i miss blockbuster.
i miss walking into the store at 10pm and being able to walk around and read the backs of the covers of movies i’d never heard of, rifling through the candy at the cash register, and marveling at the pop-in-the-bucket popcorn.
mostly i just miss having the flexibility to make a spontaneous movie rental. :/
nowadays, you have to go through streaming netflix, or mailorder movie rentals, or find a redbox (limited selection, and too randomly scattered), or hope you find a deal at bestbuy. you miss out on the whole movie rental experience! blockbuster was like the library of videos, and as a lover of libraries, i am sad to see this institution go.
and now for a fun blockbuster anecdote:
several years ago, chris and i had rented each of the Lord of the Rings movies in successive order, watching the trilogy over a series of nights during the summer. it had been awhile since either of us had seen the series, so we were really re-experiencing the storyline, getting into the depth of the characters and plot.
each LOTR movie is somewhere around 3 hours long, so watching the trilogy is no small undertaking, and after two nights of build up (read: six hours of movie watching), we were ready for the final installment: The Return of the King. if you aren’t familiar with the plot, there is an evil ring that must be destroyed and the entire focus is a hobbit’s journey of getting rid of the ring at the fires Mordor, home of the evil antagonist.
it takes ages to get to Mordor. lots of trials, bloody battles, strange lands, odd beings, and one challenge after another. it takes about 8.5 hours to be exact. so after investing that much time into these movies (albeit for the second time), it was precisely the scene (SPOILER ALERT) where Frodo goes to hold out the ring, about to let it fall to its destruction in the fiery river at Mordor that something TERRIBLE happened.
the DVD stalled. and got stuck. and there was no dropping of the ring.
8.5 hours and we can’t see the end??!!!
we made an emergency trip back to blockbuster.
“sir you don’t understand… we have watched the whole trilogy and at the grand climax, at the very end Frodo’s journey it..you know the part with the ring? ..the DVD… it…” words of exasperation weren’t enough.
lucky for us, the blockbuster employees smiled and gave us another copy.
we understood the gesture.
but the magical movie moment was lost.
sure, both of us knew what was to come. but oh the frustration.
fortunately, both of us can look back on this memory and laugh, though now it’s followed by a bittersweet sigh. farewell, blockbuster.
