PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Many moviegoers in Maine were eager to be among the first to see the final installment of director Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy, but were also shocked and saddened by the mass shooting in a Colorado movie theater.
"I'm appalled. I'm in shock actually," exclaimed Demetrios Augustine as he prepared to catch the noon screening at the Nickelodeon Cinemas in downtown Portland.
"You come to the movies to escape and kind of forget reality for an hour and a half, two hours and relax and enjoy. How do you enjoy something like that when some bobblehead is going to come in there, you know lost his job and he is not all that upstairs, you know he's lost his marbles and just starts killing people randomly?"
"Anything can happen at anytime, no matter where you are," stated Hutch Brown as he sat in the park in front of the theater talking with friends. "I definitely don't think that watching violence on TV makes you a violent person, but certainly it probably could if you are going to be prone to violence anyway."
"Maybe he did choose the Batman movie just because he thought a lot of people were going to be there," he added. "There is no security at movie theaters, you know. You can't do that at a baseball game anymore. Everything else is on lockdown."
As the line of people made their way into the movie theater, many people agreed that security will more than likely tighten at theaters as a result of this incident, but they hope it is not at the expense of the fun and enjoyment people get watching films on the silver screen.
NEWS CENTER