A Dark Day Rises In Colorado

There's nothing quite like the communal experience of sitting in a darkened theater with your popcorn and enjoying a summer blockbuster with several hundred strangers. When the film is great, that makes it even better. It lets us escape from our own day to day problems and live vicariously through the characters on screen. We can safely watch other people in fictitious peril and know that we'll be able to walk out of that theater free from harms way. But in Colorado last night, we learned it's not always true.


 As I drank my coffee and turned on the news this morning, I was shocked to get the details about the horrific shooting that took place at the local theater near my home. At least twelve are dead as I write this, and possibly more to come as the police sort through the aftermath. Most that know me also know that I'm a relatively drama free type of guy. I was just expecting a day of tweeting nonsensical ramblings about the latest Dark Knight film with my fellow blogging community before seeing the film tonight and posting my own thoughts. But the day "The Dark Knight Rises" opened will now be marred forever because of the actions of a mentally troubled young man and I feel compelled to share my thoughts about it. I went down to the theater merely hours after to get a closer look not because of some morbid curiosity, but because I'm fairly overwhelmed with several different emotions at the moment and I just wanted to document some of it. No witty captions or any of our trademark sarcasm.........just images at the scene of a tragedy that will unfortunately be remembered for years to come.

Violent crimes occur in all wakes of life, but I think this one hits home pretty damn hard for us folks in the movie blogosphere. My wife and I were planning on seeing Batman tonight, and she just called and asked if we were still going. She expressed concerns about copycat shootings possibly taking place, and I see her point. But at the same time, do we just stop doing the things we love out of fear? We decided that we're still going to the movies this evening, but no matter how good or bad the film is, the experience will be bittersweet. Unfortunately what Alfred said in "The Dark Knight" is all too true. "Some men just want to watch the world burn."