"Aiden, you are finally here."
"I was hoping to meet you today. I loved your work in [Black Saints] and was hoping you would have time to hear out a script I'm working on. It's a musical, something I'm very sure you would be great in."
"I loved your songs. Are you free after the premiere? I think we might be able to have some talk in private."
"Hey, it's the first time we are meeting, but I just want to say that I'm a huge fan of yours. You are very talented."
Everywhere he went, people kept flocking to Aiden. The sight of him was enough to make them walk towards him to greet him.
Maybe that was the effect of being a hot topic.
Although there were a lot of other people who were the talk of the night, like Seth Douglas, Aiden was the only one who recently had a very successful album launch, and now his movie was going to release in a few days.
It was not wrong to say that he was established as a young star in Hollywood.
"Isn't it tough to remember the names of all the people in the premiere? How are you even going to carry that many business cards?"
Dustin asked him, looking at the business cards on the table. There were at least 15 of them.
They were currently sitting in an area that was right of the theatre.
"I don't know. I can't even throw them away. That would be disrespectful."
Aiden said and sighed. It was going to be a headache.
"Just carry them somehow." Dustin smiled. "Think of it as the price of getting famous. A lot of people in the premiere are seeing you for the first time, and making connections is always important. I got my first role due to talking with a director at a party accidentally."
"I know. Anyway, let's go to the theatre. I think it is about to start."
"Yeah, I'm excited to see myself on the big screen. Going by trailer, both of us are going to have a lot of scenes."
Dustin said with a smirk, and they walked off to the theatre. When Aiden looked around, he saw a lot of familiar reporters and critics around, along with some celebrities and other cast members.
Wade was in a corner talking with a bald guy who Aiden remembered as the director of a fantasy action movie about dragons.
Seth Douglas and Franco Li were also present at the premiere, and they were talking with some people he didn't recognise.
For a second, when their eyes met, Seth gave him a smile that looked very annoying.
'What's up with him?'
He thought, shaking his head. Seth's attitude towards him had just gotten worse and worse as the shooting had gone. It was to the point that Aiden had stopped caring about it.
"You two are here."
"Jesse."
Both Dustin and Aiden looked at Jesse, who was wearing a cream-coloured suit, as he approached them.
"Let's go sit there. The premiere is about to start."
"Okay."
Around them, other people were also taking their seats, and some critics looked interested to know how the movie was going to turn out.
The previous works of Jesse were pretty good, so everyone had high expectations.
As they sat down, Jesse turned towards Aiden as he whispered.
"I was busy with promotions, so I wasn't able to congratulate you on your album's success. I should have made you compose a song for the movie if I knew you were so good."
"Thanks and I would have rejected you even if you had asked. I was too busy at that time making the album."
Aiden said with a smile.
"It seems like you were pretty overworked."
"Yeah, but it worked out fine in the end. I wouldn't have gone for it if I thought that my body wouldn't be able to take it."
They talked like that for a while about Aiden's album, and then Jesse took a glance at Franco Li, who was sitting in a row behind them. Seth Douglas and a few other SGA executives were also sitting with them.
Jesse's face became a bit troubled as a thought entered his mind once again.
A premonition that he wanted to be false.
"What happened?"
"Nothing. It's just that SGA interfered a lot in post-production, so I'm a bit worried."
Hearing that, Aiden tilted his head.
"You didn't see the final product?"
A movie was vastly different when it came on screen. Normally, the footage would easily be around 120-150 minutes long and some movies just become too different if edited in a certain way.
So, the final product needed to be perfect.
"I didn't," Jesse confessed, frowning. "I made a director's cut. Studios usually cut down on it a bit and just use it as the final version, but SGA has interfered a lot from what I know. It might just be too different."
As he said that, the theatre screen in front of them turned on.
Looking at it, Aiden opened his mouth.
"I guess we are about to find out."
***
John Longbottom was a movie critic that was a big fan of Aiden. On the internet and particularly Sparrow, he went by the name @Criticye, and he had become a fan of Aiden after watching [Blank Saints].
The character of Kai was presented in a very simple way yet having complicated interiors. Aiden played him so well that John became a fan.
He subsequently liked [30 days of Happiness] and even his role in [Searching for the One]. That's why he was very excited about [Disconnected].
He felt like it was a chance for Aiden to get the tag of an actor with box office hits early in his career. He wasn't the male lead but going by the rumours and trailers; John was sure that his role would be of significant importance.
Being a critic, he wasn't allowed to be biased, but as a person, he wanted Aiden to do well in [Disconnected].
That's why, sitting in the theatre during the premiere, he was giddy when the movie started and the first scene involving Seth appeared on the big screen.
He had a good feeling about the movie, and he wasn't disappointed for the first 15 minutes. The initial parts were brilliant.
The main character, Mark Knight's personality and ambitions were established pretty early on and John felt like the set design, the slightly greyish colour palette of the movie and especially the dialogues looked amazing.
The movie obviously had taken a lot of inspiration from real-life tech billionaires during the tech boom of the 90s, but it managed to hold its ground with a great screenplay and good acting.
Unfortunately for John and the others in the theatre hall, the movie went downhill from that point.
It was like the director changed in the middle of the filming as the tone shifted a lot. Rather than following a straight narrative, the story started shifting from here and there.
It was like there were two parallels going on at the same time that was going to connect in the future.
But the connection never actually came.
Characters started appearing out of nowhere without any prior warning or introduction. One of the examples was the character played by Aiden, Andrew Kingston.
The first scene he appeared in was in Mark's dorm room, where both of them talked about technology and what was the purpose of it. John was happy with the look and character of Aiden in the movie when he first appeared.
But it looked weird, too, at the same time.
It was because, at the beginning of the movie, it was established that Mark didn't really have friends as he was too arrogant and would often misbehave without realising. A superiority complex was clearly hinted at.
But when Andrew appeared, he suddenly had a friend who he saw as an equal. There was no prior hint to the character or any introductory scene, which John found a tad bit odd.
Unfortunately for him, it was just the start.
The choppy editing continued after that too as there were a lot of evident cut scenes, characters that didn't actually get enough time that they deserved and the movie started to gloss over a lot of important things, only to reveal them later.
Hence, the focus was more on Mark and how he slowly became worse and worse as the company and his idea took off.
John didn't hate that and felt that there were good moments with that kind of character arc, but he strongly felt that it was coming on the expanse of the overall story.
'The trailer promised something completely different.'
He thought in his mind and looked around. Even the others didn't seem to be enjoying the movie a lot. One of the critics was even texting someone on the phone.
The trailer for [Disconnected] had focused more on building up a billion-dollar company and the price to pay for so much wealth and fame. That was very intriguing, but the movie focused a lot more on a single character and less on how the company and characters were going forward.
It created a very weird narrative.
John still felt that one of the worst parts was the ending in which Mark betrayed Andrew and literally kicked him out of the company. The scene of it wasn't anywhere and it was only shown by the conversations of other people.
He felt like a confrontation scene between Mark and Andrew would have made total sense.
In the end, it was only told that Andrew was suing Mark to get back his shares.
After the movie ended, John undoubtedly felt sad and he was constantly frowning.
In his mind, he was only thinking one thing.
'It's a bad movie. Too bad.'
