Sunday, Bloody Sunday

I was looking at the calendar today and realized something— thanks to the whole pandemic/end of the world thing, it's officially been one year since I saw a movie in an actual theater! 

The last time I went to the local cineplex was on Sunday, March 15, 2020. Just two days later Indiana officially shut down all movie theaters throughout the state.

A year without movies probably isn't that big a deal to the vast majority of the population, who go once every six months or so. It's been a major change to me though. As regular readers of my blog know all too well, I used to go to the cineplex once a week. Occasionally twice, if there was something particularly interesting playing. That's a lot of movies!

I've watched tons of films at home of course, but it's just not the same. No matter how big a TV I buy, it just can't replace the feeling of sitting in a darkened theater and watching a movie on a twenty foot tall screen.

For the record, the last film I saw in a theater was Bloodshot, Vin Diesel's attempt at starting his own personal comic book movie franchise. It's based on the little known comic of the same name from Valiant (a company which doesn't even exist anymore). It's the story of a ruthless hitman who's killed and injected with nanites, which resurrect him and make him virtually invulnerable.

It was... not good. In fact it was laughably bad. My favorite part of the film was when Bloodshot blows up a truck filled with flour, which coats his body and temporarily gives him the appearance of the comic character's trademark paper-white skin tone. Yeah, that really happened.

Jaysis, I hate to think this may be the last movie I ever see in a theater. If only I'd seen something good as my last hurrah!

On the other hand, once the pandemic was in full effect, Hollywood pretty much shut down. Films were postponed or canceled, and there were few if any major releases. So even if I could have gone to the theater, there was nothing there to see! OK, so Christopher Nolan insisted on releasing his mumble-core masterpiece Tenet to theaters, but I wasn't about to risk my life to see that!

Hopefully as more and more of the country gets vaxxed, I can tentatively venture back into the cineplex soon, and get back to some semblance of a semi-normal life.