The audience makes the movie
movies I was once asked what films I would have loved to have seen in a theater on a big screen. I thought about the question and answered it in two ways. The first answer is more conventional, in that there are some movies I wish I could have seen on a big screen with rich sound. The second part to my answer was a series of films I would have liked to have seen with a large audience to experience their reaction.
The Crying Game immediately came to mind. Here's a movie that starts and sets itself as a political-esque thriller where a young man, Forest Whitaker, gets kidnapped at a carnival by the Irish Republican Army. The audience assumes that this will be the movie, but as the first hour of the film concludes, the hero is switched and the film becomes somewhat of a love story. The "big" reveal in the film is something I would have loved to experience with random strangers.
Every Quentin Tarantino film I've seen in a theater has had walkouts. The most occurred in the first thirty minutes of Kill Bill, particularly after the hospital scenes. Akin to the violence in that, I would have loved to have seen A Clockwork Orange just to count the number of walkouts after the musical number.
The Last Emporer was a culture shock to me when I first saw it, as I had virtually no knowledge of Eastern society. I still think the scenes with the wet nurse are odd and would loved to have seen if others felt the same about them.
This year in various film festivals, the film Antichrist met with great revolt. After seeing the film myself, I can pinpoint various scenes that would have bothered viewers enough to walk out. Still, what's still shocking is that it is the violence and sexual content that usually drives people to leave a theater, and not the intellectual assault of a movie like this. I'm not referring to a difference of opinions, such as someone might have for walking out of Fahrenheit 9/11 or Dirty Harry, but to be bombarded with thought that it becomes overwhelming is a rarity. Antichrist is a strange and compelling film.