Planet Walt

movie theater seating

I got a shock yesterday when I went to the movies to see Batman Begins. No, the surprise wasn't about the movie, which I liked a lot (4 out of 5 stars on the Netflix scale). The problem was with seating...more precisely, with the seating choices of others. When I arrived there was only one dude in the very last row of the stadium seating venue. I took my usual spot in the middle of the first row behind the main central walkway (there are 5 or 6 rows in front of that). Two minutes later a couple came in and sat in my row, three seats over on the right. The next two couples sat in the row behind me, then some people went to the second and third to the last rows. Finally, another couple sat in my row, two seats over on the left. So, when the movie started there was a cluster of people in the first two rows and another clump in the last three, with almost no one sitting in between (10 rows or so), or in the first section of seating in front of the screen. What up with this!?! Why did peeps want to sit on top of each other when there was plenty of space available for the mid-day matinee?! Maybe they were clustering for protection in case something came out of the screen to attack them....