Audience Reception of a Film: What Do YOU Remember?

[smalltalk66]

When I was nine, I remember my brother dragging me to a film I did not want to see--the film was Star Wars, and it was was the last showing before it left the theatres in 1977. I remember every female in the theatre screaming when Leia said, "Someone's got to save us" during the trash compactor scene. I turned around and wondered why everyone was cheering lol
Great memories.
What's your favorite memory of the audience's reaction when you saw your favorite film for the first time?

 

[Locutus of Bored]

My friend and I went to see Seven, and after the shocking ending of the film I have never seen a more silent, defeated-looking, mouth-agape audience in my life. Not in a bad way, mind you, because it shows how powerful the ending was, but no one seemed capable of even talking about it for while until they could process what happened. My friend and I didn't even say anything until we got back to my car, and then the first thing I think we both said was "Holy shit!"

On the flip-side of that coin, no one was expecting much from Galaxy Quest when I went to see it. It was opening day and word of mouth about what a fun movie it was hadn't spread that much. I thought it might be a cheesy, forgettable parody of Trek at best. So, I was very pleasantly surprised at how exciting and funny and celebratory of genre fandom it actually was, and the audience seemed to be as well. As the movie went on the audience reaction got more and more animated to the point where people were loudly cheering and high-fiving complete strangers toward the end. Everyone came out of that movie talking to their friends and people they just met about their favorite parts and most quotable lines.

So, those were my two most notable experiences at movies.

 

[spooky spice]

Jaws - the entire audience jumping out of their skins when the head rolls out of the boat

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Well, I think this counts. My story is for Alien. I was 13 when I saw it.

Mom wouldn't go in to see it with me, so I had to wait.

One day, my dad and I were with two male friends of ours, one close to his age and one close to mine, when we went out to lunch. Somehow, let's see Alien became the plan afterwards. (No doubt I played a part in that plan.)

It was the middle of the day, and only us four and a couple others in the audience.

The chestburster comes out.

My dad and his friend say, "Welp, let's go to the bar!" and they get up and leave us younger kids to watch the rest of the film, while they go get drunk. Years later I told mom that dad had left me in that movie when I was still technically a child without adult supervision, and she was not amused.

---

Saving Private Ryan. Packed audience. A pretty good analog of a shell-shocked crowd.

 

[Lonemagpie]

Dunno about favourite films, but the only real major responses I've seen in a cinema were:

Superman 2 - after he's had his powers removed, then gone and found the bit of Kryptonite, and there's the scene where the music starts building, people start looking up as something flying in causes papers to blow around... and the audience went wild with cheers!

Crocodile Dundee 2 - there's a bit which isn't part of a scene, but just a "local colour" sort of shot, of a kangaroo with its ears twitching in opposite directions. And the audience pissed themselves laughing! Which they didn't do at any of the intentional humour....

Alien 3 - this one's my fault. When the first guy narrowly avoids being got by the alien, and stumbles back into the giant fan and gets chopped to bits, the irony of escaping the expected fate for a sillier one made me laugh, loudly. Unfortunately it then cut to a silent solemn scene, with me going "AHAHAHAHAHahahahaha... Sorry..." *But* then after that, every time someone got killed, the whole audience laughed their asses off. At the time a lot of reviewers were saying audiences came out that film depressed, but that audience came out happy and bouncy!

 

[Kemaiku]

Well I'm a young one here so one of my favourite early reactions was Jurassic Park 2. We had a family gathering at my grandmothers house with her, a few aunts uncles and cousins, we decided to all go and see the film together.

Long story short all my cousins went right to the front while I stayed back with the adults and my sister, they made a lot of noise down front being kids, when that Raptor jumped from the grass they all dived and screamed, my cousin Jacqueline was standing cheering on the dinosaurs until that happened, she was shock still, think she wet herself

 

[JanewayRulz!]

A funny one.

When the STAR WARS trilogy was re-released in the theaters in (?) 1997, a friend and I went to a double feature of "SW" & "ESB".

During the sickbay scene where Leia tries to make Han Solo jealous by frenchkissing Skywalker, the entire audience went "euwwwwwweeee".

It was pretty obvious we'd all seen "ROTJ" by then and knew these 2 were siblings!

 

[Snaploud]

I saw the sneak preview of Groundhog Day at the movie theater. The entire audience laughed throughout the whole movie (especially when Murray kept killing himself or they saw that clock). It was the most happy I've ever seen a crowd of people in my life.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I don't think I've ever seen audience reactions to match those at the opening day showing of Star Wars that I attended.

Technically, I guess it wasn't "opening day" - the Uptown had been selling out tickets to every show all day, so they added an unannounced, unadvertised 12:30 AM show to the end of the schedule. They sold it out about four hours before showtime, and the additional show became a standard part of their schedule for the rest of the run.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I was so high on Star Wars I have no memory of how anyone else was reacting.

 

[Goliath]

I remember people in the audience cheering when the Death Star blew up, back in '77.

More recently, the first time I saw Chicago was in one of the few full-size movie theatres left in the world. And I was particularly struck by the sound of the audience laughing. It had been a long time since I'd heard that sound.

Most recently, I went to see The Grudge on opening night. The theatre was packed with young adults, and the girls in the audience screamed at every frightening scene. I've never heard anything like that in any other movie.

 

[TremblingBluStar]

I don't see many movies in the theater, but the one I have seen that got the most positive reception was Serenity on opening night. Of course, they were probably all fans of the show, so that makes sense. There were big laughs at all the jokes, and when Whedon's name came on screen a lot of clapping and cheering.

It was pretty cool!

 

[23skidoo]

I wouldn't rank these as favorite films either, necessarily, but I recall a few things:

Seeing the local premiere of Return of the Jedi and hearing some middle-aged woman loudly say "I liked the other 2 better" in a grumpy tone as we stood up. That's stuck with me for 28 years.

There was one film I went to - I've honestly forgotten which one - where some yahoos were talking about the movie through the whole showing and in a scene right out of a sitcom one of them blew the ending of the film with the old "Oh here's where so-and-so does such and such" thing. I've evidently blocked out what movie it was. I remember being really pissed off, though.

I attended a local premiere of Star Trek VI and there was a problem with the projector or something, and someone in the audience called out "let there be light!" and at that moment the film started. That was funny.

I also remember attending the premiere of First Contact and seeing a guy show up carrying a notepad and wearing a Starfleet uniform and I overheard him saying he wasn't there for actually watching the movie, but he wanted to make sketches of the new Enterprise. To each their own, I guess....

Alex

 

[indianatrekker26]

I vaguely remember seeing Star Trek IV The Voyage Home in theatres. When the crew are flying through the interior of spacedock, heading to their new ship, I remember everyone in the jampacked theatre standing up, eagerly waiting to see what ship they'd get. When the enterprise is shown, i remember everyone in the theatre screaming, clapping, yelling. It was a great moment.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

One of the more disappointing audience reactions I've seen was Star Trek: The Motion Picture on its premiere night at the MacArthur Theatre. It was, of course, a crowd composed almost entirely of fans.

Parenthetically, the process of buying movie tickets weeks in advance off-site was fairly new then, at least in this area. It didn't exist two years before, when Star Wars opened; in 1979 you had to drive to a TicketTron vendor, couldn't do it over the phone.

Anyway, much cheering and gasping early in the movie - when the Klingons appeared and got Blowed Up, when Nimoy first appeared, when Kirk entered, etc - but by the end of the Enterprise fly-around things were pretty quiet, and stayed that way for the remainder of the film. No real reaction to the few intended laugh lines, no excitement. Everyone filed out pretty quietly after it was over.

My buddy, a professional writer knew Trek very well but wasn't and still isn't a fan of the thing, said afterward that he enjoyed it and thought that it would do well, "but as a technical or artistic achievement it's sure not on the same level as Star Wars or Close Encounters were."

 

[Greg Cox]

I remember attending a college screening of PSYCHO in the eighties and being shocked to realize that were people in the audience who didn't already know that Norman was the killer and who were caught offguard by the surprise ending . . . twenty years after the fact!

 

[RoJoHen]

AvP:Requiem

We saw it on Christmas Day. The theater was packed. We had to sit way up front, which never happens. The movie was awful, and we all knew it was awful, but everybody in the theater was having an awesome time. When the Predator throws his giant ninja star and pins the girl to the ceiling, the entire theater starting laughing their asses off.

 

[ManOnTheWave]

Star Wars is a pretty good example. I saw it three times that summer and every time the audience as a whole gasped at the size (or length) of the Imperial Cruiser when it was first introduced.

I saw Batman (1989) twice in theatre, and both times the audience clapped at the end of the film. I don't recall seeing that before.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

One of my favorite negative reactions in a theater wasn't to a movie as such but to a lengthy trailer for Best Defense, a Dudley Moore comedy. Apparently the studio knew that they were in so much trouble with it that they either beefed up an existing role for Eddie Murphy or hired him after the fact to shoot new scenes for it - I have no idea which it was.

Anyway, this thing is long and loud and disjointed and spends a lot of time on Murphy's "comic reactions" to battlefield stuff - the ad people were clearly throwing every moment that they thought might get a laugh and/or appeal to Murphy's fans into the trailer.

It plays to complete silence, of course. And as the credits fade from the screen, one guy at the back of the house says loudly "Well, we can miss that one." And then the entire audience erupted in laughter.

I have no memory of what movie we were there to see, BTW.

EDIT: I looked this one up on Wikipedia. Murphy was added later.

EDIT 2: Absolutely everything is on the Internet now:

[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mIksVC8hge0[/yt]

 

[TheSeeker]

I think the movie that sticks out most in my mind for audience reaction is Star Trek VI. When the Enterprise and Excelsior both swoop in for the kill on the Bird of Prey and finally blow it up the crowd started cheering and high fiving each other.