"I thought it would be fun to attend the Marvel movie marathon, and so I suggested that it might also make a fun thing to write about.
However, there are a man and a woman out in front of the theater, dressed as Captain America and Black Widow, taking pictures with anyone coming in, so I chat with them for a moment. The woman, Kelly Perez, is enthusiastic and vivacious, an ace cosplayer of four years who agreed to appear because she’s friends with the manager here. She is not attending the marathon, and I cannot blame her, after seeing how some of the male attendees interact with her. Our Captain America is a guy named Luis, who is attending the marathon, and is assuredly not a regular cosplayer. “I actually got this [outfit] to put on a dummy, and it’s my first time wearing it,” he tells me. “It’s very snug.” He will wear his outfit the entire time, and after hearing how it makes him sweat, I am glad I’m sitting nowhere near him.
Here’s another fact you need to know, for events later on to make sense: I have a heart condition that makes it impossible for me to have caffeine, or stimulants of any kind, really, unless I don’t want my heart to work any more. As a result, I’m not so good with staying up super late, or functioning on less than five or six hours of sleep a night. This means future employers don’t have to worry about the possibility of my developing a cocaine habit, but it also means that I will not, for example, get to join in the mass coffee exodus that will happen tomorrow morning after the first Avengers movie ends. So I fear for my staying-awake skills.
There are hosts for our event, employees of AMC who are there to answer questions, maintain our enthusiasm in between films by hosting trivia giveaways, and to indulge in all the worst responsibilities of contemporary social-media-based requirements. For example, we are encouraged throughout the night to tweet, Instagram, and Facebook our experience, all with the requisite hashtags, of course, and are actually chided when our hosts feel there has been an inadequate amount of said hashtagging.
I do want to note that I’m still discovering new things in these films. I never really realized before that the secret hero of the first film is Pepper—she’s the one who kills the bad guy and generally does everything right, something the third film makes explicit by making her the final hero.
“Come on! You’re not excited?” says one host, demanding more cheers. Shut up, dude, it’s 1 a.m. Happily, he soon abandons this effort, and instead the theater starts playing surround-sound test noises. Loudly. Like, nature sounds. It’s confounding. Are they testing our reflexes? Are we supposed to collectively turn our heads to follow the animal sounds around the room? I swear to God AMC is fucking with us. Or maybe they’re punishing us for not hashtagging enough?
This marathon isn’t just a series of films; it’s a massive experiment in hypnotherapy via sleep-prevention technology. Maybe there’s something in the pretzel bites? These are the kind of thoughts that make honest-to-god sense to me as the credits roll at 7:49 a.m., and there’s some disturbing scrawls in an Iron Man notebook to prove it.
I do my best to take a short nap, sprawling out across three seats, a deeply uncomfortable position made more so by the bright lights and the people having a loud debate a few rows over regarding whether Ant-Man will eventually become an Avenger in time for the Infinity Wars movies. Shut up, nerds, I think, wearily, as I remember having spent 30 minutes internally debating myself a few weeks ago about that same question.
The trivia sessions have now become a marathon unto themselves, as our cranky ambivalence has resolved into something resembling angry capitulation to our hosts’ whims. You want us to shout? We’ll fucking shout. We will slice our wrists open to get a damn extra-large T-shirt at this point. He takes suggestions for the next prize, and I offer to snap a child’s neck in exchange for a $10 gift card. My neighbors feel this is a reasonable suggestion."
Metafilter commentary on this.
Vox commentary on also doing this.
"What is the name of the actor who plays Star Lord in Guardians of the Galaxy? That's the movie you just saw," he would ask us the next day.
This question, of course, is not "trivia," so much as it was "paying attention to the credits" or "having read an entertainment publication at any time in the past two years."
Imagine these questions happening after every other movie for 29 hours. Imagine this happening at 3:45 am.
The emcee returns. He wants to "get us pumped" ... at 4:13 am. This is somehow not a nightmare.
I realize I could have flown to Asia and back in the time I've spent in auditorium seven at the United Artists King of Prussia multiplex.
"Everyone creates the thing they dread," Ultron says in the movie, driving this point home.
I wonder if I've ever created anything I've later come to hate. Pitching coverage of this Marathon comes to mind."
Topless Robot has commentary from the same theater as Vox, apparently.
"I have made my first mistake of the evening: not purchasing the refillable Avengers mega-cup. They've sold out, much to the chagrin of some of the patrons, and instead I've purchased just a large soda to go along with my dinner.
I met recent med school graduate Samuel who flew in from Virginia Beach for the marathon and discussed strategies for when to sleep without missing the action. At this point, he's planning on napping during our next film, Thor, but for now I'm going to try and sally forth. If any film could possibly render me unconscious, it's Thor.
I will say that hygiene has been a big part of the event. People are changing shirts, brushing teeth, reapplying deodorant, and doing generally whatever they have to do to remain funk free. Granted we've only been here a day, but this could have gotten really funky, really quickly. As for me, while some of the signs of exhaustion have departed, I'm starting to get a little nervous. Two of my fingers on my left hand are twitching uncontrollably. Focusing on stopping the movement seems to work, but if I turn my attention back to the films, it isn't long before the twitching starts again."