I love seeing movies at the Arclight. For a few dollars more you get reserved seating, online ordering, nice auditoriums, no pre-movie ads, no fake radio (“And now the latest from Kenny Chesney!”), and a better audio visual experience.
That extra couple of bucks attracts people who care about movies while it repels teenagers and assorted jackasses who just want a dark place to talk on their cellphones.
Another thing, so far I haven’t experienced catastrophic movie failure at an Arclight screening. Meanwhile, at other theaters:
- When I saw Revenge of the Sith on opening night the film starting doing that horizontal scroll thing right before the climactic triple amputation. That’s right, the movie moment I’d been waiting for my whole life, the one I’d spent hours in lines for and sat through six hours of crap prequel for, was totally ruined by EPIC THEATER FAIL.
- During Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Regard for Our Childhood the sound kept cutting in and out.
- My brother the film buff reports that during the pivotal “architect” scene in Matrix 2 (aka superfluous crap sequel part 1) the film snapped.
- He also reports that the latest Indiana Jones movie was ruined by blurry projection that the manager couldn’t or wouldn’t fix. (The hamfisted script didn’t help)
- My friend Yuko saw The Dark Knight in IMAX at Universal City Walk on opening weekend and the film melted.
When movie reels melt on a big opening weekend, the theaters do a worse job making it up to customers because the mob is furious, and many just leave in frustration without elbowing through to get their “free” comp ticket (as if a do-over at the same crappy theater makes it all right).
By the way, this is how The Dark Knight’s opening weekend went down at the Arclight Hollywood:
