I’m not a big Spiderman movie fan.  I watched the Tobey Maguire movies and I’m still cranky about how bad the third one was.  I didn’t see any of the other reboots of the series.  I don’t get the point of rebooting series.  It is also cranky-making for me.

But, this newest Spiderman film, Spiderman: Homecoming, looked cute and it has Robert Downey, Jr who I do like, so I wanted to go.

We tried to go on Sunday afternoon of opening weekend.  There are two major theaters we go to.  One has the only popcorn I’ve ever liked in a theater and iced tea to drink.  The other has pretzel bites which used to be an absolute requirement for me to go to a theater but since I’ve mostly given up cheese I don’t eat them unless I want to be self-destructive.  We went to Good Popcorn theater.

The problem is that Good Popcorn theater has recently gone to assigned seating.  This sucks.  I understand why the theater likes it but it sucks for movie goers.  You don’t know when you pick a seat if people will come and sit right next to you.  You don’t know if people you are sitting by actually are bringing 16 screaming children.  You can’t adjust where you plan on sitting once you get into the theater.  This is extra bad because the husband has PTSD and gets panicky if he feels trapped.

So it ended up being super crowded and he freaked and we had to leave before the previews came on.  Spiderman Fail #1.

I decided that I would go by myself on Tuesday morning to see the movie.  I also decided to be self-destructive and go to the Pretzel Bites theater because I had errands to run in that area who am I kidding?  I wanted pretzel bites and cheese.  I get there in time for the 11:15  AM showing.  I get my pretzel bites and a medium root beer which ends up being this gigantic flagon of liquid sugar.  I go to the theater and settle in the back row content with my lot in life.

The first preview comes on the screen.  A space ship crosses from right to left on the screen.  The screen goes dark.  Strobe lights start flashing on either side of the theater.  Sirens start to wail.  This seems like an impressively elaborate preview.  This theater has really upped their immersive effects since I was here last.  Then the lights come up and a robotic voice says over the sirens, “There is an emergency. Please evacuate the theater.  Do not use the elevators.”  (Not hard since this is a one-level theater.)  Huh.

There were about 11 of us in the theater.  We made the decision to actually try out the emergency exits that you never get to use.  No other theater seemed to make this decision so we were on the back of the building and now had to walk all the way around to see what was going on. 

Sirens were still going off inside so we waited outside.  Our group was still the only people outside.  No other patrons.  No workers.  No emergency response personnel.  Eventually a cop showed up and ambled inside.  I continued eating my pretzel bites while balancing my flagon of root beer in the crook of my elbow.  Priorities.

Eventually we hear fire sirens.  If there was a real fire, the whole place might have burned down before the fire department came.  They strolled in too but I decided to quit leaning against the columns of a possibly actually burning building and go finish my pretzel bites a bit away from the building.

About this time people from other theaters started to come out.  I guess our theater had all the smart people who are not going to die in a horror movie because we got out at the first sign of trouble.  We also entertained the idea that our theater was only starting previews so we weren’t as invested in sticking around as groups who were in the middle of a movie.  All the “lucky they weren’t murdered by a serial killer” people had movie passes in their hands though so our group went inside to get ours.  Officially, no one could actually find anything on fire but the alarm wouldn’t shut off either so we should come back another day.

Questions:

  1. Is the universe trying to tell me not to go see Spiderman?
  2. Am I bad luck for Spiderman?
  3. When I use my voucher to go try to see the movie again, will I be self-destructive enough to eat pretzel bites again? I’m already starting to feel sick.  Or, will I be satisfied with the very fancy candy bar I snuck in and didn’t have a chance to eat?
  4. Is a movie actually worth this much effort even with 94% on Rotten Tomatoes?