Several films have the word "Guardian" in the title, so it understandable for a theater to make a mistake by airing a film that is not the new blockbuster "Guardians of the Galaxy." However, this issue became a problem when a single theater made the mistake three times.

Hey, man, we're not joking around here, this did happen at a Regal Cinemas theater in Virginia. Apparently, the theater aired "Rise of the Guardians," a DreamWorks animated movie that was released back in 2012. However, unlike the success "Guardians of the Galaxy" is experiencing right now, "Rise of the Guardians" was not so lucky.

What makes this story interesting is not truly the amount of time the theater played back the wrong movie, but that it happened to the same audience back-to-back-to-back. We find it quite strange that a theater could make such a mistake three times. Was the whole thing being managed by an inexperienced employee, or was someone playing an elaborate prank?

According to tweets, Regal first began things with five minutes worth of "Rise of the Guardians," then figured out the mistake. After that, the theater played the same movie, and if folks believed that the third time would have been the charm, well, they were dead wrong. Any crowd left at that point stormed the gates and got refunds, a poster and tickets to a showing Friday.

From our assumption, this was not just a simple mistake, it was a big one. It appears someone just searched the company's movie database for "Guardians" and instead of checking to see if the file found was the correct one, they chose to place it in the playlist for the day.

The mistakes made after the first one should be seen as employees pressing the panic button and hoping for a happy ending. Unfortunately, it did not materialize, and it just went on to make moviegoers angry.

But, hey, at least folks who had never seen the awful "Rise of the Guardians" got the chance to see the movie, and to realize that it is truly awful, even if they only saw the first five minutes of the film.

No one will get fired for this, we're sure, but someone will likely get scolded and probably placed on probation without pay.