I saw this in theaters when the third one came out. Did the whole marathon-to-debut thing. My brother fell asleep during the first one. It is… deliberately paced. Fantastic to go in on blind, and certainly admirable in all of its decisions, but there is a reason it did even better on home video. (Though I’m not sure how many copies they sold, since DVD players will spontaneously generate a copy if left in a dark room.)

That theater did the same thing for Lord Of The Rings, but there was no way my dad was gonna sit through that.