The Batman Trilogy all at once. Faithful Phantom followers know that a couple of months ago, I attended the Marvel Marathon that featured 5 Marvel movies followed by the midnight showing of The Avengers. So when I learned that they would be doing a mini-marathon of the Batman Trilogy...I was all in and ready to go! My experience was quite different, which may be due to the fact that I did not go to the same theater that I did last time. Feel free to share YOUR experience in the comment section below.
The first thing that I noticed was when I first got there, it took a much longer time to get in. They were handing out lanyards to all the ticket holders to get in and out of the theater, just like they did for the Avengers Marathon. However, they were also handing out posters to every ticket holder, which not only slowed down the line, but made it difficult to position yourself in a crowded theater with a couple of hundred other people trying to figure out the same thing. It was a nice offering, but I liked the raffle of movie posters and cardboard standees the Avengers did between movies better. It made it a bit more special if you walked out with one, and by doing it during the breaks, you had a chance to put those items in your car before watching the next movie so you wouldn't have to worry about where to put it during the movie.
And let's talk about those lanyards for a moment. Great idea, but the mall I saw this one at closed all it's food courts pretty early on, so there was not a whole lot of walking in and out to do. The other thing about them was that however they were made, when you moved the slightest bit, the metal "jingled" a bit. Now picture a few hundred people shifting in their seats sitting for 9 hours during this event. During slow points in any of the movies, it sounded like Santa Claus was making an early delivery.
I mentioned how the food courts closed early. This was really a poor decision on their part, but great news for the theater concessions...or at least you would think. After the second movie, and right before the start of the Midnight showing of The Dark Knight Rises, EVERYBODY was ready to get something to eat besides popcorn. Not only that, but you had the people who had just come to see the Midnight showing being let in as well. If you had 3 hours to prepare for this onslaught, and knew everyone was gonna come at you all at once, you would have thought you could be prepared for such a situation. That was not the case. If you didn't spend the entire 40 minutes of the break you had on line for food, you were not gonna make it in time, which a lot of people did not. (Good thing they had that 20 minute buffer of previews to make it before the movie started). It really was poor planning on their part.
The other thing that I noticed was that there was not so much of the camaraderie between the movie goers as I experienced with the Avengers Marathon. That may be due to the fact that it was half the amount of time spent together,or it could have been just the situation at the time. Whatever it was, it was just not there. I did however, see a LOT more people dressed up in full costume. Many different characters from the Batman Universe were represented and THAT was really cool!
The sad fact is that this may be the last time you get to see that. AMC (and other theater chains, I would assume will follow suit) is gonna be cracking down and not allowing masks and costumes into their theaters due to the tragic shooting that happened in Colorado that night. It's a depressing sign of the times that something like that had to happen and my prayers go out to all the families of the victims of that night. It's a tragic truth also that not allowing people to have masks or costumes will not stop things like that from happening.
With all that said, I still had a good time at this event and would go again if given the chance. Maybe I won't go back to that particular theater/mall though.
Until next time, see you in the center seat.
No comments:
Post a Comment