So last night I saw the movie that apparently everyone has just been raving about, and at the end, I honestly thought that it was pretty good.
It was the first time I’ve seen a movie opening weekend in, well, actually forever, so I was a little surprised at the line we had to wait in. The preferred showtime we had wanted was completely sold out, so we settled for another one an hour later and by the time we grabbed dessert and came back, there was already a line for our showing built up inside the theater. We only waited for maybe 20-30 minutes, though, so still nothing like what we’ve been through at any theme parks! 😉
Anyways, the movie itself was pretty enjoyable – a bit drawn out at some points (almost 2.5 hours long!) and certainly predictable at many others, but overall it was an intriguing story and I’m sure it’s going to do very well at the theaters because it kind of breaks the mold of so many blockbusters we’ve seen lately (i.e. vampires, superheroes, teen wizards). That said, not sure how it will do as a trilogy of movies – I honestly didn’t know until we left the theater that the books are a trilogy, hence all of the terse, cliffhanger-esque looks at the end started to make a little more sense … I’m frankly a little sick of trilogies and the such lately because a) most of the sequels usually suck, and b) I’d much rather have one excellent movie than an entire series of subpar ones strung out year after year after year.
Maybe I’ll try to read one of the books if I have some time – my wife started reading the first one today and she’s really enjoying it, and my sister-in-law who’s read the whole series said she liked the books better than the movies, though I suppose that’s really often the case. We’ll see – I’ve got a lot of other things I’d like to read someday if I can ever find the time, too, so in the meantime I just have to make due with the 2-3 hour summaries that Hollywood has for me…