, grabbed us all by the medulla oblongata.

Seeing something like that, again, here in Abu Dhabi, was fun but familiar.

The movie lasts two hours and five minutes, but I never felt as if it were dragging. Star Wars stalwarts Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher are in the cast, but you already know that.

And now I will walk away from this, secure in the knowledge that I saw this eagerly anticipated movie up to 18 hours ahead of anyone I know back home.

If I keep writing, I may give away something that will get me in trouble.