Unplanned Adventures: Catching Fire, Midnight Premiere

In the early hours of Thursday, I got to indulge in an experience I had not had since Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2: the midnight release. A group of faithful GUSTies and myself braved the throngs of teens and twenty somethings all for the sake of seeing Catching Fire before anyone else.

And while I of course paid for my late night foray in my vague, zombi-esque palor for the rest of the day, it was so worth it. 

The energy of the cinema was simply incredible. We were all in the largest theater in the cinema, surrounded by a young, high-energy crowd. Admittedly, these weren't the cosplaying, die-hard fans of Deathly Hallows (but how can anything compete where the Harry Potter fandom is concerned?), but as I can't remember the last time I saw a movie on it's opening week, in a proper theater, at a time that wasn't 10 AM, it was certainly exhilarating (or that could have just been the large coffee and M&Ms that were my lifeline).

 

As for the movie itself...wow. I went in with pretty high expectations, after all the glowing reviews I had read, and I'm glad to say that it lived up to the hype. A lot slicker than the first movie, it still manages to forge that emotional attachment to the characters (largely due to the incredible performances of the entire cast, standouts including Sam Clafin, Jenna Malone, and the freaking-obviously gifted Jennifer Lawrence, who could bring an audience to tears over a dramatic dictionary reading). The movie manages to follow the book quite closely, and pulls details and dialogue so neatly from page to screen that I couldn't find a single thing that conflicted with the way I had imagined things.  And the baboons! Don't get me started on how terrifying the baboons were...

But I digress. Perhaps part of the reason I enjoyed the movie so much boiled down to it being a factor of the midnight screening, of being with new friends and staying out way past my bedtime. It was an impulsive decision to go (about two days prior, despite classes and what not the next day), one I ended up not regretting in the slightest. For what it's worth, I think it was impulsiveness, combined with the time, was what heightened the pleasure of the experience as a whole. There are precious few instances in my previous years of Uni where I did anything that was categorically "reckless teen," unless you count pulling all nighters and buying hardback YA novels. Some of it's just my personality, my business, and the way my friends and I define fun. But I think to be impulsive takes a certain degree of confidence that I hadn't quite developed as a teenager. A certain boldness, something I think I've only gained since coming abroad for my studies. 

I like this new aspect of me, this willingness to plow forward unplanned. Simply put, I think the best adventures are the ones that happen on a whim, and I'm quite keen on having good adventures.