The Walkout [Lex]

Before this year, the only movie I remember walking out of was Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill (2003). Undoubtedly there were others, but I can’t recall any specifically. I’m sure I wanted to walk out of many movies in my film school years, but I took naps instead of earning poor grades.

Why do I remember, so sharply, bailing on Kill Bill? For one thing, I was having a hard time believing Uma Thurman could battle twenty men with swords, and, even more, I was having a hard time believing the man who gave us Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction couldn’t do better in his maturer years. The older Tarantino got, the more juvenile his pictures became, and I’d had enough of him.

Fast forward to July 2025 when I walked –flew— out of Superman.

It would take an entire post to detail what was wrong with the movie, but let me summarize by saying this: the writing was lousy. Its effects and action were not memorable and its glibness was irritating. Story, mise en scene, dialogue. When all three fail to intrigue early in the going, how can a movie recover?

I hadn’t thought there was much meaning behind my walkout of Kill Bill—only that I didn’t like it. But now, with the landscape of cinema irreversibly changed, I was inspired to muse on the walkout: if I was abandoning an American icon and the greatest super hero of them all that had to mean something.

What is the cultural meaning of a walkout then and now? Does the act still have relevance? Did it ever?

***
When thinking about walkouts, I keep coming back to that scene from Singin’ in the Rain, where Don Lockwood looks on in horror, as an audience leaves the end of his first talkie with Lina Lamont. The people are mocking her voice, and he knows he’ll be ruined if he continues to work with her in the post-silent era. That scene was not so much about a walkout, but an indicator that audience opinion mattered and producers lived in fear of it.

Test screenings and sneak previews still occur, but somehow I don’t think James Gunn or David Korenswet were ever waiting at a theater exit, hoping to gauge the vibe on Superman.

Of course, movies have changed since Covid. We are going to the theater less. We are streaming and downloading more. We are viewing entire films on our phones and watches. A walkout these days, might mean swiping away from a video three seconds into it.
Despite the alteration of the movie viewing experience, people still go to the cinema. Box office does matter, and James Gunn surely pours over the digital trades to see what each weekend’s returns are.

What really has been lost is the communal experience of going to a movie—and along with that the power of the walkout.

There are profound psychological phenomena that occur when watching a film with others, whether friends or strangers. There is shared joy and displeasure. There’s the cut up and the too-loud whisperer. There’s something you might not laugh at unless someone else did. Yawns can be contagious and stray comments can be affirming or annoying.

And on that rare occasion: the mass walkout. But did the mass walkout hurt or harm a picture? Public relations flaks surely could reframe a mass walkout as “see what’s got everyone so worked up,” but Don Lamont didn’t even consider putting lipstick on a pig. No, a mass walkout was the kind of word of mouth that was bad for business.

Is it the same today? I think not because the theater-going experience, even in its diminished state, is far different. In many cineplexes, a seat barely touches the one adjacent to it. They recline and have foot rests. It’s more like flying first class than watching a film.

These changes, I’m hazarding a guess, have made the mass walkout –once an emphatic and noteworthy statement—highly unlikely. A stray departure here and there is always the way it’s going to be, but as I left Superman I thought, perhaps in days gone by, others would have followed.

I grew up in Concord, Massachusetts –in the shadow of Henry David Thoreau— but in the darkness of the movie theater I’m not sure a “majority of one” means anything.
***
What may have been more noteworthy about my walkout was the reaction on social media when I announced I had left the movie.

I didn’t intend to stir up trouble, but relating my early departure from Superman turned more heads than the act of leaving itself.

Kill Bill was released in 2003, and back then I had nowhere to post my thoughts. Yes, the internet existed, but it was nascent. I’m not even sure I had a cell phone in 2003. And even if I did there were no apps, and social media’s hottest thing going was My Space (remember that?).

Two criticisms emerged above others. First: how could I know Superman was bad if I left at the mid-point? Second, so I was admonished: “it’s a movie; just go with it, bro (or brah).”

Let’s take the second part first. By this rationale, anything put on screen, simply because it’s there, deserves praise. No matter how illogical, no matter how ill-conceived or expositional, you have to dismiss all of this because “it’s a movie.” Have the fanboys no limit beyond which they can be pushed?

As for not thinking I can criticize a movie because I didn’t remain for all of it, my simple reply has been, ‘if you can’t interest me in the first hour, how will you change my mind in hour two?’ There are slow burns and then there are flame outs, and for me Superman ran out of oxygen after forty-five minutes.

After some back and forth with my interlocutors, I realized debate was going to be difficult. Like almost everything these days, discussion has become tribal and pseudo-religious. My walkout on Superman was less a departure from a disappointing movie and more akin to spitting on someone’s deity.

Of course, Superman did well financially, and my walkout, whether trumpeted or not, was never going to be harmful. Movies surely bomb, but that’s because no one goes to see them in the first place, so walkouts might not be harmful because they occur after the theater has your money.

When critics had immense cultural cache a bad review could derail a film. If Pauline Kael announced she had walked out of a certain picture that might be enough to sink a movie’s fortunes. But then again, she also couldn’t understand how Nixon won because no one she knew voted for him.
***
If you sense my ambivalence about the walkout, you are on point. It’s an immeasurable thing. Instinct tells me it may have had more impact in the past, but a hunch doesn’t always solve the case.

Perhaps a political film could inspire a walkout, but since opposing camps generally refuse to see one another’s work at all there is no singing in the rain—only singing to the choir. Michael Moore fans are more likely to boycott a Dinseh D’Souza film, not attend it and walkout. And vice versa.

At this stage, there are no facts in evidence, so I can only solicit opinions. What are your thoughts on the walkout, past and present? What in-theater films have you abandoned? Turning the channel, pausing the stream, or swiping off don’t count.

If you’ve made it to the end of this post, I know you will have not walked out on me, and I’d like to hear other opinions on this subject.

posted by Open Blogger at 07:30 PM

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