I don’t think I can survive sitting through the Lord of The Ring trilogy, all 10 hours of it, let alone attempting a feat of torture so much as to watch all the marvel movies at one go – 28 hours odd of superheroes overdose.
Last year, when Netflix released season 2 of House of Cards at once, it was openly tugging and wooing its viewers to binge-watch it. And many people did, or attempt to, complete 13 episodes of the drama in a single sitting.
So, looking at the account of Alex McCown of AV Club who attempted this gave me a magnitude of emotions. I wish I was among the hardcore Marvel fanatics in the crowd. This way, I could recount this strange but something few-would-attempt experience to my grandchildren in the future. But I think deeper, why pay so much to deprieve myself of sleep, proper food, confine in a place where the lack of shower probably causes people to have weird odor. Some say it’s akin to running in a marathon, where you pay money to wake up in the wee hours, run yourself to jelly and earn a finisher’s medal which will probably be chucked somewhere in the cupboard. Doing a movie marathon and running an actual marathon is similar – both are a battle of physical and mental endurance.
Here’s two extracts which cracked me up:
The hosts sense our restlessness, and rather than just starting the movie, they double down on their cheerleading duties. “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?
[…] Here’s what makes it worthwhile:How was it? That seems almost incidental. I was awake for the entire movie. That’s the big achievement, by far. Whether I liked it or not is somewhat akin to asking someone who just spent all day in a competitive eating competition if they appreciated the hint of rosemary in that last hot dog. We willingly took on this challenge, and the experience overtakes the nature of the content at some point. I will say, there was more applause and cheering during the last film than for any other movie of the whole endeavor. That felt nice. The marathon is something that grew in significance as it progressed, and despite the fact that I would 100 percent never, ever do it again, it’s a weirdly treasured memory in my mind, already taking on the rosy glow of nostalgia.
The last I did anything remotely close to marathon viewing was when there was football matches screening back to back, one after another. Even then, I was growing into my teens, where I didn’t know where to expand my never-ending energy. Now, I’d probably think twice before giving the answer of “another time, perhaps”.