I go to the movies with a friend whenever a good one comes around. Often it’s opening night, but last night we went to The Peanuts Movie, which has been open for weeks, and there were about ten of us in attendance. Our record is two: yes, just us (we went to a Wednesday Fathom Events encore Met Opera screening of Carmen in a teeming rainstorm). I don’t know which is better: suffocating crowds or the spacious racket of crickets chirping.
A theater full of fans can be like an asylum full of patients on good drugs; a happy kind of chaos fills the space with anticipating humans jacked up on publicity hype and fountain soda. It’s a world in which lines at the concessions are endless and the preview trailers are deliberate torture meant to delay the main event. I’m seeing Star Wars next weekend, so I know I should find a parking space about eight hours before showtime, consume no food or beverages after noon and wear comfortable shoes.
A movie past its premiere shelf life, on the other hand, is a much more intimate event, usually filled with people who are undergoing their second or third viewing, folks who hate the chaos of a packed theater or those who finally got a sitter and a day with no appointments or must-see shows on cable.
This was a family movie (and if you want a recommendation, a must-see), but the screening was 9:00. What happened to kids being in bed by that hour? But then again, there were no kids in this theater; just a few nostalgic adults who wanted to see what was done to bring a comic strip to life in computer-generated depth.
Next week there will be such a conglomeration of seventies and eighties Star Wars buffs of a certain age with their kids in (occasionally unwilling) tow, along with cosplay factions of Dark and Good Side Jedi and Sith milling around, I’m afraid I won’t know where to sit. Perhaps on one side close to the exits in case a light saber fight breaks out. Maybe I should make it comfortable steel toe shoes.
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