Cheering At the Movie Is Good, Actually
I’m lucky I live in Atlanta. We have cheap access to air travel, reasonable living expenses (for now), and moviegoers here get it. Sometimes, especially on opening weekend, the theater is made for cheering.
Spoilers for every Avengers movie, including Endgame are below.
In the brief intervening moments before the ravenous hordes descend upon my home and burn me at the stake in the name of our Good Lord Alamo Drafthouse, I will make my case. To appease the gods, I will lay down the caveats first:
Alright. Got all that out of the way? We agree on the ground rules? Cool.
You’re supposed to cheer at some movies.
As of this writing, Avengers: Endgame is about to enter its second weekend and 700th billion at the box office. It is the culmination of 11 years and 22 movies worth of storytelling. It is a flashy comic book movie that is roughly 1/3rd vibrant action sequence, it’s drenched in emotional lighter fluid, and it’s layered over an intertextual latticework of callbacks to everything that came before it, after it, and itself all in one.
And yet, there are still those who believe that, for some reason, you are meant to be completely silent the entire time you view it.
I am not here to tell you what you should and should not enjoy on a personal level. If you prefer to watch Thor’s grandiose entry into Wakanda with the quiet contemplation of a benedictine monk, I can’t tell you that you’re wrong to enjoy that. And yet, for some reason, the reverse has has always been accepted. Anyone who enjoys a movie loudly is, by necessity, evil.
This isn’t the case and the nature of our movies proves it so.
One common argument against anyone uttering so much as a squeak of excitement is that, by making any sound, you will miss what comes next. I would like to hear what the movie says, thank you very much. So kindly keep your reactions to yourself, so I know what critical piece of dialogue comes after the moment you want to cheer for.
The year was 2015. At the time, the MCU was a scant seven years old, there were only (only.) ten prior films, and Thor had appeared in three of them. We knew these things to be true: No one could lift Mjolnir unless he be worthy, and no one in the films had yet done so after its enchantment besides Thor himself. It was Age of Ultron’s opening night in Atlanta and the moment above happens on screen.
Vision casually lifts Mjolnir like he’s handing Thor an Odindamned beer.
My crowd fucking lost it. For a solid ten seconds, the crowd was cheering, laughing, and clapping. You could not hear the soundtrack of the movie if you wanted to. It’s a theater experience that, for all my days, I will never forget.
But, I’m told, I must’ve missed something. The treacherous heathens who cheered were cheering over something. Some piece of dialogue. Some crucial element that would forever change my understanding of the movie.
Except there wasn’t. There is a solid 15 seconds in which absolutely no character says anything, no sound is made, save for a light clink as Mjolnir passes from Vision’s hand to Thor’s, and there is no music to be heard.
Most movies do not hold for applause the way a sitcom or stand up comic might. But they often delay important information, or give a shot room to breath, knowing the reactions that will occur. This moment from Age of Ultron is a step beyond that. It was as clear cut of an applause line as you can get. The film itself is crafted in such a way as to ensure that if you spent ten straight seconds screaming at the screen, you’d catch your breath long before the next line.
Which, by the way, was nothing of consequence. Thor tells Tony “Well done.” Funny joke. Not critical to the plot.
This example is extreme, but it’s far from the only one. In fact, every Avengers movie seems to have one. Once again, the moment Thor enters Wakanda in Infinity War is a clear-cut applause line.
The MCU has been criticized for lacking clear or unique musical scores, but the one exception to this rule has always been the Avengers theme. The single most triumphant piece of music in the franchise is used only twice in any significant portion in the third Avengers movie. The first time, its more militaristic, escalating intro is used when Captain America and the other rogue Avengers are first revealed in Edinburgh. However, the theme is cut off before it’s allowed to reach its peak.
The second time the theme appears is the moment the Bifrost touches down in Wakanda. Stormbreaker flies out first, mowing down Outriders before at last the rainbow bridge recedes, revealing Thor, Rocket, and Groot, and finally breaking into the unassailable crescendo of the theme song that says the enemy is fucked.
Incidentally, it will be a full ten seconds before Banner says so as well. Five of those seconds are spent literally just watching the trio pose for the camera. The next five seconds show Black Widow, Captain America, and Black Panther’s silent reactions (T’Challa doesn’t even remove his helmet), before Banner shouts, “You’re so screwed now!”
Just what I was thinking, Bruce.
This is no coincidence, either. As the Russos explain on the commentary track for the movie (you can read the relevant bits here), the song is “very Pavlovian for many of us in terms of the emotional reaction we get from it.” And so it was used only for those exceptional moments where the directors want to get the biggest, most intense emotional reaction out of the audience.
The argument that you are not meant to cheer or clap or get excited because you are taking something away from what the directors intended runs directly counter to the truth: That these emotional reactions are what the directors intended. And the films have accounted for these reactions. It’s not as though Joss Whedon or the Russo brothers crafted a movie that was meant to be silently endured, and are shocked, shocked I say, to discover that viewers have an enthusiastic reaction. No. They are deliberately crafting this reaction. To ignore that is the true disrespect to their work.
On some level, we know this as well. It’s deeply ingrained in anti-spoiler culture. What if I told you prior to watching it that in Avengers: Endgame, Captain America lifts Mjolnir? Would that be considered a spoiler? To most people, it would be. And yet it tells you nothing about the plot and very little about the character you didn’t already know. So, why is it a spoiler?
Because we know, deep down, that we don’t just want to avoid having the plot spoiled. We want to experience moments exactly as they were designed. Surprising, unexpected, shocking, thrilling, exciting! We want to feel something. If you know Cap lifts Mjolnir in Endgame, then when it happens your response is “Ah, this is that part.” If you don’t know it happens, then your response is, “HOLY FUCKING SHIT, IS CAP HOLDING MJOLNIR RIGHT NOW?!”
Creating these moments is an arduous balancing act. Marvel now routinely modifies its trailers, puts out signed memos, crams its cast into secret vans, and secretly assassinates any cast member who leaks and replaces them with life model decoys, all in the name of keeping every little moment a surprise.
Does anyone. anyone. honestly believe that they do all of this so that when, almost 2,700 minutes into this film series, Cap finally says “Avengers….Assemble!” it’s so the audience can nod along with all the emotional reaction of lobotomized tortoise?
Yes. There are downsides to this. I watched the original Avengers in theaters four times before I finally heard Hulk say “Puny god.” The three times I watched before that, the audience cackled and howled and irritated every stuffy, annoyed person within a 50 mile radius when Hulk starts smashing Loki. I genuinely didn’t even know he said words until much later. I guess I missed that! (Incidentally, there’s only a four second break between Loki smashing to the ground and Hulk speaking. Possibly suggesting Whedon expected less of a reaction than to other moments.)
But you know what? During every Marvel movie, I’ve had more fun cheering and clapping and enjoying myself than I ever would if I insisted that the only Proper Way to enjoy a movie is silently.
I know that this is not how everyone sees things. And other cultures will vary widely. I’m an American and Americans tend to be a little on the loud side. If your culture or personality is more subdued and reverential towards movies, fair! But at the very least, with Loud Americans also making these movies, it’s hard to argue that enthusiastic responses aren’t at least partially intended.
Moviegoing audiences (at least in my area) seem to have settled on a fair compromise. The first weekend is for the cheers, the claps, the unspoiled, unadulterated enthusiasm. After that, it tapers off and even during the fun movies, we’re all silent. That seems like a fair trade. There’s a time and space for everyone, and if you prefer to watch in silence and on opening night, then you’ll always have the Drafthouse. I will politely stay away.
We can all get along. Just so long as we’re all willing to accept that there’s more than one right way to watch a movie.
Cheering At the Movie Is Good, Actually
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