At the Movies

One of the things I did on my time off over the holiday week was to go to the movies with Sam. This was his idea. He wanted to see the new Star Wars movie and it was playing at the local theater.

The local theater is in the center of town, a few miles from where I live. Even though I don’t go to the movies very often, I like the fact that our town still has a theater. As I’ve mentioned to my kids on more than one occasion, and as I mentioned to Sam when we left for this movie, when I was little, almost every town had their own movie theater. Now, there’s fewer and fewer movie theaters around. So we’re pretty lucky to still have one in our town.

This comment, like most of my other “when I was a kid” comments, was met with the usual amount of intense interest - which is to say, I had to ask Sam if he even heard what I said - as if I expected there to be any follow-up comments or questions. (There weren't.)

Anyway, we drove over to the theater, getting there about 10 minutes or so before the movie was to start. This left plenty of time for Sam to get some popcorn and some water and for us to find a place to sit. As a matter of fact, we could have arrived a minute before showtime and still not had any trouble finding a seat. The place is almost never crowded - which, if I’m going to go to the movies, is how I like it. The fewer people, the better.

Almost showtime! You can pretty much taste the excitement!

Well, we saw the movie and Sam liked it just fine, but I could tell there was something bothering him. Turns out, it had to do with a scene near the very beginning of the movie. (This is far from a spoiler alert, being so incidental...) 

In the movie, there’s a character who dies early on, in the course of making an attack on the bad guys. I’m not sure if this character even had a name, the part was so small, but we find out later that she was another character’s sister. 

Anyway, she dies a Star Wars death, which is to say, heroically, and pretty much off screen - by maybe a second or two. When I had asked Sam what he didn’t like about the movie, he mentioned this person to me and the fact that she died, but I had trouble placing it - until he finally got through to me. It surprised me, but shouldn’t have, that this is what he came away with.

On the other hand, it wasn’t completely without its merits. It was filled with plenty of scenes that caused Sam, from time to time, to point at the screen and say things (way too loudly) like, “What???" and "That’s pretty mean! Why’s he doing that?” or “Someone should lock him up!” to which I can only assume that the handful of other people in the audience, readily agreed. At least, that's judging by their silence.

Oh, and there was another part he seemed to like, closer to the end, where a female character surprises a male character by giving him a quick kiss, which elicited from Sam a hushed, “Awww.” Then, almost immediately, the female character seemingly dies. But I’m pretty sure she’s still alive. So that was pretty good.