I did not watch Star Wars until I was about 20, didn’t see Empire Strikes Back until I was maybe 24, and yet I had basically watched those movies already. I knew all the important plot beats, I had a pretty firm grasp on who all the characters were, and when I finally did watch them I felt as though I had watched them already, years ago. The films were so omnipresent that just existing was enough to learn everything there was to unintentionally know about them before even watching the movie.
This might be why I’ve never been a big Star Wars fan, it was like watching movies I’ve seen many times already.
This is also how I feel about the recent Avengers: Infinity War, a movie I have not watched but, somehow, feel like I already have. As soon as the film was released every corner of the internet was eager to outline every plot beat, character moment and major twist, to the point where even someone not looking for it suddenly knows all of the details of a movie they haven’t seen. Thanks, internet!
This doesn’t bother me. The sprawling Marvel Cinematic Universe, as they call it, left me cold a while ago, because I didn’t have time to watch eight movies and take a six week correspondence course to keep up with what’s going on. Ever since they started building up towards Grimace collecting the chaos emeralds I have found myself increasingly unable to care about the goings on in Marvel land. By the time we got to Avengers: Crisis on Infinite Earths I was so far behind that I probably won’t even watch it for five years.
I am sure several things in the above paragraph will enrage obsessive fans.
But I should be nicer to those obsessive fans, because unless they were able to get to another city this weekend they have had a movie they have been anticipating for years completely ruined for them. While it’s handy for me, someone who isn’t very interested in Avengers: Infiniti Q45, I imagine that the only way an obsessive fan can maintain their composure is to live like they are Amish and eschew all technology.
I hope that in the future, Disney and Marvel think of these poor folks and are kinder to rural theatres when they open the sequel, Dodge Avenger with Optional Infinity Stereo System.
Scheduling Marvel is clearly a challenge for a small theatre – the local theatre can usually get a new release unless it’s a Marvel film. The hoops a theatre has to go through to get first run on a big Disney tentpole feature is not merely bad for the theatre, but bad for the fans of the series, who want to watch it near home but don’t have the option.
This desire to see these films screening in local, one-screen theatres is not for me, but for all the people who didn’t even read this column because they assumed I’d ruin the film. It’s for the people who develop an involuntary twitch when I say that my favorite Avenger is Batman. It’s for the woman I knew who took a notepad to the first Avengers movie in order to properly discuss what it did right and wrong. They deserve better from the people who make their favorite entertainment. Disney and Marvel will make an absurd amount of money either way, so at least they can be kind to their fans in rural areas.
