A tale of going to see The Hobbit
by Courtney Ridout
Where to begin . . . ah yes. With the tickets.
I am glad I have a husband who researches things, because if not, we would have had a wasted and disappointing first trip to the theater. Because, if you would like to see a movie in Rotterdam, especially if it is a movie worth seeing, you must reserve your tickets ahead of time and preferably online.
So we did just that. A week in advance I was the anxious owner of two carefully chosen (assigned!) seats in the large movie theater not far from our home for an Imax 3D showing of The Hobbit (part 1).
Then the Friday before THE weekend I printed off the tickets.
A co-worker had also seen The Hobbit and enjoyed it so we got to talking about it, and thankfully he dropped the hint that the printed tickets aren't the actual tickets, you need to arrive at the theatre 30 minutes in advance so that you can scan your print-out on the ticket machine in the theater which will print the actual tickets.
Sounded fine to us. So we had to get to the theatre a little early? Should be no problem. Except that on the day of the actual showing we were running a little bit late due to slightly uncontrollable circumstances. And in a fateful moment we re-read the fine print on the ticket papers. It said something like "you must validate your tickets 90-30 minutes before the showing time or your tickets may be re-sold to another customer" (in Dutch).
WHAT?? It was 38 minutes before the showing when read about this tiny little detail. Plus we were a 10 minute walk from the movie theater! I'm poor at math, but a first grader could tell that that added up to trouble.
We had been planning to grab a nice bite to eat from the train stations cheap and quick meal options (which was right on our way) so that we could be sustained through the 3 hour film. After all it was about 12:45 pm and neither of us had eaten more than a small bowl of granola for the day. And by this time that was hours past. We began to feel Hobbit-like panic at the thought of having to go another 3 hours without food.
Although the panic was building up inside us, we realized that getting to the movie theater on time was top priority so we doubled the pace. You would have thought that we were being hunted by wargs.
Our speed saved us, we arrived at the ticket machine exactly 31 minutes before the showing and with elf-like dexterity I punched in the numbers of our barcode so that the ticket machine surrendered the two tickets assuring us a place to sit and watch the movie.
That left us about a crunched 10 minutes to find, buy and eat whatever we were going to have for lunch (when the 10 minute commute either way was factored in). Back to the train station we went, this time it was hunger that increased our speed. All the sandwiches in the cheapest and best store were sold out, so we split up and found our own replacements and tried to choose the fastest moving lines.
Then, chewing, swallowing, and drinking all along the way back to the movie theater, we somehow finished in time to give our empty lunch bags a synchronized throw into the waste basket as we whipped the freshly printed tickets out with our other hand and presented them to the ticket checker.
Feeling just a little bit proud of our efficiency we strode up to our theater door just in time to find our assigned seats, put on our 3D glasses, nestle into our chairs and the previews began. We watched a cute preview that would have been rated R for language if it had been in the States (different words have different 'force' here because they are not the native language, and British English doesn't necessarily view the same words as 'strong' words).
But the rustling, whispering, talking, munching, slurping, etc. of the viewers during the previews was pretty disturbing. And I remembered that rumor had it that the audiences in this theater were the worst of The Netherlands for making disturbing noises during the films so I began to despair that my first viewing of The Hobbit would be a tainted one.
However, my fears were needless. Whether it was my eyes and ears that tuned all else off once the title appeared on the screen or if it was that the audience finally settled and silenced, I'm not sure, but all that matters is that I was able to soak in the whole movie with quite a bit of delight.
The only detail, and it is a small one, that may have tainted my experience was that I could not understand almost any of the orcish/goblinish, or elvish that was spoken. Not because the movie was lacking subtitles, no, it had subtitles in Dutch all through out the movie, therefore when it came time to translating the non-English script it just continued into the flow of Dutch subtitles, so I found myself listening to the orcs talk and wondering why I had never had trouble understanding their speech before . . when it hit me-- if I happen to be in The Netherlands when the next movie is released I had better be more advanced in orcish/elvish or Dutch or I'll have the same problem again.
Since I don't live in Middle Earth Dutch is the most practical option . . . but I'm still considering the others an option.
And incase you're wondering how much of this tale is true, all I will say in answer is a quote from Gandalf, "All good stories deserve some embellishment." -- although it sounded to me like Peter Jackson defending himself against the many people who carefully track where the movie leaves the path of the book. Luckily for him, I understand that line.
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