Watching the Secret Life of Walter Mitty in the USA...

On Christmas day last year, we caught the Secret Life of Walter Mitty in the USA at Regal Cinemas Vancouver Washington…

Entrance of Regal Cinema Vancouver Washington

Inside Regal Cinema Vancouver Washington

This post is about some interesting observations that I made while watching movies in the USA. I will briefly talk about the movie itself and about watching movie in the USA in general.

On Watching Movies in the USA

1. Americans understand jokes from US films better than we do. After watching Hollywood films since time immemorial, I thought that I would understand most if not all the jokes in US comedy movies. That is so not true… there was a scene where Ben Stiller was described by the customer service officer (played by Patton Oswalt) as a “cross between Indiana Jones and the lead singer of the Strokes”. At that point, the cinema burst into laughter! Something that we didn’t comprehend. After seeing the picture of the lead singer of the Strokes, then we realised that the description was quite apt. Funny in a sense. Much like watching a Singaporean movie, there are jokes that only Singaporeans understand, this is similar for American movies for Americans.

2. People clap at the end of movies. At the end of the movie, people actually clapped in unison, to signal that the movie was good. This was the same when we watched Inception in 2010 in the USA. Locals actually clap at the end of movies, applauding a great movie they have just watched.

3. Movie snacks are EXPENSIVE! That evening, we skipped dinner thinking that popcorn combos (at a cost of $10 MAX) would be our dinner. Turns out that the popcorn (medium-size) and coke (large) costs $7.25 and $5.50 respectively! That’s almost $16SGD in total! 😮

On the ending of Walter Mitty

At the end of the movie, you will remember that Walter Mitty appears on the cover of the last issue of LIFE magazine. What happened was, after all the experiences that Walter been through, he was told by the famous photographer Sean O’Connell (played by Sean Penn) that the missing “negative 25”, which captured the “Quintessence” of LIFE (meant to be the cover photo of the last issue) was in the wallet given to him by Sean all along. After which, he stormed into the magazine’s meeting and told the new boss that LIFE magazine is about the people who made it happen. Then, he handed him the photo which he never looked at.

So the question is, how did Walter Mitty’s photo land on the cover of LIFE magazine?

1. It was the missing photo taken by Sean O’Connell. In general, most people (including Kate), thinks that the missing “negative 25” is the photo of Walter Mitty. This is because, Sean asked Walter’s mum about his schedule and most probably snapped a photo of him while he was on his lunch break.

2. Photo was featured after what Walter said in the meeting. But I personally have a different view in that after what Walter said in the meeting, the board realised that what he said made sense and wanted to have an issue that recognised the people and hard work that these people have put in at LIFE. So they found a picture of Walter and featured him as a representative of the staff of LIFE.