'Dark Knight' Fans Speak out on Twitter About Colorado Attack

The Batman Twitter stream Friday morning began with excitement that soon proved sadly ironic.

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One fan called The Dark Knight Rises a “great end to a great story,” while another who presumably had just seen the movie at a midnight screening said “I feel bad for everyone that didn’t go see Batman.”

A third remarked about the film's villain that “the appeal of Bane is that he’s physically terrorizing.”

That was before a man described as wearing a gas mask and body armor walked into a crowded theater in Aurora, Colo., set off tear gas and then began shooting at the audience.

The tweets changed, with praise for the movie interspersed with retweets of early news reports of the attack. Those were followed by expressions of shock and outrage, and of sympathy for the victims and their families. The latest figures are 12 dead and about another 38 injured.

The tweets came at a rate that appeared to be several hundreds per minute, with hashtags such as #theatershooting, #aurora, and #aurorashooting.

With Hollywood asleep, there was also an early reaction in the form of a statement of sympathy from Warner Bros. itself.

Meanwhile, another social medium, YouTube, provided the venue for an upload of cell phone video taken as moviegoers evacuated the theater.

Email: jhandel@att.net

Twitter: @jhandel