Letting Film Nerd 2.0 speak for themselves on DEADPOOL, PURPLE RAIN, and more

Plus we're feeling more mellow these days... but why?

Sometimes, you cannot separate a movie from the experience you have watching it, and it is impossible to review a movie as a result.

I am sure I will eventually see Deadpool & Wolverine again and at that point, I’ll have a better idea of what I think of it. My first impression is that it was pretty much exactly what they promised, a Viking’s funeral for the 20th Century Fox superhero movies as well as a few other vestigial limbs of the larger history of Marvel on film. It is very much a sequel to Deadpool 2 (which I prefer to this film), but it is also a sequel to Logan (which I absolutely prefer to this film) and an expansion of Loki, the two-season streaming series from Disney+. I don’t think you have to see all of those, or even any of them, to derive some pleasure from D&W, but I can’t imagine why anyone seeing the film wouldn’t have seen all of those things. This is perhaps the most totemic victory of nerd culture I can imagine, because this is pure fan service, start to finish, with absolutely no apology.

Without getting into specifics, it’s odd that people call the appearances here by special guest stars “cameos,” because many of them are full-blown supporting roles. The biggest surprise in the film for me was from a character who didn’t appear in any of the Fox films, and I thought they did right by him. It’s a very silly movie, and it feels like Ryan Reynolds cashing every blank check he’s amassed by this point. Hugh Jackman has reached a point where he can play with his own iconography in a way that is both celebratory and self-deprecating, and he seems to be delighted to be able to re-approach the character this way.

The experience of seeing the film, though, was enough to give me a fresh perspective in the “why are movie theaters struggling” debate. I have a season pass for the Alamo Drafthouse, which gives me two tickets every day of the month for a single price and, since we live twenty minutes from the theater, I make fairly aggressive use of the deal. In this particular case, there was a problem with my opening weekend tickets, so I started looking for the best big screen in the area. This is a complicated question, and one I do not agree with a lot of LA residents about. I have a list of theaters in LA that I won’t go to because they seem like a hostile experience even before I get into the theater, and the very top of that list for me is the Universal Citywalk. I hate everything about it. I hate the parking. I hate the mall itself. I hate the ticketing area. I hate the layout. And despite Christopher Nolan’s constant ongoing endorsement, I think the IMAX screen is weirdly unimpressive. It is large, yes, but I don’t enjoy any other part of the theater. The seats, the angle of the theater… it’s all wrong. Physically punishing. The Chinese IMAX is nice, and we enjoyed Furiosa there on opening weekend as well as a recent screening of Fincher’s 8K restoration of Se7en, but that wasn’t on the table since D&W was playing across the street at the El Capitan, Disney’s flagship theater. The El Cap is expensive, the screen is fine, and the seats were all restored to their original 1930s dimensions, making them feel like torture devices for anyone over 5’6”. I’m 6'1”, so one screening there equals two days of aches and pains for me.

I think the Grove, which is even closer to where I live, is a terrible place for a movie theater, but they’ve done some nice work renovating the actual auditoriums in the last few years. The parking at the Grove is breathtakingly expensive now, thanks to some recent decisions, so it makes it hard to justify seeing anything there. The AMC in Century City is fine, but they’ve been doing construction in the area for a while and it’s one of those things where it’s just enough of a pain in the ass to get to the parking for the mall that it makes me hesitate to go there unless there’s no choice. I know plenty of people have decided that the Burbank AMC is the new best theater in LA in this post-Arclight hellscape, but I don’t get that at all. I spent a lot of time at all of the Burbank AMCs over the years, and they are the platonic ideal of anonymous mall theaters.

There’s one other choice in my area that has a large-format screen, and I’ve been there a few times in the past and enjoyed it. The Regal LA Live is part of the same complex as the Staples Center (or whatever the hell stupid name it’s called right now), which means there are nights when it would be madness to go anywhere near it, but on the Saturday night of opening weekend, it seemed safe to book 8:45 tickets in the theater’s biggest auditorium. While it is not Dolby or an IMAX screen, their large-format screen is gigantic and they’ve had perfectly lovely projection in the past. That night, though, their theater was understaffed and they were not ready for the onslaught of humanity who were there for D&W. The film was screening something like 25 times that day in their building on multiple screens, so there was plenty of ticket availability. I made a choice for that one particular time because it was in that specific auditorium, and when we got there, we managed to wade through the chaos and take our seats before the showtime. It’s a good thing, too, because they didn’t start the pre-show until almost 9:15. They didn’t come in to announce anything. They didn’t tell us there were any problems. I finally went to the lobby where there was one poor usher who was manning the ticket box and asked him if he was aware the film had not started. “Oh. Really? Well, we had a fire in another theater. So I’ll tell someone.” He said this to me as casually as he might have said, “It’s Saturday, by the way.” No mention of what was going on with the fire. Very cool. Very normal. I went back into the auditorium and about five minutes later, the pre-show began. I would normally say the trailers, but there were no trailers. Just terrible commercials. One after another. Almost fifteen minutes worth.

So now our 8:45 show still hasn’t started and it’s just after 9:30. That’s when the fire alarm goes off and the emergency lights start blinking. The pre-show stops and the lights come back up. Everyone gets up and starts to leave. In the lobby again, I ask the usher if we’re actually supposed to evacuate. “Nope. Fire’s out. It’s fine.” I ask him if they’re going to restart the film. “Yep.” I ask him if anyone’s going to explain that to all of the people who are currently leaving the theater. “Oh. Yeah. Probably.” I go back into the theater with my family, and about five minutes later, the usher comes in and tells people the movie will restart eventually. “You can get your money back, but there’s about two hundred people trying to get their money back from a different movie right now, so it’s going to be a while.”

“A while” turned out to be twenty-five more minutes. It was just after 10:00 when they started the movie. We were treated to one more fire alarm that started about fifteen minutes in, and again, I went to the lobby and was told it was nothing and I should just keep watching the film. It was at least five minutes before they turned it off, and at this point, they’ve had people walking in and out and talking and standing up and walking around for the first half-hour of the film, completely disrupting everything, making it impossible for me to pay any attention at all, especially considering the price tag on the evening.

The theater did not offer us passes to attend again. They did not compensate us for the experience. They did not even acknowledge it. The only person who ever spoke to the auditorium was that one usher that one time, and even then, he only did it because I asked him to do it. I was a theater manager for years and I’ve worked in a number of different theaters, and I was genuinely flabbergasted by the way Regal handled every single part of this situation. It was as if they were trying to get us all to leave, as if they designed the most unpleasant overall experience possible, and they charged a fortune for it. It was offensive, an anti-customer experience from start to finish, capped off when the validation from the theater didn’t work and the parking garage charged me $40. The real scandal of all of this is how few good options there are for movie going in Los Angeles, a city that is supposedly the hub of international film production. If we are having so much trouble with exhibition, then what hope is there on a national scale?

The evening wasn’t really about me seeing the film at all. It was about taking my family to see it, and both Toshi and Allen were hyped about it. Despite all of this, they apparently enjoyed the film. Toshi wrote, “I am a firm believer that being extremely critical of the MCU is kind of fucking stupid. I go to Marvel movies and I just want to have fun, and that is what this movie provided. Just pure nonstop fun for two hours. It had amazing jokes, great characters and cameos, and a killer soundtrack. Cool appearances from people I did not think that I was gonna see. I thought every time a song played, the needle drops were perfect. Ryan Reynolds made sure to pull no punches and Hugh Jackman looked like he was having the most fun he has ever had as the Wolverine. I feel a reenergized energy in this latest addition to the ever-growing MCU and it makes me excited for what’s to come. I hope Fantastic Four is great, that Thunderbolts and Captain America are fun, and that this franchise gets back to the height of fun and enjoyment we are used to. Cinema is more fun when these superhero films go crazy and have all the fun they want.”

image courtesy of Disney/Marvel

Allen added, “As someone who is the same age as the MCU, this was everything I could ask for. There is a lot of controversy that came with Endgame because people felt like that was the end of the MCU. Marvel had a fantastic run of 11 years, and 22 movies that were all just great one after another. That’s a once-in-a-lifetime miracle being as good as they were for that long. But of course, no one can be great forever. I’ve had a lot of fun with movies like Spider-Man No Way Home, Shang Chi, and Eternals, but none of them evoked that same feeling that early Marvel did. I love Eternals to an unhealthy point and I think it’s one of the best movies in the MCU and maybe even the best stand-alone, but it’s very different. Before Endgame, Marvel had a plan of how every single movie and every character was leading to that moment. Their early films like the first Iron Man, Captain America, and Thor all felt like they were connected to something bigger. After Endgame, people thought Marvel was dead and would never be able to bring that feeling back that we all sitting in the theater looking up at the big screen when Cap finally lifted Mijonir, all the heroes came out of their portals, or RDJ’s famous ‘I am Iron Man.’ Deadpool and Wolverine feels like Marvel is just getting ready for what it has to throw at us next. I may not have liked everything Marvel has done recently (The Marvels was fine, but I was baffled by that god-awful Quantumania), but there is just something about seeing Jackman in the full Wolverine suit as he slides on the cowl and extends those claws that put me straight back in that theater five years ago for Endgame. Can we just appreciate Wesley Snipes having the greatest entrance in a superhero movie of all time because I lost my mind. I couldn’t care less that there were only a few cameos but man, every one of them was just amazing. Finally getting to see Cavill as the Wolverine was amazing as well. I mean, all in all, it was just such a great addition to the MCU and I have really nothing but love for it.”

I’m glad they had that much fun. That was the entire point. I honestly never connected that Allen is the exact same age as the MCU, but they’ve both grown up with it as one of the primary forces in pop culture. Their relationship with it is through the movies first, the comics and other media second, and I appreciate their perspective on the way things are going. I think that might be it for me and the LA Live theater, though. One more “no-fly zone” for me. More than anything, I just thought it was embarrassing to see a theater running that poorly on what was obviously a record-breaking weekend for them. It does not surprise me, though, and that is a damning statement about the way theaters are being run in this city in general.

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It recently occurred to me that it is very strange that I am still speaking for Toshi and Allen in 2024.

If you’ve been a longtime reader of my work, you know that my experience of sharing media with my kids has been one of the primary focuses of my work since at least 2008. Film Nerd 2.0 is easily the column that has had the biggest overall impact on my life, and the thing I am proudest of as a writer. When I began writing about these things, Toshi was just turning four years old, just starting to react to things he liked. His first loves were Star Trek and Speed Racer, and this year, we kicked things off with a screening at the New Beverly of Speed Racer, which only reaffirmed how much we all love the film.