By Even with half of the universe culled, everyone and their mother wants to see Avengers: Endgame. It was only a matter of time until Marvel released presale tickets for opening weekend. And when that moment came, we all expected the worst for everyone trying to rush onto AMC, Fandango, or even Atom Tickets if you were desperate.
Your nightmares couldn’t have prepared you for the grim reality.
It was a normal morning at the Flixist offices. Sian was sipping her tea, Kyle and Anthony were having their weekly debate on which Nic Cage movie was the best, and I was trying furiously to catch up on American Gods Season 2. It was a normal morning for all of us… until it happened. We got word that there was a new Endgame trailer with one tag at the end that drove us into a frenzy: “Tickets Now Available.”
With that, we all rushed to our computers, like the rest of the country, to try and secure our access to the biggest theatrical event of the decade. I went to Fandango, hoping to quickly grab a ticket and move on with my life, but then I was met with this image.
And so it began.
Users across the country were greeted by this image with a slow green bar filling up maybe a millimeter every 15 minutes. While I was staring at this image for an entire hour, only for it to be one-fourth of the way filled, I was reminded of the Amiibogeddon of 2015, where unless you bought your Amiibo in the first minute of digital sale, you had no luck of getting them on release day. Those were dark times, and AMC just had to revive them.
Frustrated fans tried furiously to get an Endgame ticket. Some were easily able to snag one up. Others were taken to their ticket-buying website of choice, only for all of the seats to have already been taken. Some were just booted from the digital line entirely and forced to start from the beginning, standing in an impossibly long line that simultaneously did and didn’t exist. A Schroedinger’s Cat of lines, if you will. Then the line paused, dooming millions to wait in agony for something, anything to happen. Unfortunately, what happened was that AMC’s website crashed and most people had to start from square one.
Some of us made the necessary sacrifices to get a ticket. John grabbed a ticket at a nowhere theater far from home, uncomfortable seats and all, just to have one for opening day. Young Sam, who wanted nothing more than to see Avengers: Endgame for his birthday, was told several times by his app, like the word of God before Jeremiah, “Network issue occurred. Tap to retry.” His birthday has officially been canceled.
Rick was out of the office grabbing booze at the liquor store when he dared to utter after his app crashed, “Hey, who cares if I can’t get into the nerds’ wet dream on opening night, amiright?”A bodybuilder, adorned in a ripped Avengers t-shirt and sporting Thor and Iron Man tattoos, felt that Rick’s comments offended her and took action. It was only 8 hours later that he called us from the ER and told us his internal and external injuries from this harrowing encounter. All the while, Matt laughed from his lofty perch, watching us squirm, as he already secured a press pass to the premiere.
We’re pleased to share that our mobile app is up & running. Once again, we appreciate your patience today & look forward to seeing you at the movies.
— AMC Theatres (@AMCTheatres) April 3, 2019
So what did we have to show for it? Some of us got tickets. Some of us didn’t. None of us were any of the lucky souls to grab them from an AMC with comfy recliner chairs and a dependable sound system. I checked this morning to see if any local theaters still had seats, but opening weekend screenings were sold out for a 25-mile radius.
And what did AMC do afterward? They apologized. They offered up three apologies on Twitter, then sent out an email this morning apologizing once more. They tried to be cute, saying that Thanos snapped their services out of existence, but no cute jokes could save us from the horrors that occurred. This is 2019. And we nearly lost our goddamn minds trying to see a movie about how a man the size of an ant will go into a purple man’s bum.
