After a lazy day, we finally went to see Thor 2 in 3D at the Millenium Theater tonight.  Millennium usually has current movies shown in two theaters — one in English with Spanish subtitles (the one we choose, given our current language skills), and the other dubbed in Spanish.  They usually have one major movie in 3D, with the English language version shown once per day in the late evening.

Current run movies are $4 here, or $7 for 3D.  Once we turn 65, we will get them for half price.  The movie was set to start at 9:15PM, so we arrived at 8:45, to give us time to get popcorn and choose a good seat.

It turns out that movies are now assigned seating. You choose your seat on a little touch screen outside the ticket agent’s window.  All the seats cost the same, but I guess this must be a way to give benefit to those that buy the tickets early.  This is new since last year.  Evelyn chose seats and we proceeded to the theaters… only to be told (in Spanish) that the doors wouldn’t open for 10 more minutes.

Though the show started at 9:15 (and did start on time), they didn’t even open the doors to the theater until 9:05.  Most patrons didn’t actually come in until about 9:30 — after the trailers were done and the movie was actually about to start.

The show was OK, though neither of us thought it was all that strong.  I won’t go into details, in case you are still planning on seeing it, but I would give it a “4 out of 5 stars” if I still had NetFlix.

Suddenly, the lights came on in the theater, even though the movie was still going?  The Big Finale Battle was complete, but there was still action on the screen.  In the US, the lights stay down until the credits have completed, but here they were up before the movie was even over.  It looked like a rational place to end the movie (about 15 seconds after the lights came up), so we left the theater, as did about 1/3 of the other patrons.

As we climbed the steps and left the exit, someone called to come back.  We went back to the exit door, and there was still action going on! The movie wasn’t over for another 5 minutes!?  We were in the exit door, a couple families behind us unable to see, a bunch of people on the steps leading up to the exit, and about half the audience still in their seats, as though they knew this was going to happen.

It’s going to take awhile to get used to Ecuadorian movie theaters…