My first weekend in South Korea a new found friend asked me if I had any plans for the upcoming break. I didn’t even know we had a break coming up. She invited me to hang out with her in Seoul for the full five days. She’d take the bus up from Southern South Korea (It takes her about 4 hours) and I’d just do my average 2 hour journey. We’d meet up at hostel and start our adventure from there. I was looking forward to not having a curfew in order to get home. One of the things I really really wanted to do was see Age of Ultron which had already been playing for over a week. (It arrived early in Korea, like apparently most movies.) She only wanted to go if we could find it in 4D, because “We can always watch it where we are, at a normal movie theater.” Only she didn’t know I live so far out in nowhere that there isn’t a theater nearby. But I was able to find a movie theater within walking distance of our hostel that was showing Age of Ultron in 4D, for the very very last time the first night we’d be staying in Seoul. So I checked into the hostel, chilled and waited for my friend to arrive.
It took a couple of misadventure to find the theater. The 4D floor was the very top floor, the 13th. First though we had to get our tickets. My friend ordered them online and went up to a touch screen to have them printed out when we got in. We didn’t get any food because she said it was too expensive and we wanted to get to our movie on time.
4D movies are expensive but I guess for the upkeep of technology it isn’t that bad, they’re about 23,000 won. It was a 3D movie with huge red seats that move. We sat towards the front but we weren’t craning our necks and were comfortable. It was like being on a roller coaster. They puff air at you, water, punch the back of the seat (like a bizarre massage) during fight scenes, and there are smells. I think my scent machine was malfunctioning because everything smelled nice like mint, but my friend kept getting harsh metallic smells and the scents of a forest. It was fun, I think it’s probably best to experience 4D with an action movie, maybe an adventure or even kids movie. But a drama, comedy or romantic movie would probably be boring other than smells.
There are some restrictions for a 4D movie and probably some downfalls, they really stress to be careful when getting up during the movie because there’s a good chance the seats will suddenly move with the scene and you’ll trip all over yourself and the other people. You have to be of at least a certain height and not pregnant or with a baby, or particularly elderly. Essentially not too old or too young and in good health. You can turn off the water if it’s getting to be too much.
It reminded me of the special effects at certain movies at Disney world where they’d have bubble machines go when there were bubbles on the screen to add to the atmosphere and the experience. Seeing Avengers: Age of Ultron in 4D was probably one of my favorite things we did over break.
As a heads up though to anyone who hasn’t seen Avengers: Age of Ultron there is no scene after the credits, only one quick scene after the start of the credits, but once the black and white credits start rolling don’t expect anything special, unless you like reading the names and listening to the music. It was kinda fun though to see parts of it set in Seoul.