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Tonight I took a break from designing, animating, and blogging to see a movie I’ve been eagerly anticipating: the Roland Emmerich apocalyptic disaster epic, 2012.
I saw this film at the brand new Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live, Downtown L.A.’s first new movie theater in 25 years. The now deceased and rather antiquated Laemmle Grand 4-plex was the only multiplex in Downtown until the Regal come onto the scene, stole the Laemmle’s thunder and lifeblood, and brought modern cinema to DTLA.
The theater is on the northwest corner of the L.A. Live campus and about a 10 minute walk from Taft 2.0’s South Park loft.
M-Dogg, Bianca and I headed out the door at about 7:2o to get to the 7:40 showing on time. As we neared L.A. Live I felt, for the first time, that the whole “Times Square West” thing it’s been promoted as was finally starting to work. I don’t know why, maybe it was because I finally had a reason to go, but the combination of the lights, the people, and the nature of the streets really gave it a very lively and urban feel.
On our way we did run into some classic L.A. hate toward pedestrians. The sidewalk on the south side of Olympic, just before the Regal Cinemas was blocked off due to construction of the hotel, so we were forced to go inside the actual L.A. Live campus and take the roundabout way to the theaters. Along the way I noticed that although I’ve often compared L.A. Live to Universal CityWalk and Downtown Disney, it does manage to contain a shred more authenticity than those places. Maybe it’s the lack of celebrity endorsed restaurants and the completely cartoonish fake urban street infrastructure. Whatever it is, I think I like it just a bit better.
We entered the theaters on Georgia Street and found ourselves bewildered as to where we should go. We already had tickets (I bought mine off the internet, $11 plus a $1 convenience charge) but had no clue what theater the movie was playing in and even if we did, there was really no signage directing us. Unlike the Arclight, there’s no large screen inside the lobby displaying the movie times and theaters they are playing in. The box office is outside, but on the corner of Georgia and Olympic and had we entered through the doors before it.
The lobby is large and open, with a nice chandelier in the center that draws your eye up to the upper levels. The concession stands feature screens that display the menu at the tiniest possible font size. A concession worker laughed as I squinted to read the menu (which includes calorie counts for some reason… all very high obviously) and when I asked if a lot of people had trouble reading the menu, she responded with affirmative laughter.
Worse than the tiny type is the disappearing act the menu pulls every minute or so when a full screen advertisement for combos and other concession deals takes over EVERY SINGLE SCREEN for at least 30 seconds. That’s right, the every single menu disappears while the stupid animated promos play.
After grabbing some snacks (nachos, Reeses Pieces, and a HUGE medium Dr. Pepper) we joined others in what we assumed was the line to the theater we needed to go to. The staff seemed to still be getting the hang of things, and strangely, the ticket person not only had to scan my ticket that I printed at home, but also manually tear off the bottom half and place it in a pile of other torn up pieces of printer paper. Makes me wonder what the point of the barcode scanner is.
Finding our theater continued to prove to be challenging, as the place seems to be designed by the same people who designed the Hollywood and Highland mall. There’s very little signage, the stairs and escalators are like something out of an MC Escher painting, and there’s no one around to help you. What there is however, is a really nice view of the Downtown L.A. skyscrapers.
We finally found our theater and walked into a full house. Front row seats for us. Seats where comfortable, plenty of leg room, but the arm rests with the cup holders were stiff and required a huge amount of force to get them down. Some kids who sat next to us just gave up and held their massive medium sized drinks in their hands for the duration of the movie.
Our front row seats were actually pretty good… we didn’t have to strain our necks or pan across the screen to follow the action.
And there was plenty of action to followl
2012 blew me away. It’s a true roller coaster ride of a summer blockbuster, right in the middle of November. The whole movie is ridiculous and fully embraces it. The action is over the top. The special effects are over the top. The story is over the top.
These days I tend to compare movies to video games, and for the most part feel that the latest generation of gaming provides far great entertainment bang for the buck than most movies. 2012 is the first movie I’ve seen in a long time that really matched, and in many cases beat some of the best video game experiences of the last few years.
The destruction sequences, especially the L.A. one (and I had already watched most if it on the internet) are so dynamic and exhilarating you really are on the edge of your seat and can’t help but cheer once it’s finished.
John Cussak is just awesome, ultimately likable and about as believable as a character can be in a totally unbelievable premise.
There’s a bunch of funny stuff from the side characters and there’s rarely any attempt to get TOO serious. Sure, it has somber moments, but nothing that seems like the filmmakers have pretensions that the movie is anything but what it is: a fucking blast.
Go see it. Check out the Regal Cinemas at L.A. Live. It’s got a few problems, most of which I think are just growing pains (aside from the somewhat ridiculous design), but overall it was a great movie-going experience and I’ll definitely be going back.