Missed The Beginning Of The Movie

I hate missing the beginning of movies. I am usually late to everything else, but movies are different because I want to go see it, which means seeing all of it, which means getting there early enough to watch the film from the beginning. It's weird, but I'm usually good when it comes to getting to movies on time.

But I didn't today getting to Iron Man 2. I thought I had time. I built in some time to get to gas for my car, which I really, really wanted to do before I drove to the movie theater. Big mistake -- funny that if I were more irresponsible I would've gotten to the movie on time. But because of that, and traffic, and parking on the other side of the mall because I wanted to park under a ramp so my car wouldn't get pelted by rain all afternoon, and going to the bathroom, and getting popcorn and pop, and asking if I could use both coupons to get both items for free, I go up to the stairs and see Mickey Rourke's huge face. Initially I thought it was the middle of the movie and I was at the wrong screen. But I was late.

I looked at my watch when I finally sat down -- 2:02. Movie listing was 1:50. Twelve minutes is really late, but come on, previews usually take up, what, 10 minutes of a main feature's listing time? I should't've been late, but I swear that this movie went off a lot earlier than what conventionally would happen.

As for the movie ... uh, incomplete. OK, OK, it was good, although a bit of a trifle. Not a lot of action scenes, the throwaway dialogue of the first movie was absent in this one, and, most importantly, there was no engaging, deep backstory that, to my surprise, I remember in many summer movies in recent years, such as The Dark Knight, Spider-Man, and even Iron Man 1. But my overriding feeling, this ache I felt throughout the movie? I missed the beginning. I probably got the gist of the movie, but I'm not sure because I missed the beginning of the first scene. Bugs the hell out of me, and it still does.