This happened to me and my girlfriend years ago with the movie Unbreakable. Right at the point where Mr. Glass was explaining to Bruce Willis who he was (the climax of the film), the lights went out. The sound messed up multiple times... We complained, get a refund, and a ticket to see the movie again.

With as much as a movie costs these days, you'd think they'd be more accommodating when they didn't live up to their end of the deal.

Honestly, it sounds like it's enough. An apology would have been nice, but since you've left the theater already, I'd say it's "water under the bridge" and move on.

I would write them if you felt an apology was due.

As to the tickets being enough, in the end you paid to watch the movie and will get to watch the movie, so all you lost was some time.

On a side note I contacted a movie company 2 weeks ago because I found the restroom bloodied. Drops of blood on the floor, blood sprayed on the counter, sink, and multiple facets. No employee or manger could be found to inform them of the problem (last showing of the night was 12am) so I took pictures and contacted the east coast manager about it. I received 4 free passes as well as a nice long letter about what steps were taken to prevent this as well as assurance that they would be better staffed in the future so I would always have somebody I could reach.

I went to see avengers myself yesterday and noticed a new staff member sitting late at night. I assume this was the new employee they hired so there is always somebody in the lobby now.

Always good to see changes in effect.

I went to one of the early Harry Potter movies with my little brother, and for the first 10-ish minutes of the movie there was no sound to go with the picture. They fixed the problem with no repeat occurrences, but still the manager apologized for the inconvenience and has ushers hand everyone free passes on the way out. This was an area where the next closest movie theater was much smaller in its offerings (in a mall), so it wasn't as though they were going to lose a lot of business to the competition.

Free passes are an appropriate consolation prize, however the lack of apology doesn't say a lot for your theater's customer service. Where I live now (more theater choices) this would make me more apt to visit a different theater.

Happened to me as well. During Spider-Man's opening weekend, a guy had a heart attack in the theater, so they turned on the lights and stopped the film. For some reason, they decided to end the movie and kick everyone out. I don't recall if there was an apology, but we each received 2 vouchers; one to finish Spider-Man and a second to see another movie of our choice later. Although now that I think about it, having people finish out the movie after someone almost died would be rather gauche.

It really isn't anyone's fault, but a personal apology builds a lot of good will. Managers should not be afraid to apologize even when something isn't their fault.

No offense, but the logistics of having a huge group of people shuffle into another theater during the opening weekend of a film just to see the last 20 minutes is a tad unreasonable.

Since I used to work at a movie theater, I can tell you that sometimes these things happen... But in regards to letting you watch the movie somewhere else, it's not as easy as popping a DVD out, taking it to another machine, putting it back in and skipping to the part where you left off.

The film gets wound onto huge platters and is 'threaded' through the machine. There isn't a way to restart the movie in the middle with out 'creatively' splicing the film, threading it through the machine, and taping it back together. Attempting something like that is more likely to drop the film all over the floor. And believe me, trying to pick up an entire movie's worth of film is not fun...

I would just accept the free passes, and try and catch it again some other time, but there's not much else that can be done.

@okham: Do you feel better now? I mean after the apology?

Hopefully in the future they will learn from this mistake and take the time to properly address the issue and give an apology.