Narnia, The Dystopia Edition
Full review upcoming (I haven’t had a second to write anything), but I do have some time for some thoughts about the whole advanced screening thing. This was an advanced screening for the huddled, miserable and annoying masses. We had to queue up outside of the Lloyd Center Theater in Portland, with the temperature hovering around the mid-30′s with a nice strong wind to top everything off.
We got there about 6 (the screening was to start at 7:30) and we thought that we weren’t going to get in. Nothing bums you out like waiting and just not knowing if you were going to make something of an otherwise wasted evening.
The real torture existed in the line. We were unfortunate enough to have gotten in line behind a couple of high school kids who, like so many others of their generation, were attached to their cellphones. Talking and gabbing to no end, one of the guys in particular was like listening to screeching nails on a chalkboard. Young and religious (and incongruously sounding a lot like Christopher Lowell) he simply did not stop speaking on the phone or to his friend for the entire hour plus that we were in line. He would rapid fire a stream of sentences like a 4 year old that just learned to speak: "And then, Jenny was there, and I was like, hi Jenny, and she was like, Hi, and it was so funny because we were like saying hi, but at the same time but not at the same time. So were were like, let’s go and see what’s going on. And she was like. Wait. There was this one time when…" Copy and paste that sentence, then read it aloud for an hour and a half for the full effect. I was about to gouge my medulla oblongata, when the line finally started moving.
Then, the consumer as criminal parade really started. I’m saving my anti-anti-piracy-crusade for another time, but any time when you are assumed to have done wrong before you’ve even stepped in the door can’t give you faith in the system. Little kids, senior citizens and dorky high school kids getting wanded and patted down because they’re going to see a film is asinine. As was the requirement that we take out our cellphones, power them down, and submit them to security if they contained a cameraphone. As if a blurry, two day before the movie comes out, camera pic would somehow damage a multi-million dollar movie. If it did, the film has bigger issues to deal with. I held mine in my hand as the guy wanded me, then put it back in my pocket.
Finally, came the pre-show entertainment that was in the form of a disclaimer claiming that the movie was ‘their property’ and that they would ‘protect their property’ by whatever means necessary. This is the point where I rolled my eyes (that and when I saw the roaming security guards with night vision goggles). The whole thing was a surreal, Orwellian-lite fable filled with enough nonsense to take me out of the movie and the movie-going experience. Hell, dealing with all that, I’d rather just pay the price for the fucking ticket and be left alone.
Despite this, the movie was a fine romp, and a nice adaptation of a work that I’ve always believed to be more simple-minded than Lord of the Rings. But more about that later. Oh, and Amy won me a lightscribe t-shirt because she knew some obscure piece of Narnia trivia.
Disney, I knew that you were a cruel master. I just never realized how cruel.