Wolverine's Profanity-Fueled Rant Targets Disrespectful Moviegoers

By Andrew Sanford | Film | June 6, 2024 |

By Andrew Sanford | Film | June 6, 2024 |

I love going to the movies. I often go after I bartend on Tuesday nights, often by myself. When I’m sitting in a movie theater, being taken someplace else for 90-200+ minutes, everything else fades away. It’s just me, my snacks and/or seltzer, and the characters on the screen. This is what happens 90 percent of the time that I go to a picture show. But there is that ten percent. Those times when people’s self-awareness and manners go out the window. When they take out their stupid f***ing phones.

Few things are more frustrating than being in a movie theater and having someone extract from their pocket what is, essentially, a giant flashlight in a dark room. They scroll, they text, and they ruin the movie (even though the man with the deep voice pleaded with them not to). Despite being looked at by every single M&M, stark disappointment on their candy-coated faces, these ner do wells feel compelled to ruin everyone else’s experience so they can look at whatever dank meme their buddy Francis posted on Instagram.

It shouldn’t be surprising that people will put themselves before the well-being of others. But at the movies? A place where we’re all just trying to enjoy ourselves? You can blame social media, the phones themselves, bad schools, and maybe low attention spans brought on by all of the above, but I’m going to be a little hyperbolic when I say that it comes down to basic human decency. It is a battle of good vs evil. These people won’t change unless taken to task by a hero… or two.

In a new PSA that is making its way to theaters, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds (as Wolverine and Deadpool, respectively) are about to spoil the upcoming Secret Wars when someone’s phone goes off. This leads Jackman’s Wolverine to break the fourth wall and threaten to do all kinds of nasty things to the person who committed the almost unforgivable sin of not having their phone on silent (if your cell phone makes a noise when someone calls you consider this a friendly reminder to renew your AARP membership).

The bit is quite funny and makes me excited for the movie it is also plugging. Jackman and Reynolds have great chemistry and we’ve only gotten a taste of it so far. Reynolds, somehow makes the Deadpool mask more and more emotive, especially when he’s turned on. Maybe it’s the blank eyes? Will any of this get people to keep their phones away during a movie? No. Because the people who do so are monsters who cannot be reasoned with.