I just purchased my ticket on Fandango, I’m going to the very first showing of X-Men 3, at 11:59 pm on Thursday. I’m such a geek, heh.

Ah, but at that time the only people there with me will be other geeks. Its cool. Back in 2002 when Spider-Man first came out I went to the “geek showing” of that as well. As expected there were lots of geeks in attendence, which made the experience all the more satisfying. There was even a guy there - a high school student - in a full-body, home-made Spider-Man costume. It was very well done.

The Spider-Man showing really was an experience. It was the movie Marvel fans had been waiting to see for decades. So there was definitely an electricity in the air; a certain commraderie among everyone there. The movie began with a cheer from the crowd and we settled in to watch. I, and others no doubt, were worried that the movie wouldn’t measure up to our expectations, but I was quite surprized. It actually exceeded my expectations. At the time at least.

I was quite immersed in the movie when towards the end during the final battle between Spider-Man and the Green Goblin the sound cut out. We waited, but several minutes of movie passed by without any sound (or it was choppy or not lined up properly). Ugh. People were getting restless and it looked like there wasn’t anyone in the booth trying to fix the problem so I took it upon myself to get things straightened out.

It was like 1:30 in the morning, so the theater was on a skeleton crew, it was tough to find someone, but eventually I did and explained what was going on. They were rather dismissive. Despite their attitude they seemed to be going to fix it. Since they weren’t going to go tell the sold out theater what was going on, I relayed the info. For the next several minutes I was the go-between between the packed theater and the staff. Trying to keep the people calm and keep the staff busy fixing the damn thing.

It took a while. Not only did they have to fix the sound, but they had to rewind the reel to the correct point before the sound went on the fritz. Whenever things were still screwed up, or when they didn’t rewind to the correct part the crowd would let out a shout.

Meanwhile however, to keep the crowd busy as the minutes ticked by bringing us earlier and earlier into the following morning, the guy in the Spider-Man costume entertained everyone. He did a hell of a job too. Since the scene we were missing and all waiting on was the final battle between Spider-Man and Green Goblin, this guy and his friend got up in front to act it out.

His friend grabbed one of those wet floor pylons and started riding it around like the Green Goblin glider and doing battle with Spider-Man. It was a riot. I don’t remember any of their lines, but they did a pretty damn good parody of the movie and they had everyone laughing.

The crowd was still pretty pissed off as it was getting later and later (or earlier and earlier) and the projector still hadn’t been fixed. I popped my head out again to see what was going on with the staff and saw that they were getting some free tickets ready to hand out. Good idea. Of course like before they weren’t at all talking with the people in the theater despite the fact they had just been sitting around for half an hour or more just getting angry at the theater. So instead of letting them sit and stew I went back in and made an announcement about the progress of fixing the projector and announcing that the theater was giving out free ticket vouchers.

Even though they never totally rewound to the correct spot, they did get the audio fixed and we finished up the rest of the movie. While Spider-Man isn’t quite as magical today as it was that first time I saw it, it is still one of my favorite movies. With everything that happened that first viewing, it is definitely an event to remember.

So while its doubtful that X-Men 3 will be quite as memorable an experience as the mishap of Spider-Man, I’ll still be there in all my geeky glory at 11:59 tomorrow night.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 24th, 2006 at 10:01 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.