The hallway was dark, unnaturally lit by abrasive swirling neons. A man could easily have lost himself in the never ending series of doors and vending machines, swallowed by the inky blackness. I sat low, cross-legged on the floor, watching the endless river of legs flow by. All were tense, looking up occasionally to check a watch or a phone, throwing a longing glance toward the towering doors. No one knew what lay beyond those doors, but everyone present wanted to see it very, very badly.
Avatar day had been introduced back in June, when director James Cameron had announced special "extended trailers" for his new film Avatar. The hype had been considerable, and when the tickets had become available online, the website had crashed under the weight of number of visitors. But now, the mood had relaxed, and all anyone wanted was to get into the IMAX theater, at the Metreon in San Francisco. We had arrived early, along with several hundred other people, but I had managed to find places near the door. Others, farther back in the snaking line, watched us longingly. Everyone wanted a good spot, and no one wanted to be turned away for lack of seats.
But it was quickly beginning to appear as if we were waiting for nothing. 2 hours we had sat, with no hint of activity from behind the ominous doors. Some were sleeping, perched against walls or boyfriends, while others sat with headphones firmly pressed against their ears. My friends were playing poker with a set of cards they’d won at the arcade downstairs. A pair of Jacks was revealed, only to be outdone by a full house. The cards were collected and shuffled, the jarring hiss pulling me back to reality. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the darkness.
The doors suddenly swung open, brilliant light spilling forth like water from a burst dam. The crowd stirred, and began to rise from the ground, where some of them had been since early morning. I checked my watch: 6:00PM. Right on time.
We shuffled through the doors, edging down a gently sloping corridor to another set of doors. A friendly woman stood there with a clipboard, verifying tickets. There was a feeling of nervousness is the corridor, made exponentially worse by the confined space. No one wanted to be rejected, told to leave. My stomach clenched involuntarily. I was afraid. Everyone was.
Finally, I reached the second set of doors. The woman, a short brunette with a midwesterners charm, was wearing standard red theater garb, and seemed uncomfortable. She looked back, to make sure the last person had entered the theater, and then looked me in the eyes.
“Name?”
I responded quickly, almost slurring the words. “Alex Allen-Hyma.” After several seconds of futile searching, she looked back up at me. “I’m not seeing a Mr. Hyman…”
I twitched. For a moment the world seemed to collapse. Then I noticed the mistake.
“Allen-Hyma,” I pronunciated, stressing the open “a” at the end. “It’s hyphenated.”
“Oh, sorry…” She trailed off in thought for a moment, then found my name at the top of the list. “Your guest?”
“This guy.” I said, pointing toward a friend. She checked my ID, and, handing me two 3D glasses, gestured for us to enter. My gut loosened instantly. All my worries flew away.
After regrouping with my team, we made our way to our seats. Our dedication had paid off, and we excitedly filed to the middle of the 7th row. As we finally sat down, all my unease left, and my mind finally started to wander.
Predictably, it wandered to the immensity of the room we were sitting in.
70 feet tall, and twice as wide, dominated by a screen that was almost as big as downtown Fairfax, the IMAX theater dwarfed everyone and everything within it. Seats seemed to stretch out forever on either side, gently curving toward steep stairs. The darkness of the room was abbreviated by sharp red lights on the ground, which looked for all the world like miniscule fires from our lofty seats. Other people were getting in through other doors now, and as the room filled, chatter filled the air. People talked about the movie, people talked about weather, people told jokes, people told stories. It was just the type of atmosphere you would expect for this sort of thing: Light, but with the ever present danger of suddenly erupting into a storm of applause.
Which is exactly what happened when the lights dimmed.
A huge face appeared on the screen, bellowing words which were barely audible over the cacophony of claps. “Welcome” and “Hope you enjoy” were discernable, and then the face disappeared, and the cheers died down. This is what everyone had come for, the great unknown that some had camped for hours to see. Everyone – and I mean everyone – was on the edge of their seats, craning foreword as if they were trying to make out some small detail on the huge and now defiantly black screen.
Without warning, the speakers erupted in with sound, louder than any theater I had been in before. Feet in black army boots walked across the screen, almost popping off because of the 3D, and a voice, raspy and dry, echoed through the great hall. “My job is to keep you alive. I will fail.”
16 minutes pass, a blur of explosions, yelling, and dragons. The special effects are very, very good, although some of the characters seem too real. They are plunging into the uncanny valley, a place where fake things look so real our brains start judging them as real things. Because they are not real, they fail miserably, and our brains find fault with everything. This is an issue which plagues the trailer, and will definitely be the films largest hurdle. There are mutters, even some shouts, of “what?” when the “avatar” is revealed to us. It doesn’t quite look right, and everyone is trying to find an excuse.
And then, too early, it is done. The last image flicks across the screen, and then the lights come on, pulling us back to the real world. Some get up quickly and leave, while others stay seated, trying to understand what they have seen. After a few moments of awkward silence, a man 2 rows back yells “awesome!”, and then the applause starts. It is loud, continuous, and delivered straight from the heart. Yelling, cheering, shouts and screams fill the room, and soon all 300 of us are giving a standing ovation to a blank screen. But it doesn’t matter. We all got something out of this, whether it was a peak at a film we’re interested in, or just a day in the city. That guy was right: it was awesome.
