Well, he did it. Out of five contestants, only Jim Braden had the fortitude and mind and physical strength to go all the way during Alamo Drafthouse’s epic The Marathon Awakens, which made contestants sit through the prequel trilogy, the original trilogy, and then as many showings of The Force Awakens as it took before all but one tapped out. In the end, the whole deal took about forty-six hours. That’s insane.

I was lucky enough to ask Jim a few questions about what the experience was like and whether seeing The Force Awakens a gazillion times gave him any insight into the film that the rest of us may have missed.

You watched Star Wars for over forty hours. What kind of items do you eat and drink when faced with such an ordeal? What do you avoid?

I came in with a very clear strategy regarding diet and physical behavior. I ate very little. I ate a Larabar fruit & nut bar each morning (not energy bars), and one very light meal per day at lunchtime (Greek chicken wrap) that I ate over a period of one hour so it wouldn't hit my stomach too hard. I avoided stuff like 5 Hour Energy and Red Bull, just sticking with a cup of black coffee every 6 hours, which is the recommended dose over a prolonged period to avoid a crash. I drank a ton of water and periodically ordered special, not-strictly-off-the-menu items like a sliced apple. I also ordered bowls of lemon wedges that I squeezed into my water and also onto my fingers, which I used to dot my upper lip, since citrus aroma aids in mental stamina. Peppermint gum also helped for the same reason, as well as the mechanical action of chewing. Weird things: tickling the roof of my mouth with my tongue (sounds bizarre, but it works) and pulling on my earlobes. I didn't make any of this stuff up--there's a lot of information like this online if you take the time to look. TL;DR version: I did my homework and made a plan. The old adage is always true: a failure to plan is a plan to fail.

Did you develop any kind of unexpected bond with your fellow contestants?

Not as much as I would have liked. The regular, public marathon was extremely hard to get tickets for, and I think I was the only one of the contestants to score tickets on my own before the contest was announced. I had bought tickets for myself and my 6-year-old son, whom I had promised that when the new Star Wars movie came out, he and I would see it for the first time together. When I was chosen for the contest, I made a special arrangement with the Drafthouse to keep my original seats rather than sitting in the row designated for the contestants. As a result, by the time the 7-movie marathon ended, I handed my son off to my wife and I joined the rest of the group, I was a bit of an outsider. Sitting in a dark theater and banned from talking doesn't do much to facilitate friendships, so I didn't really bond with anyone until it was down to myself and one other contestant. The Drafthouse surprised us with a showing of the horrendous 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special (so bad that Lucas was famously quoted as saying that if he had enough time and a hammer, he'd personally smash every copy into dust). The two of us weren't supposed to talk, but everyone was pretty punchy at that point and we started making fun of it and playing off each other, all while live-streaming on Periscope. We developed a bit of an audience and it turned into a surprisingly lively interlude that woke us up and probably prolonged the contest another 6 hours because we caught our second wind. We became friendly, but a contest is a contest and we were definitely both hoping to knock the other guy out and take the prize.

You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t a huge Star Wars fan. Does that mean you are fond of the prequels?

Haha, well that's a loaded question if I ever heard one! I'm not sure I'd say I'm particularly fond of the prequels. I think they're severely flawed in some very key aspects, and I could write an entire thesis on how they could have been vastly improved with a few very simple changes. Beyond the flaws in execution, the bigger problem is the fact that they're simply unnecessary. Backstory is just that--background events and details to be referenced, but not fleshed out. They inform the main story, but don't form a story on their own. The three films set out to answer a bunch of questions that no one really asked (or if they did, they didn't necessarily really want the answers they were given). As a little kid playing with Star Wars figures on the living room floor, I absolutely created my own little head canon about the Clone Wars, the history between Obi-wan and Anakin and the fall of the Republic, but even then I never felt any particular desire to find out "what really happened."

But this is all my subjective interpretation. Objectively, in the end, the prequels just pretty much suck because they're bad movies. That's a universal truth.

Does watching the first six movies all in a row change your perspective on how they work as a whole? Did anything surprise you?

I'm too familiar with all six existing films for anything to really surprise me anymore. That said, every single time I watch the prequels, I'm baffled by Lucas' creative decisions and the weird, unnecessary additions he made to the lore. Enough has been written about Midichlorians, virgin births, the powerful romantic bond between a 14-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy, the nature of sand (spoiler alert: it's rough and it gets everywhere). There's no need to elaborate on any of that. It's just amazing to me that Lucas could have so misunderstood what people loved about the original trilogy. To me, that's the greatest proof that he's never really had a grasp of what worked about his own creation. The entire Star Wars franchise was built upon the happy accidental intersection of a handful of true geniuses (chiefly John Dykstra, Lawrence Kasdan, Gary Kurtz, John Williams and Ralph McQuarrie) and a cargo hold-full of good luck and good timing.

How rough was it for you at the end?

I know it's not the sexiest story, but it wasn't rough at all. Physically, I could have gone on far longer than we did. Mentally, not so much. It's hard to convey in words how maddening it is to watch the same sequence of images over and over again. There were a couple of little moments that, despite the fact that I obviously saw them in at least 2 hour increments, seemed like they were on a 5-minute loop. At one point, the scene of the two stormtroopers walking in on one of Kylo Ren's temper tantrums caused me to start laughing out loud in that "oh god, this guy's not right in the head" kind of way. Time stops making sense. I completely lost count of how many times we had watched the movie, and what time of day or night it was. Eventually I sort of let the movie just wash over me without really engaging with it. It became a really hallucinatory, dreamlike experience. By the time we finished the contest, I'd come out the other side of that nightmare and was ready to watch it as long as necessary to win. I felt like the "Pink Floyd" character from The Wall, after he has his "Comfortably Numb" mental breakdown, peels off his skin and emerges completely insane but with perfect composure and strength of purpose. From the outside, I was apparently looking good and acting pretty normal.

Which Force Awakens scene was your last?

The contest ended about 15 minutes into our 10th viewing. I had told my opponent after the previous show that I really didn't think I could take any more of this movie, but when the next show was ready, I dug deep and charged back in. I think he assumed that I was on the verge of folding, and maybe that having that hope dashed broke his will. He leaned over to me at that point and said "You're not going to quit, are you?" I said "Nope," and he said "Well, I guess I quit then." It was abrupt for sure, but I think we were both at the breaking point.

Having seen The Force Awakens more times than probably any other civilian, what insights can you offer about the film?

Well, I really enjoyed it. People have already begun to pick apart the arbitrary story points (e.g., "we have to go talk to this random alien on this random planet because reasons"), plot inconsistencies and the leaps in logic, and those criticisms aren't wrong. Still, those critics would do well to remember that the original trilogy we all hold so sacred was a bit, well, dumb. The plot was extremely thin—at least in the first installment—and the whole thing got by on humor, fun, discovery and sheer spectacle, all built upon a foundation of solid (if one-dimensional) characters that we liked and cared about. After the ponderous, overwrought and joyless prequels, The Force Awakens was a return to form for the franchise, and it succeeds on every single point mentioned above as the strengths of the original trilogy. When is the last time a Star Wars movie was laugh-out-loud funny and also brought a tear to your eye? I’m guessing it was in 1983.

As for insights based on repeated viewings, there were a lot of fun little throwbacks to the OT. While Lucas plucked the same low-hanging fruit with annoying frequency (“I have a bad feeling about this,” “This is where the fun begins,” etc.), The Force Awakens pulled out some deep cuts that really rewarded the die-hard fan. While rummaging around the Falcon, Finn casually throws aside the Jedi training remote used in A New Hope. When Finn accidentally turns on the Dejarik holochess table, the same two creatures whose faceoff in A New Hope resulted in threats to pull arms out of sockets meet up again, but this time, after 39 years, the little yellow guy gets his revenge by hammering his opponent into the ground. The fact that Chewie takes notice of the play is even more hilarious.

The only thing I found mildly disappointing was the score. Much as I love John Williams, I feel like his most creative years are behind him, and gone are those classic, hummable themes upon which he’s earned his reputation and his Academy Awards. He riffs on those iconic melodies—the triumphant Millennium Falcon theme that surges as Finn and Rey take their first desperate flight is particularly effective, eliciting a cheer from the audience at every single screening—but the new material seems like someone sampled a few dozen of Williams’ most well-known scores, threw them into a blender and reassembled them in no particular order. The soundtrack is instantly recognizable as Williams, but just as instantly forgettable. Still, I’d rather have him composing than anyone else. John Williams’ music is, and will always be, the music of Star Wars.

And finally, does conquering an endurance test like this make you want to find more, now that you know you have the goods?

God no. I like a challenge as much as anyone, but I have nothing to prove at this point. A few years back, I tackled the Four Horsemen Burger at Chunky’s in San Antonio. This is the Ghost Pepper burger that almost took out Adam “Man vs. Food” Richman. I love spicy food, and ever since I heard about that burger, I was determined to tackle it. I had my chance, and though it was one of the most unpleasant experiences of my life, I don’t regret it for a second. I made up my mind that I would beat it, and I did. I’m on the Wall of Flame! Likewise, I love Star Wars. Like, I REALLY love Star Wars. This contest was made for me, and I had friends I hadn’t spoken to in 20 years coming out of the woodwork to wish me luck and telling me that my entire life had led to this moment. I decided that if I was chosen to participate, I would win. Once I was picked, I told everyone in my office that I would win. It wasn’t even a question in my mind. There’s a little switch in my head that, when flipped, won’t allow me to quit. To lose that contest, I would have had to physically collapse. I wish I could apply that strength of will to things that are actually important, but what can I say? Star Wars is my thing.