Cinema foyer lighting, when coupled with lifesize cutouts and tacky, super-sized posters makes for quite an unusual scene. I took this photograph while queuing for The Return of the King, which — although quite a wait — didn’t last for nearly as long as the feature presentation. According to MovieWeb, the film has grossed nearly USD $295 million in the two weeks since its opening. Remarkable. Perhaps even more amazing is the ability of the film to capture the attention of a mainstream audience for nearly 3.5 hours without nudity. This is testament to the depth and timelessness of Tolkien’s universe and Peter Jackson’s courageous (if butchered) adaption.

Without a doubt, however, the highlight of the evening was the complete and utter incompetance of the Byron Bay cinema staff. The sound was disabled for the opening scene (and they didn’t bother restarting the reel), the trailers were rotating dizzyingly from side to side (only in Byron Bay would you get a complementary ‘wild ride’ with every cinema ticket…ahem), and in the climactic scene at Mt Doom, there was what ushers described as a ‘complete grid blackout’ and emergency generator failure. (We blame the energy-unaware tourists and lack of civil infrastructure, of course.) The backup generator came online eventually, but the lack of redundancy is completely unacceptable from a theatre showing films of this profile. I would have requested a refund, had the queue for doing so not been almost as long as the queue for tickets…