My Battle with The Most Obnoxious Movie-Goer Ever

A while back I commented about how much I hate people who interrupt a good movie experience. Karma struck back. Hard. The obnoxious movie-goer struck back and won. Ladies and gentlemen, here is the tale of the best and worst movie experience of my entire life.

A couple of nights ago my sister and I went to go see “Prometheus“. I won’t go too much into the movie except say it’s one of my favourite movies to be released in the past few years. As a fan of “Alien” and “Aliens” I have been looking forward to a third installment to the franchise for a while. I knew what I was getting into based on the premise, but clearly this woman thought she was seeing “Markmaduke” or something worth heckling.

This movie does not deserve active attention.

I have never known what it is like to have an antagonist in my life. Not a true one at least. This woman has filled that gap. She is the Moby Dick to my Ahab, the Goliath to my David, the Newman to my Seinfeld. She has found out what I loved in life and actively attempted to destroy it.

This woman was approaching the 250lb mark and was attempting to rock a “Tim Horton’s Camp Day” t-shirt. She was with her husband (the most patient man on Earth). She was double-fisting her bucket of popcorn and large drink (I’m not being mean to larger people, these descriptions serve a purpose to the story). The seating went like this from left to right: myself, my sister, The Woman, the husband. My sister Andrea and I knew something was amuck when during the preview for that new John Winchester exorcism movie that is “based on a true story” she exclaimed loudly “OH YEAH RIGHT”. Andrea turned to me and said, “this woman is going to drive me insane”.

As the movie starts, my blood is rushing for some Ridley Scott awesomeness, something that has not really existed since “Gladiator” in 2000. As the movie starts, The Woman keeps muttering to herself in an above-a-whisper level of voice [NOTE: The husband NEVER responds to anything she says.] An establishing subtitle states “Scotland, 2089” which leads to her shouting “2089” as if she had just learned literacy that very moment and needed to share. It was at this moment I whisper over “could you please keep it down”. I proceed to tell her to be quiet twice more during the film with a “can you please be quiet” and a very under-the-breath “shut the fuck up”. I could have easily done it twenty more times.

Not only was she vocally annoying, she was physically annoying as well. During a scary scene I see flailing arms in my peripheral vision as she blocks my sister from actually watching the movie. Immediately she returns to her popcorn which she chomps loudly. Right when she is done with that, she eats her Kit-Kat chocolate as if she was trying to beat the world record for “Loudest Ingestion of Candy”. When she was done with that she dug into her purse for some bonus candy which she then stuck into a makeshift bowl she formed with her “Camp Day” shirt. After she was done consuming, she then dug into the ice cubes in the large pop cup. It wasn’t a simple task getting her hand through the diameter of the cup as she yet again topped the amount of noise she made previously. Metallica would have trouble making as much noise.

Replace “George” with “Brian” and “Upset” with “enraged beyond belief”

Finally the movie was over. I made some snarky, loud remarks while The Woman was still in my vicinity just to get my hatred out. My friend asked me in retrospect if I was afraid of her husband attacking me after the movie. That’s the thing, I wasn’t. Now I understand what it is like to have a cause that I can be truly devoted to. Now, I write to get revenge. It may not be as glamorous as Edmond Dantes revenge or even Timothy Dalton’s revenge in “007: License To Kill” but now I understand why it is necessary.  I ended up seeing “Prometheus” again the next day anyway so my experience of watching the movie is not totally tarnished.

This is a tricky thing about society. What can you really do if someone is annoying you in a silent setting? Sure you can tell them to be quiet but sometimes they don’t quite get it. You can rat them out, but then they win and you miss out on the performance you paid to see. I would gladly pay and extra $2 per movie for ushers in the theatres to tell people to shut their traps and turn off their phones. In the meantime however, I should be happy enough that I had the option not to pay an additional $3 for “Prometheus” and that perhaps someday movies will be affordable again.
On a more positive note, I just read “Dune”. I’ll likely write about it soon.

 

In the meantime, just be quiet and enjoy the damn movie.

Distracting Movie-Goers and How They Ruin a Good Experience

I was seeing “The Hunger Games” with my sister last night. As I was rolling my eyes at the fact that Peeta’s cake decoration skills make him a master of camouflage , I caught some girl BBM’ing away during the movie. [NOTE: If RIM wants to increase the value of their stocks they should discourage their users from texting in movies, it always seems to be Blackberry users. I blame them for their financial state] Now this is cheap night, so this girl has only spent $6.75 to piss off others and talk to her BFF, but the fact remains she has disrupted something sacred.

I own like a trillion DVDs, a huge chunk I have yet to watch yet, so there is no real reason for me to spend a large amount of cheddar to go to the movies. I’m not paying for the movie entirely, but I am paying for an experience. I love going to the movies. I get a thrill out of being in a darkened theatre and having Shia LaBeouf flailing his arms in the air in 3D. I love being bombarded by soundtracks. I find going to the cinema to be the ultimate way to experience a movie, even if it is terrible (refer to the Shia LaBeouf 3D).

$16 for this?!

I however am not paying $11+ to hear you talk to your friends about how hot Ryan Gosling is though. Shepard Book said it the best in “Firefly”.

I feel that 4/5 movies I go to there is always one person there to ruin the experience. When I saw “Inception”, the guy beside me was trying to show off to his girlfriend by providing running commentary such as “this film was directed by Christopher Nolan, best known for such films as: “The Prestige”, “The Dark Knight”, and “Memento””. “Social Network” was ruined by a trio of guys behind me talking loudly in Spanish. “Titanic 3D” was ruined by middle-aged women quoting lines the entire movie. “21 Jump Street” was ruined by a teenager twitching the whole time exclaiming “this movie sucks”.

I can keep going…

Movies are good for dates as it provides something to talk about before hand as well as after and you get to remain silent in-between so you can avoid awkward small talk. Movies themselves are not a social event. With movie tickets reaching upwards of $20, I want to get my money’s worth. I cannot understand how anyone would go into a movie with the mindset of “OMG I NEED TO TELL MY BFFL ABOUT THIS” after they have dished out that much money.

I forget “Revelations”, but was a movie-texter a siren of the Apocalypse?

For this reason I strongly believe movie theatres should have ushers. When I saw “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2” at the midnight release they had people patrolling the auditorium ensuring no one had phones out. This was to ensure no one was trying to bootleg the movie, but it also worked as no one had their phones out or talked throughout the entire movie. It remains one of my favourite movie experiences ever. Perhaps that is where they can redirect my money instead of helping to finance terrible movies. On that note Hollywood, please don’t make a “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie or my “inner goddess” may feel the need to heckle it the whole time.

Long story short: no one better talk during “The Dark Knight Rises” or you may die.

[Disclaimer: People are allowed to talk during midnight cult classics. They are presented in that fashion for a reason]