How NOT to Watch The Dark Knight

Laughing at me from the grave, this guy.

The Dark Knight. It’s the white elephant in the room that everyone has seen and talked about. My fantastical lateness to write about the film means a review would only be of use to cave dwelling terrorists and maybe astronauts (who knows. maybe they get awesome torrent speeds up there). I instead will take this time to tell you a little story on my experience when I saw the durn thing. Oh and i could cry spoilers alerts but given how successful the films i mention here have been, it’s statistically impossible for you to not have seen it yet. Anyway…

Two things have worked in my favor between summer blockbuster seasons: working the nightshift and the opening of a new mall with above average cinemas close to home. Should there be an opening for a film I am highly anticipating (read: raging hard on), I can always rely on that cinema to have an early enough screening, not too long after my shift ends. Standard procedure is to find an equally excited film geek and head there, watch it and gush, then prolly ruin it for everyone later at work. And it’s worked quite well so far.
The mall in question is situated in that side of town not quite urbanized yet as others and is probably the asian equivalent of a hick town. They have running water and motorized vehicles but not the finer, advanced innovations like, say, knowing when a movie is truly over or not. You see earlier that year, said geek and I high tailed over there to watch us some Iron Man. Now we’ve seen enough films to know of after credits epilogues and knew of the possibilities of this CG circle jerk of a film having one. Long story short, as soon as the credits ran, the lights went on to the point we couldn’t even read the screen no more. We reasonably figured that was that. The anger upon finding out otherwise was enough to will kittens to die.

Back to The Dark Knight. Everyone knows what it’s about story wise as well as production wise. Heat-of-the-moment reasoning led me to believe that an after-credits extra was inevitable. I mean Heath is dead-o yet the Joker was only arrested in the end? “What gives?!” said me, the perplexed cinema goer. I am reminded of what happened when I saw Iron Man. When I recognized and ending coming up, I spied the cinema cleaners and ushers from the corner of my eye. I knew what was coming down. Credits ran, lights went on. “Not agayn!” i though. I began to run to every usher, screaming and pleading for them in my best local tongue to turn the goddamn lights off! They looked at me like I was a woman who lost her child, but sounding like Chewbacka. They soon agreed to turn of some lights. I can even see people who were once leaving deciding to stay. Only once I got back to my seat is when it occurred to me the the question “what if there was none?”. Before I could even begin to figure elaborate escape plans, there ended the credits and guess what? Thats it! Everyone looked at me. I laughed it off and left only to when I was out of sight where I began to hit my head on the wall.

What’s the lesson to learn here? Whatever it is, should a movie be made of my special epic fail day, i’d place it right after the credits. Let’s see if you’ll wait for it.