So far we've been reading about some (relatively) light-hearted reactions to problems in theaters, but a midnight screening in Kentucky didn't go so well. Darth Nate writes:

I had a small bit of news from the midnight screening of Episode III at the AMC Newport On The Levee 20, which is directly across from Cincinnati, Ohio.

My wife and I left with mixed feelings about the screening. The movie was showing on all of the theater's twenty screens. They did a good job of making it an event, offering popcorn, hot dogs, and sodas at $1.00 each, and letting people duel with lightsabers and so on, as another person has said.

However, as soon as the lights went down and the AMC advertisement was displayed the film rolled so that the bottom half of the film was at the top of the screen and the top half was at the bottom of the screen. The crowd was very unhappy, one person covering up the projector window so that we would not see the movie incorrectly. The error lasted through the opening crawl and a couple of minutes into the space battle at the beginning of the movie. The crowd seemed on the verge of riot, and two policemen came in to accompany the manager who nearly pulled a guy out who was screaming obscenities. As the manager left, I stopped him and asked if they were able to restart the movie and he told me that was not possible due to the way the projectors work. He apologized profusely, and said that they would have free passes to give out after the movie was over. Following the movie, people were positioned at the exits distributing the passes.

Finally, they got the problem corrected about halfway through the opening space fight and people settled down. Unfortunately it ruined the beginning of the movie and gave it a bit of a negative feeling.

All in all, I think they handled it relatively well. They made it a very festive event and offered passes to everyone when it was all over.

The same thing happened to the theater beside us as well, where the same free passes were offered.