Theater Shows Wrong Film Repeatedly to Guardians of the Galaxy Fans

[Alex Co]

Theater Shows Wrong Film Repeatedly to Guardians of the Galaxy Fans

Though one accidental showing could be chalked up to a mistake, repeated showings of Rise of the Guardians instead of Guardians of the Galaxy seem like trolling to us.

Fans got way less than they bargained for on Thursday when a Regal Cinemas in Virginia repeatedly showed the wrong Guardians film in a Guardians of the Galaxy screening. Instead of showing the latest Marvel film, the theater mistakenly showed the opening segment of 2012's kiddie flick, Rise of the Guardians. The worse thing is, it just didn't happen once, but three times. Dean Browell, who was sitting in the audience with his 10-year daughter states that they sat through 15 minutes of previews, before being shown five minutes of Rise of the Guardians before a theater employee came in to say they were fixing the error. Unfortunately, the same audience was then subjected to another 15 minutes of previews before Rise of the Guardians played again. The cinema then offered to give the audience a ticket to a late 3D Imax showing, with half of the moviegoers taking the offer.

But Browell, who deemed the Imax showing to be too late in the day, stayed on for the 2D showing and waited. According to Browell, "There was a 10 minute wait, then the lights went down again and the third go of previews started, this time with the new Interstellar one, which gave us hope." However, all hopes were dashed when Rise of the Guardians started playing for a third time, which drew expletives from a then-agitated crowd. Browell adds, "It was now 9:15 p.m., from an 8 p.m. movie..Those left in the theater stormed out and then joined a line 50-people long trying to get their money back, anything. We were so disappointed."

[tweet t=https://twitter.com/dbrowell/statuses/495005692550725632]

Fortunately for Browell and the others who stayed on, the theater refunded their tickets, gave them a poster for Guardians of the Galaxy, and tickets to a Friday show. Oddly enough, this isn't an isolated incident. A woman in New Jersey tweeted that the same mix up happened at a Regal screening as well [https://twitter.com/thestorysofxr?protected_redirect=true]. And again, the movie shown was Rise of the Guardians instead of Marvel's sci-fi superhero flick. CinemaBlend theorizes that Regal had been showing kid-friendly matinees featuring Rise of the Guardians and that an employee might have labeled the Dreamworks film as just Guardians, which could have heavily contributed to the wrong movie being played.

Guardians of the Galaxy has already greenlit sequel even before the first one has been released in cinemas [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/136591-FRIDAY-BOX-OFFICE-Guardians-of-The-Galaxy-Is-a-Record-Breaking-Smash], with an estimated theater release in July 28, 2017.

Have you or anyone else you know experienced the same mix-up when watching Guardians of the Galaxy? If so, share your stories in the comments.

Source: CinemaBlend [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/guardians-galaxy-theater-repeatedly-shows-722926]

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[Oly J]

it hadn't even occured to me that this could happen, the fact that theatres still have Rise of the Guardians to show is surprising, that came out on DVD forever ago

 

[INF1NIT3 D00M]

At my Regal Cinemas screening just yesterday, they had issues for ~20 minutes with their projector, we ended up watching the trailers for The Giver and When The Game Stands Tall at least five times each.

Fortunately, once they realized that they were completely incapable of fixing the focus, all of us were offered our choice between a refund or a free upgrade to the 3D showing in the next room over.

 

[EiMitch]

CinemaBlend theorizes that Regal had been showing kid-friendly matinees featuring Rise of the Guardians and that an employee might have labeled the Dreamworks film as just Guardians, which could have heavily contributed to the wrong movie being played.

There are remakes, reboots, re-releases, and films with ridiculously similar titles pretty much everywhere. And it didn't occur to whoever labeled the movies that "Guardians" is too common a word to be used as an abbreviation? Have Men in Black and Meet Joe Black both been labeled "Black" for short? How about checking the year it was released? Or the studio it was from? Did the label at least have that? Apparently not.

This has been a cautionary tale about sloppy management and short-sighted inattention to basic details.

 

[JSoup]

The 3D upgrades are nice, but I'd probably wait for the 2D one as well. Being blind in one eye means 3D screenings are useless to me.

 

[kajinking]

Yeah heard about this yesterday and I still find it funny. Feel bad for the moviegoers but some of the tweets were hilarous!

 

[Scarim Coral]

Heh, it make me wonder if someone make a crossover/ mashup fanart of the two films (Rise of the Guardians of the Galaxy)?

 

[J Tyran]

It wouldn't have been so bad if they dint keep insisting on putting the audience through the trailers are previews each time, I mean 15 mins worth over and over.

 

[Story]

Okay this is so funny.
Obvious proof that both movies have very generic titles.
It would be even funnier if they also showed clips of Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Gah'ool as well.

How does such a thing happen anyway? Those movies are two years apart from one another.

 

[deth2munkies]

So here's the thing, I worked in the projection booth of a movie theater for a year in high school and I know how easily this thing can happen.

Assuming it's a small theater, they probably don't have digital projectors yet. If this WAS a digital projector, there was either a massive computer glitch or the most moronic person I've ever heard of in charge. Likely what happened was the print was labeled "Guardians" and there were a bunch of old prints for "Rise of the Guardians" also labeled "Guardians" on the shelf. Guy grabbed the wrong one initially, went back to the shelf, found 3 more with the same label (really bad labelling system) and the poor sap had to guess which one was which (it's really annoying to unwrap a print enough to look through and see what movie it is, you already have like 15 feet worth of previews that you have to splice onto the print when it comes in, it's no easy task).

No excuse for shitty labelling, but still, I see how it could happen.

I mean normally theaters don't keep prints that long unless they have a "summer movie club" for kids (our old theater did) that shows a bunch of old kids movies every day over the summer. Even when they do, new prints are typically on a different shelf (or at least to a different side) than the older prints, but again, if it was a summer movie club, they could have gotten the old Rise of the Guardians print sent to them at the beginning of summer.

EDIT: So it was 3-D IMAX which is ONLY a digital projector, so the only possible explanation other than crippling stupidity is that their computer system was fucked and they loaded the wrong movie initially and it wouldn't let them load another or something. Those projectors are typically "Press one button to make movie start", so it's really hard to fuck up otherwise.

 

[Haru17]

Third time's the -oh wait, no, not the charm.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

Okay Hollywood, new rule: No more movies with the word "Guardians" in the title. You done fucked up enough...

 

[RA92]

Looks like movies need to start following the same rules game names need.

 

[The Apple BOOM]

This happened to me in Turnersville, NJ. They said that there was a children's matinee of Rise of the Gaurdians earlier in they day, and they mixed up the reels or something. They offered us a free ticket or free admission to a showing later in the day. Some people were pissed at the one free ticket and got them to give us two. Now I get to see it today with a friend for free!

 

[Saltyk]

It wouldn't have been so bad if they dint keep insisting on putting the audience through the trailers are previews each time, I mean 15 mins worth over and over.

That's what I was thinking. I'd say that after the first time, the theater should have just started with the movie and no previews. But after the second time, that's the least they could do. To make them watch the previews a THIRD time is just bad business. Guardians of the Galaxy has a good 15 minutes of previews itself. That's an hour of previews to watch a two hour movie.

Yeah, someone should probably be fired over this. At least the theater tried to make it right with some promotional material and free tickets.

 

[PirateRose]

I remember that time families with little kids went to see Madagascar 3, and instead they saw the first 5 minutes Paranormal Activity 4. Which from my understanding is a scene of a corpse hurtling at the screen.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

I would flip the fuck out if this happened to me in the theater.

I live in a quite small town (around 150-200k people) and we have a Mall where I usually go and watch movies there (pretty much the only place) and this has never happened to me. If it did I would definitely ask for my money back or get into a screening with the actual movie that I want to watch.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

It sucks when the theater torrents the wrong movie... *eyeroll*

 

[CrazyGirl17]

How do you do that? Is it really that hard to keep your movies in order?

(Still, Rise of the Guardians is a pretty good movie, so I wouldn't mind... after a bit.)

 

[Grimh]

"Third time's the char- Oh noooo!"

Now that's just funny, sucks for the movie goers though.