I’ve never walked out of a movie in the theater (though I would have probably done so in Transformers 2 if I hadn’t been trapped, see above), but I did stop watching a Turkish movie called Winter Sleep about an hour in, having been recommended it somewhere - I think by Robin Laws, whose recommendations I usually trust, but it might have been a more cineaste-oriented podcast like Filmspotting in which case go figure.
Put simply, it was an hour into the movie, no trace of anything resembling plot or forward motion had emerged, and I couldn’t stand the protagonist nor care about his shambolic interactions with other cast members. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining about the pacing of shows like Westworld and Sharp Objects being too slow and I think those people have lost any concept of patience, but Winter Sleep was way the fuck too slow.
I guess some liked it, but I just saw a few characters walk in from the left, say a few lines out of the book, and walk off to the right. Over and over.
Equaled the disappointment I felt when I read the first page of the 2nd Dune book. Herbert took something that was pretty taut and coherent, and just threw a kitchen-sink-ful of new aliens into that first page - I never recovered and never read any other Dune sequels.
When I was 12 or so, I was visiting my grandparents, and they said I could pick out a movie for us all to to watch at Blockbuster. Nothing immediately jumped out on me – it was mostly generic blue-and-yellow boxes with nothing to go on but the title. I finally settled on one that 1) I was pretty sure some kid at school had said was funny, and 2) I had a positive association with the Don McLean song it was based on.
As you can probably guess, we got about 15 minutes into American Pie before the abject mortification became too much to bear.
I saw it alone. Almost walked out of Blue Velvet, Dennis Hopper was so disturbing, and when it was over I was crossing a street and nearly got hit by a car with a vanity plate that said “Blue.”
I was living in a glorified toaster oven, and the air conditioning in the theater was just better. There was nothing believable about this movie. Two of the actors, basically the bad guys, seemed like they were in a different movie from everyone else, and there was some sort of love story going on that only made sense if you watched the cartoon, I guess, because there was nothing on the screen that made that relationship real.
The Stuff is classic Larry Cohen, the guy who dreamed up It’s Alive and coaxed the performance of a career out of Michael Moriarty in a cheapo creature feature called Q. He attempts something similar with SNL alum Garret Morris in The Stuff, but it didn’t work out as well.
Highlander 2 is the one movie I’ve walked out of. My call, took about 10-15 minutes to convince my buddy it wasn’t going to get better, we weren’t going to get our money back, so why waste another hour of our lives.
Watched a group of older guys (older to me at the time, probably college age) storm out of a viewing of the animated Lord of the Rings back in '79, yelling very loudly how it sucked.
Worst move-going experience was the first Next Gen Trek movie, people showed up in Star Fleet officer uniforms, a few sat right behind us, and when the Bird of Prey was tearing up the Enterprise, one of them was carrying on about how a light scout ship would not be able to penetrate the additional defenses of a heavy cruiser regardless of bypassing its shields, blah blah. A friend of mine (who’s now dead), huge black guy, finally snapped after listening to about 10 minutes of 100% distilled Trek nerd talk, turned around, and threatened to go Klingon if they didn’t STFU. They STFU. Rob was huge, that one time my psionicist ethereal walked his hobbit thief for stealing from the party was the only time I’ve ever been scared while playing D&D.
I once was forced to walk out of a movie before it even started. I am not sure what it even was now. Some lame looking Jurassic Park rip off or something. I had gone for a wander in town with a friend and it started raining so we decided to keep dry by going to the cinema. 5 minutes after we sat down this couple came over and the guy said “excuse me, you are in our seats”. There was about 6 other people in the theatre, I’d guess the capacity was at least 200. My friend was so angry, that he feared he would cause a scene and so we had to leave. I never saw that movie, but I don’t think it was any great loss.
I never walked out of a movie in a theather in my life: I hardly ever go anyway, so if I do, I make sure I pick a movie I will like. That doesn’t mean it has to be a good one, just that it is something I’m in the mood for at the time. Even a super dumb action movie can be fun, as long as you know what you are getting yourself into and your expectations aren’t too high.
That being said, I have watched several movies on televison that I just could not sit through, despite low expectations. The last one being Independance Day Resurgance. The combination of absolutely giant plotholes combined with a shitload of cliches was just too much…
I’ve discussed this in earlier threads, but The Verdict. Yes, the generally highly-regarded movie for which Paul Newman won a (deserved) Best Actor Oscar. My reasons for hating this movie are similar to the reasons that I hate films based on historical events that change history (Pearl Harbor I’m looking at you). It’s settling for cheap and easy plotting, instead of taking the care required to craft a realistic story. Understand that I watched this film with a lawyer’s eye and when Lumet kept stacking the deck against Newman’s character in ways that, as a lawyer, I knew were ridiculous, it finally got to the point that I had to walk out lest I upset the other audience members with my scoffing. It’s not like it’s impossible to make a good legal drama with a realistic story line. Anatomy of a Murder is proof of that.
It’s true that there are a lot of lawyers who love this movie, but you’ll find that they are personal injury or criminal defense lawyers who identify with the Don Quixote aspects of the Newman character and realism be damned. That just doesn’t work for me.
