Godzilla AKA Gojira returns!

Hi there,

I was fortunate enough to be able to catch Godzilla relatively early on in its Malaysian release. 

I chose to experience Godzilla at (GSC) Golden Screen Cinema's (and Malaysia's) one and only Dolby Atmos theatre which is actually Hall 3 in Golden Screen Cinema 1 Utama. 

I paid for the ticket online and simply printed out the selfprint ticket which would allow me through the turnstile. 

QR code at the ready

Below is how the turnstile scans the QR code and subsequently opens up the gates to your chosen (and paid for) cinema experience.

Make sure the QR code is within that scanning window (obscured by the paper) and you're good to go!

 My chosen seat this time around was seat H14. I was fortunate that I arrived just in time before any commercial/trailer had begun (how early is that?!) and there weren't many people. It being the first show on a Thursday probably had something to do with it. :P

I managed to take a photo of the viewpoint from my seat. Here it is:

Methinks this view is pretty decent. What do you think?

The minutes ticked by. It was only then that I realised that I hadn't been early, the show itself was delayed. Oh dear. A fellow audience member (seated a row above me) chatted with his friend. He said there were delays previously, up to half an hour, but I wasn't sure whether he meant this particular Atmos theatre (Hall 3) or just a delay in general in GSC's cinema services. Why wasn't I sure? Because he spoke in a language that I have yet to understand; Cantonese with some English thrown in. Seeing as the movie was not going to start soon, I took out my phone, and started to take some notes regarding my 2nd Atmos experience, just in case I forgot anything later. 

Moments after that, I heard our fellow from a row above change his topic to smartphones. He talked about phones with pretty good specs, like a 5" screen, 13MP camera, but don't expect the build quality of a smartphone that costs thousands of Ringgit. I assumed he was talking about some new, cheaper smartphone emerging in the Malaysian market; perhaps any one of these: 

• Xiaomi's Mi 3 which would be available for purchase from May 20th 2014 at RM889
• Oneplus' One of which I have no details on its Malaysian availability or pricing, sorry!

 It's nice to know that the phone in my hand could generate a conversation elsewhere! Anyway, their conversation, in turn, led me to try benchmarking the data connection in Hall 3 of GSC. Why not? I noticed that the data connection seemed speedy enough. So i ran a Speedtest and the result is below:

It's OK-ish..nothing to shout about I guess

It's decent..in terms of download performance. The ping and upload needs work though. I recall, at least, that a ping > 500ms is synonymous with an unplayable online gaming experience. Am I right? :D

Back to the movie experience! I timed 1208hrs as the time when the first trailer popped up on screen. So we were 8 minutes late already. Which trailer was it? Why, none other than ...

Yup, guess I've got to book my calendar for this too. After 20 minutes of advertisements and a "The Purge" trailer, the famous THX demonstration played. So, this is a THX cinema? Cool. It was followed by 2 (count 'em!) Dolby Atmos demos. I wondered why there were 2. Perhaps they came up with a new one. I liked the newer one better, that's for sure. It seemed to really leverage the 64 speakers in the Hall.

I remember the movie proper started to 'roll' (perhaps once upon a time it rolled, because movies were a series of pictures in a 'can' displayed at a certain speed) at 1228hrs. 

I liked the movie and its presentation. I would say 2D is definitely the way to watch this movie. I've no idea whether 3D has any momentum left in it nowadays. I want to ask GSC/TGV in Malaysia; how are 3D ticket sales going? Are they still selling well? If it's not selling well, what happens to the 3D theatres? Will they be selling off the 3D specs? Are people even buying 3D television sets?

You see, I watched Captain America: The Winter Soldier in 3D and throughout the movie, I wished I could just watch it in 2D, and that's never a nice feeling to have hang over you whilst watching a movie! As I said in a previous post, I praised Gravity for being an excellent 3D movie. A 3D showcase, if you will. Other than that, I've not been impressed with any 3D movie lately..

Let me share with you one highlight from watching Godzilla. As the character played by Ken Watanabe was introducing Godzilla to the audience, he said on-screen "We call him.." and someone from the audience sportingly and spontaneously cried out "Gojira!" That moment certainly made me laugh! Thanks for livening up the theatre man!