Company-sponsored movie outings

Company-sponsored movie outings

Think back to May 2008. As spring turned to summer on this half of the world, a couple of relatively big movies were set for release. The first one was the fourth Indiana Jones movie, or as I think of it, "Nuclear Refrigerator".

My company at the time bought a whole bunch of tickets to see Indy 4. I think they actually bought an entire nearby theater for a day to make this happen. I forget the specifics since I wasn't involved and was trying to ignore it as much as possible. I had no desire to see that particular movie.

One week later, Sex and the City opened. This was a HBO show which had run for several years and had now graduated to a movie. For anyone who followed those stories and characters, it was a long-awaited chance to "catch up" with the latest. I definitely cared about this movie, and made plans to see it as soon as possible.

I wound up making plans with friends from outside of work, and about eight of us went as a group to see it on opening night. It was playing in several absolutely massive theaters and they were doing the sort of crowd control stuff which only happens for blockbuster movies. They needed it, too: the entire place was packed.

Reviews at the time said that people were so excited that they cheered when just the HBO logo came up. This was also the case in my theater. Several years had elapsed since the show wrapped, so finally getting an update was great. Again, for those who cared, it was a big deal.

Notice that I went with friends. I didn't go as part of a company-sponsored outing since they didn't do anything for that movie. They were all about movies like Indiana Jones and Transformers, and not so much for movies like Sex and the City.

Clearly, one of these things is not like the others.

It must be the PG-13 rating of the first two vs. the R of the third. Yep. That makes sense.

Any other possibility would just be too awful to contemplate.

I'd guess that some companies probably put together outings to SATC. These would be significantly different companies somehow. Maybe they can handle the R rating better? That must be it... since... well, any other possibility would just be horrible.