A Cinecle (Re)View – Thor: Ragnarok
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I’m sure some of you reading this are too young to remember standing in line for movie tickets.
CUE OLD MAN VOICE …
Back in my day we had to walk 25 miles to and from the movie theater. Usually in waist deep snow. Without shoes. Uphill in both directions. And there was no interwebs so if we made it to the theater, we had to stand in line to get tickets. And there was no reserved seating. If you didn’t have someone with you willing to go in and save seats, you’d be lucky if you weren’t sitting on the sticky, soda/gum/candy/butter/pukey floor in the aisle. Those were some dark days. @#$%ing kids today don’t realize how good they have it.
AND, SCENE.
Today we have all of the luxuries. Internet ticket purchasing …
Reserved seating …
Reclining chairs…
And some people still can’t manage to not be colossal assholes and metaphorically shit in the collective cereal of the people around them trying to enjoy Thor: Ragnaork, or, as I like to call it, Eye Candy Overdose!
The only diversity needed in this flick is some ugly people.
First, there was the douchenozzle at the ticket vending kiosk machine thingy. I like to skip the box office and pick-up my tickets from the inanimate thing with which you don’t have to converse, if for no other reason than the little ticket droid doesn’t make judgey faces at you when you admit that, despite the ample amount of gray in your beard, you are indeed here to watch a ridiculously-handsome, unfairly-charming, impossibly-built specimen of manhood punch CGI creatures for two hours; it just prints your tickets and sends you on your way.
But when I approached my mechanical servant, there was a young man at the machine who, rather than pre-purchasing his seats online and simply fetching his tickets from SEAT3PO, he was selecting his seats from the seating chart on the screen and changing his mind … again … and again … and again. My impatience grew as I began to wonder if he didn’t actually understood the purpose of this machine, or if he was just the same kind of self-absorbed prick that uses self checkout lanes at the grocery store for two full carts of food.
Negan spent less time deciding who’s skull to use for his T-ball demonstration, and that took 203 days; JUST PICK SOME @$#%ING SEATS!
I try to time my arrival at the theater for five minutes before showtime, which almost always gives me enough time to retrieve our tickets from the Ticketnator, gives my wife enough time to make sure that Regal Entertainment Group stays solvent by purchasing a large water and 3.5 oz
of Raisinettes in a 9 oz. box for $75, and get into our auditorium and reclined after the commercials have finished but before the trailers begin.
But that didn’t happen this time … and not because of the Sheldon Cooper-esque seat connoisseur.
At 27 minutes after showtime, there was still a giant Coca Cola logo where Chris Hemsworth’s dreamy baby blues should have been.
Unacceptable, Regal, UN-APP-@#$%ING-CEPTABLE!
I get it; distributors kill theaters on ticket sale participation, so theaters have to resort to charging more for Sno Caps than a midrange restaurant chain like Ruby Tuesday charges for a rack of ribs and selling screen time to Coke and TV shows that no one is ever going to watch to
keep the doors open, so I could forgive starting the feature a half hour after show time.
BUT WE WEREN’T EVEN THROUGH TRAILERS YET!!! I’m no theater manager (oh, that’s right, I was for nearly 6 years), but I think that if removing the commercials that run AFTER a movie’s scheduled start times for every show during an average day would save you enough time to run the movie and trailers again, your commercials are too @#$%ing long.
When the lights finally began to dim, I exhaled a sigh of relief … until a complete asshat sat down next to me with pretzel bites and cheese in one of those noisy plastic trays and wearing a coat that I can only assume was made of maracas.
Seriously, what kind of no boundary-having, nails on a chalk board food eating, rain stick garment-wearing tool looks at a nearly empty seating chart online …
… and decides that the only viable seating option is …
… is right next to a complete stranger?
And yes, the movie was funny. Thor and Surtur were funny. Thor throwing things at Loki was funny. The play was funny. Valkyrie’s functional alcoholism was funny. Jeff Goldblum Goldbluming was funny. Thor logging in to the quintet was funny. “Get help” was funny. Korg was funny.
BUT NONE OF IT WAS THIS @#$%ING FUNNY …
And yet, this is what I was trapped with … for two hours and ten minutes.
Overall, I give it 1 out of 5 stars and would in no way recommend it to a friend.
The experience, that is. The movie was awesome!
Tony Marion is a writer and filmmaker who splits time between Lancaster, PA and Baltimore, MD. He lives for the work of Descendents (the band), Chuck Palahniuk and Rian Johnson. Check out the digital embodiment of procrastination he calls his website here.