The Incredible Hulk

Or, How My Plan for a Lazy Afternoon was Thwarted By a Corporate Cinema Giant

By Lisa Fary

I just wanted to sit in a cold theater and watch The Incredible Hulk.   We’d been trying to get to a Hulk matinee for days and couldn’t get it together.  On Tuesday, we finally made it to the theater at Park Place Mall for the 4:05 PM show.  

I was already starting to hungry hulk a little bit and went through the concession stand for water and a snacky snack, nearly unleashing my hulk on the three slow moving people who managed to take up the entire concession line and managed to be in front of everywhere I wanted to be.  How long does it take to fill up a small drink cup? I mean, really?  How long does it take to look at the ice cream selection when you’re not even getting any?  I mean, come on! 

I was hungry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m hungry. 

It was just as well that when we opened the door to theater 16 (you know, the door with the marquee over it clearly reading, “#16 HULK 4:05”), it was totally empty. 

“Looks like it’s just us and an empty Icee cup,” I said.  It’s five minutes until show time and he theater is a mess.  Aside from the Icee cup, there’s garbage everywhere: empty nacho boxes, hot dog wrappers, candy boxes stuffed in cup holders.  This is supposed to be the nicest theater in town.  

We took seats two rows behind the Icee cup and tore into the snacks.  Knowing that I paid $4.25 for my ice cream bar kinda killed the flavor, but only for a second. Really, it was chocolate and Hagen Daaz – there isn’t much that can ruin that.  And even though John covered me from neck to mid-thigh in napkins, I still managed to get chocolate on my tank top. 

Stupid chocolate.

4:05 PM comes and goes and the only thing on screen are “Before They Were Stars!” slides.  Did you know that before he was star Tom Cruise was a Franciscan seminary student?  I learned that about eight times sitting in the theater, waiting for The Incredible Hulk to start.   

A two person cleaning crew came in, angrily stabbing trash and tossing it into their bins.  At about 4:10, we were still the only ones in the theater and the screen is still running through the same “Before They Were Stars!” slides.  John got up and stuck his head out the theater door to flag down an employee, but there was no one in the corridor.

John sat down for a few more minutes and we practiced being an elderly couple (we’re going to be the grumpiest, most curmudgeonly old couple ever), sharing a rant about how expensive everything at the theater is and reminiscing about the days when we could see a matinee for three bucks and when the Park Place theater was a nice place to see a movie.  

I’d rather go to the El Con theater in town because they run more indie and foreign films along side the blockbusters; or at least, they did before Cinemark took it over. Now it’s a twenty screen theater that is usually running only five or six movies. That company is singlehandedly killing small film distribution in this country.  Four screens for Get Smart? Are you kidding me? There is now one theater in Tucson that shows independent and smaller films – that theater has two screens and a poorly operating swamp cooler. It’s not a great place to be in the summer.  

Cinemark used to run the ghetto dollar theater where my friend Geneva and I saw a million movies in college.  It was gross, with ratty carpet, crumbling tile and a sign that continuously had letters flickering or burnt out.  And the smell – it was like stale popcorn, sweat, urine, and weed.  For years, that was the only Cinemark theater I’d had contact with, until Cinemark Tinseltown opened in my parents’ town several years ago.  Just walking into the lobby is enough to send the most grounded person into a seizure.  Giant, talking trash cans that laugh maniacally when you throw garbage into them.  That’s the clearest image I can pull up from that decorating nightmare.  

Where was I?  Right, I’d rather go to El Con, but that doesn’t matter because it’s just another crappy Cinemark theater.  I hate you, Cinemark!  I hate your little anthropomorphic mascots, too!

It’s 4:15 by this point and we’d already ranted about all the reasons the Cinemark Park Place theater sucks.  John sputtered, “This is ridiculous!” and stormed out to find a manager.  

This time there was an employee in the corridor. John complained that the 4:05 movie in theater 16 hadn’t started yet.  The kid stared opened mouthed for a second before asking, “So, what’s the problem?”

“The problem,” John replied, “is that it’s 4:15.”

“Oh. . . OK.  I’ll get a manager on that right away.”

For a minute, we were pleased. We’d get to see The Incredible Hulk in a few minutes, and all was well.  Then the “First Look” reel started rolling at about 4:20.  If you’ve been to a Cinemark theater, you know the First Look reel runs for like twenty minutes.  At this rate, our 4:05 movie wasn’t going to even start previews until 4:40 or 4:45.  

Now our rant was about how much Tucson sucks.  It wasTucson’s fault that the movie isn’t starting on time. The heat makes everyone sluggish.  Everyone kinda walks around in a daze and won’t get out of the way.  No one in Tucson cares about being punctual.  The theater was still empty, so we got pretty loud about it. 

“That’s it.  I’m going out there,” I growl, putting on my most annoyed teacher face and storming down to the only place I could find theater employees: the concession stand.  I had already dropped sixteen bucks there on two drinks, a hot dog, and an ice cream bar.  I didn’t have good feelings about the Cinemark concession stand. 

“I’d like to speak to a manager, please,” I said as politely as I could to a kid stocking M&M’s.  He grunted in my direction and then grunted toward a door behind the concession stand, which must have been Cinemark code because a manager wandered out right then.  

I explained what was going on as we walked back to theater 16.  To her benefit, the manager was very nice and seemed willing to take care of it.  I reached for the door handle and she said, “That’s theater 17.”

Ummm. . . what?  The sign over the door clearly said it was theater 16.

I looked up at the marquee over the door and looked back at her.  “You mean the door that has the ‘Theater 16’ sign over it, isn’t theater 16?”

“No. That’s theater 17.  Theater 16 is right here,” she said, pointing toward a door that was tucked away in a dimly lit cubby.  

We’d been sitting in the wrong theater for twenty minutes.  

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to me.

John and I met at PF Chang’s for our first date 3 1/2 years ago.  After waiting at the restaurant bar and calling each other back and forth having this conversation:

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the restaurant bar.”

“So am I. I don’t see you.”

“Do you remember what I look like?”

“Yes!  Are you on the patio?”

“No, I’m at the bar.”

“Let’s just both go outside and meet at the front door.”

So, I went out the front door and looked up at the restaurant sign.  It read “Bistro Zin.”

I’d gone to the wrong restaurant.  Not because of poor signage – I was just nervous about the date and not paying close attention to where the hell I was (on the bright side, the restaurants were pretty much next door to one another).  But, at least I got a good meal and a good boyfriend out of that little episode.  

The Case of the Badly Marked Theaters wasn’t going to end nearly so well because when we asked for a refund, the manager started coming up with reasons why we shouldn’t get one (the 4:05 show has only been on for a few minutes, the 4:40 show starts in twenty, how about a theater credit, etc). 

I’m sorry, but when I pay that much to go to the movies, I don’t want to miss all of the previews and the first several minutes of the movie.  

“Just pay attention to this next time,” the manager said.  She motioned toward a sign about the size of a paperback book between the two theaters with arrows pointing to 16 and 17 (black letters on a maroon and forest green background – that’s totally visible – it also was not there when we walked up).  

After some agitated back and forth, the manager relented and gave us the refund, but I steamed about it for the rest of the day, occasionally muttering, “Stupid Cinemark” or “I hate Cinemark” at completely random times, like standing in line at Best Buy. 

And I still haven’t seen The Incredible Hulk.  

Grrrrr! 

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Lisa Fary’s early exposure to classic Battlestar Galactica in 1979 is largely responsible for her lifelong interest in science fiction and her childhood ambition of being an intergalactic space cowgirl. She thinks diagramming sentences is a fun alternative to Sudoku.