Rewatching the excellent Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse recently (not for the site, I do watch some films for fun), I was reminded of an embarrassing moment from the screening I attended which I’d forced from my memory.
It’s not a long story, and it makes me look like a bit of a prat, but I wonder if anyone has had a similar experience?
I might be in the minority here, but back when we could visit cinemas I loved to take in a quiet afternoon screening – don’t get me wrong, there’s definitely something thrilling about experiencing a film with an audience, but there’s also something great about having an entire theatre to yourself.
So there I was, alone in the Odeon, smiling through the opening scenes of Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, when I began to think something might be wrong.
As anyone who’s seen the movie will know, not only is it a joyful celebration of the Spider-Man comics, it’s also an utterly breathtaking feat of animation, and it uses every inch of the screen and every artistic trick in the book to deliver a unique vision that puts other comic book movies to shame.
In places, you can see the individual colour dots from vintage comics, and in others, the CG lines and colours as dazzlingly sharp, and this is pretty much where my confusion started.
Because while the movies uses playful tones and experiments with focus specifically to make it look like you’re watching a comic come to life, the little berk that lives in my brain convinced me that I’d somehow wandered into a 3D screening without the necessary glasses, and that’s why it looked the way it did.
Long story short, I missed five minutes of the film because I ran out of the screening to find a member of staff, explained that the focus looked unusual, and asked them to double check the film I was watching wasn’t being projected in 3D.
Very patiently, she reassured me that’s how the film was supposed to look, and said I wasn’t the first person to ask.
That last part, in my mind, was said solely to make me – an idiot – feel like less of an idiot, but whatever.
Anyway, there it is, my moment of cinematic daftness.
Have you ever experienced a similar ‘wait a minute…’ moment in the cinema? If so, please take to the comments, Twitter or Facebook and let me know I’m not alone!
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