For those of you still living in your proverbial cave, last night was the grand opening of the final Star Wars film, and yours truly was there with baited breath along with a whole host of strange creatures who had dared to slink out into the real world in order to see George Lucas’ latest concoction. Yes, I know that his last two attempts had some problems, to say the least. Yes, I know that the franchise has turned into a spectacle-driven load of corporate drivel meant to squeeze money from the very blood of the masses. But there I was, giddy with anticipation while I waited an hour and half for the thing to start. For one brief fraction of a second, I actually considered wearing the Jedi costume I have in storage somewhere (to my everlasting shame – because not only did I considered wearing it but I also actually own one (don't tell anybody)).
What gets me so worked up? Star Wars is my childhood. For me, there has never been a time when there wasn’t Star Wars, and I wasn’t in love with it. I have video of myself at two years old swinging a long balloon around like a lightsaber. So the idea of Star Wars taps into the most fundamental memories of my happy childhood; when I was innocent and carefree and could watch the original trilogy all day. And let me tell you, Episode III did not disappoint. I was mostly expecting a lot of crap that I would have to pretend to like out of principle, but there was actually much to like about it. I highly recommend all you doubters out there to give it a shot, it’ll probably surprise you. I was very pleasantly surprised.
Problem was, I almost didn’t get to see it. You see, I bought two tickets online for my old roommate and me over two weeks ago. So when Dan and I showed up at the theater, tickets in hand, we assumed there would be a seat waiting for us. Not so. Every seat in the theater was either taken or saved. “There’s no seats,” Dan said. “But there must be,” I said, “We have two tickets and that means there are two seats here somewhere for us.” You see, I was operating on the assumption that the theater would not sell more tickets than they had seats. This seems like a logical assumption to me, but apparently not to our friends at Cinemark. We asked the usher guy if we were in the right theater (they were showing it in three) and he said we were. We said that there weren’t any seats left and he said, “Yeah, the show is sold out,” in a tone that indicated that was an obvious explanation of the situation and his final word on the matter. I pressed him, because whether the show was sold out or not was irrelevant. I had two tickets, and that meant I had two seats. He explained, very wearily and with a great show of patience (as if it made total sense and I was the only one who didn’t get it) that the internet sales sold more tickets than seats. This was the overflow theater and it was first come, first serve. Nobody was guaranteed a seat.
Only a true capitalist would have come up with such a stupid idea (if indeed it was on purpose, and not simply some kind of computer error, which I suppose is possible) but what really ticks me off is that I was never told that this would be the case, and that my ticket did not guarantee me a seat. Had I been informed when I bought my tickets I would have got there much earlier. Has anybody else heard of this? Is this some kind of common practice and I'm just not aware of it? At any rate, Dan and I were lucky and found two seats right on the front row. But there were other groups of people, including families with exuberant children, who had assumed for weeks that they had tickets for the opening night of Star Wars, only to discover on arrival that there were not any seats and that they couldn’t see it. I would hope the theater gave them free tickets and lots of other stuff for their trouble because that really stinks. That’s the kind of unfair business practice that can start riots.
Never mess with Star Wars fans.
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