One thing that I find striking is that chain theaters have gradually made the concessions experience less and less appealing, even though concessions are where they make most of their money. What's the deal, as Jerry would say?
Purely speculation, but I wonder whether concessions only turn a profit at a certain scale.
The cost of keeping a variety of food offerings, and the equipment to prepare them, and the people to run all that, may simply be too high for the current levels of attendance.
I am sure part of the reason we have popcorn at the movies is that popcorn was easy to scale.
I guess tastes just change. Dinner and a movie did not use to mean dinner AT the movie.
If you want a full restaurant at the movies why not also have an oil change as part of the deal? Watch the movie, all you can eat soup, salad, breadsticks with your meal and at the same time someone changes the oil in your car.
Do they have good food again? They simplified their menu, dropping more sophisticated dishes and locally-sourced beers when their CEO went on a drive to expand. Unfortunately the quality dropped way off and it really robbed the theaters of their local charm. Instead of eating there me and all my friends switched to eating elsewhere prior to the movie.
Alamo is literally the only place I'll watch a movie due to their "No, really: no using your cellphone" policy, so I'm happy to give them my business, but I draw the line at mediocre food. It's too bad and kind of ironic because they messed up their menu in a drive to greater profitablity and lost a lot of their most profitable business as a result: the margins on food and alcohol are far better than ticket sales.
Yeah I used to get popcorn when it was simply high priced. But now that the pricing feels predatory I bring my own snack or have none at all. 2 hours is not a long time to go without eating.
"A new poll by HarrisX, exclusive to IndieWire, found that 34 percent of U.S. adults prefer to watch movies in theaters, which means a solid two-thirds would rather wait for them to be released on streaming."
What a silly deduction. 2/3 might watch them in blu ray, or from a torrent, or from cable when and if it is aired, ppv by cable, and finally, streaming online.
Also, they don't show any serious information about the survey. It could be bogus, flawed or serious.
Binary crisis in action! Everything is now binary, and the only alternative to the old hegemonic distribution network is the new (fractured, risibly expensive, and moreover technically poor) hegemonic distribution network!
It’s kinda surprising that I’ve never heard of movie theaters doing smaller watch-a-movie-with-friends-sized theaters. No showtimes, just reserve your living room, pick among the new releases, and play. Order food and drinks and they get delivered to the room. Yes, I realized I just reinvented streaming. The difference is that it gives the theaters that exist some path forward while offering the market something closer to what they want.
I used to do this adhoc with friends, because all the projectuonests knew each other and would source films we would all pitch in on and show them after hours. After a few years they started an official monthly classic film selection and it was popular until projectionist as a job fizzled out. The whole culture is nearly lost, but no reason we cant revive it,
So, a lounge room? It sounds like a slightly more intimate variation of what We Work was doing. And we know how that ended. Even without the pandemic and with appealing to small businesses it just seems like that kind of upkeep for land was unviabble.
The big "issue" is the US itself. These kinds of things do exist in Asia and some parts of the EU and works great, because housing is tiny and basically only for eating and sleeping. The US meanwhile has more land for bigger houses and backwards thar are the subject of house gatherings.
This may be on the fall right now, so the idea ironically becomes more viable later for newer generations. but as it is there's not much incentive to rent out a large club room when you have a house to go to instead.
It's relatively affordable, or was during the late pandemic, to simply book a theater. They charge about the same as twentyfive tickets and it's for you and up to twenty friends. Was great to add an intermission to the middle of James Bond to go hit the restroom and get drinks.
I hate to be “that guy” but in retrospect, that doesn’t really seem to have been a great idea during a worldwide, deadly, airborne pandemic… at least until the vaccines were widely deployed. I guess that’s what you mean by late pandemic.
A couple of our local theaters were doing this during the Pandemic. You could rent out the theater for something like $300 and they had a list of movies you could choose from. There wasn’t anything that accommodated the entirely family so we didn’t ever bother with it. I was hoping it’d hold out a bit more, but they’ve gone back to business as usual.
That doesn't sound like streaming to me, it sounds much better. Getting out of the house, watching on a big screen, new releases made for the big screen as opposed to second screen content made to be forgotten once it falls off the home page.
I think this really depends on the movie. Once every few years something good comes out and I want to see it in the best version possible. Most 'film' today is just holywood content mill output flogging whatever ip is currently selling. I will catch those on streaming if I bother.
I'm not really doing this to save bucks, I just prefer watching things in full blown minimally compressed 4K at home, so DVD is not going to do the job.
The three times I’ve been to the theater since 2020 have been utter nightmares. People have forgotten how to be considerate in public. I won’t go into details but let’s just say that two of three times were really unpleasant, and the third was kind of gross, and all three were expensive and not particularly memorable.
I’ll take a cold drink and a clean comfortable chair at home with friends, and the ability to pause something for the bathroom any day.
People have become utter savages since 2020. Inconsiderate, rude, selfish, belligerent… and when you call them on their bullshit, suddenly -you’re- the bad guy. You’re “Karen” for daring to try to ask some idiot to shut the fuck up. The less I have to do out in public, the better. No wonder In Real Life fun events are slowly going away.
I took my nephew to King Kong in 2005. There were a group of 5-6 teenagers sitting at the middle top of the theater who talked and laughed throughout the movie. In the final scenes where he had her at the top of the building, they started fake crying and I just lost my shit: I ran up to the top of the theater, falling twice on the stairs, got in the row in front of them and told them quietly but forcefully to just shut the hell up. I guess they could tell I was out of control and one of the girls starting yelling and goading me to hit her! Somebody in the audience told her to "shut the fuck up". I turned around in the seat and had to calm down before I strangled her.
After the movie people were complaining and I told them to ask for a refund, because I did and got one. They thanked me for finally saying something to those idiots. I don't think I went to the movie for 10 years after that horrible experience.
I'm glad the study lists the reasons people cited. I'd love to hone in on this:
"Distractions from other members of the audience: 19%"
One major reason for me is the lack of courtesy from fellow moviegoers, especially with phones. A bright smartphone screen in front of you is jarring, especially in a dark theatre, and especially with 3D movies. I've even seen people take phone calls in the theatre.
Stadium seating solves this problem as the gradient usually hides phones in front of you. I have started to either sit in the front row balcony, or stadium seating, or just refuse to go to theatres.
I work for a very large company whose name starts with a G, and they recently put on an event for employees to watch a movie. The person next to me was on their phone the whole time (they appeared about halfway through the movie) and even took a call during the movie while remaining in their seat. If it wasn't a corporate event I would have left. As such, I couldn't even say anything since it wasn't like I had paid for the movie and I didn't want bad blood.
I was utterly baffled a working professional at this particular company could behave like this around their co-workers, thankfully no member of the general public has ever done something like that around me.
For me, any one of the issues would be a problem in isolation but the combination of issues makes it so going to the movies isn't something I really consider.
Oppenheimer was the first movie I considered going to in a long time but still did not. I am going to finally watch it Sunday. Even if I love it, I know I won't think about how much better it could have been at the movies. I will actually just be grateful it wasn't ruined for me by some negative aspect of going to the movies.
I’ve no qualms about asking (or telling, if asking doesn’t work) people to be quiet if they’re talking on their phone or asking them to turn it off if the glare is distracting. What surprises me is how nobody else calls out the bad behaviour – even though they’ve all paid a substantial price to enjoy the cinema experience.
I used to love going to the movie theaters. A lot of things ruined them over the years. The cost: A family of five plus snacks is topping out around $60-70 nowadays. Totally ridiculous for a movie. Fellow moviegoers: people aren’t there for the movie anymore. They’re talking, they’re on their phone, they’re talking on their phones, doing selfies with flashes. I remember going to see Contact opening night and during the silent part at the very beginning you could hear a pin drop in the theater. Would never happen now. Nobody even gets kicked out for shitty behavior now. The physical facilities: everything just seems dirtier and grimier and just falling apart now. The whole thing has just turned into a terrible, expensive, uncivilized experience.
Meanwhile, home theater technology has never been better. 7.1 surround, amazing displays, you can pause, eat food that you like, and being at home is so much better in every way than being out with the savage public.
Dune 2 was totally worth it to watch in IMAX. Similarly I remember Interstellar being an amazing experience in IMAX. I wish more similar movies were made. That would make me go to the movies more frequently.
Incidentally, why was Oppenheimer promoted as an IMAX movie? It was a letdown and a waste for me to have watched it on IMAX, as it was essentially a visually unexciting primarily conversational drama. Barbie would have been a better IMAX movie.
> a visually unexciting primarily conversational drama
Which may be why he framed it like a serial drama?
The 70mm imax that Oppenheimer was filmed on is 4:3.
An old standard aspect ratio for television serials.
If you watch Oppenheimer any other way, to remove what are usually large black bars on the sides for contemporary tvs, you are watching a cropped version of the film maker’s vision.
But also, there are plenty stunning vistas in that film.
I imagine you're on a very Metropolitan area? I've definitely heard of this but even right before the pandemic Ive had mostly quiet experiences at theaters in my suburb.
It's a shame for me. It's an easy way for me to get out of the house and out of my own head for a bit and despite having a nice TV, nothing quite compares to the silver screen and it's bolstering speakers.
I don’t know about “metropolitan” but definitely… urban? I hate to be ageist but I think it’s mostly teenagers ruining things. They are basically untouchable and uncontrollable and they fully know it and take advantage. The best recent moviegoing experience I had was at 1:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday because all the hooligan kids were in school and the theater was about a dozen grown adults.
> A family of five plus snacks is topping out around $60-70 nowadays
I am in NYC. I went on a double date to the movie theatres for Dune 2. It was like $90 for the tickets, $35 for the pop corn and drinks, and $28 for the alcohol.
I've been trying to talk with desktop people, browser people and videoplayer people trying to convince then that volume normalization is a good thing,(people are sleeping in the next room)
What kind of movies are you going to to? I witnessed zero bad behaviour at Dune part 2, Godzilla Minus One, or Poor Things in theatres. It's not even that high brow stuff. Just not the typical marvel shovel ware.
I took my daughter to a local theatre to meet some friends. I was nervous and definitely maintaining awareness. That didn't happen again.
I recently went to see the Deep Sky documentary with my family at the Omnimax Theatre. Much better experience. There were people crying, the JWST images were so overwhelming.
This is the thing that kills me about theaters. They've just not kept up with display quality at all. Your normal theater projector is 1080p, digital IMAX is 2k, and laser IMAX is 4k. Eventually they'll get 8k IMAX as well but so few theaters even have laser IMAX as it is. And on top of that you are generally going to have better colors, brighter whites, and blacker blacks on a high quality panel than is achievable with all but the top of the line IMAX digital projectors.
So the way I see it, there is absolutely no technical advantage to going out to a movie theater over watching at home unless it's something uniquely special and you happen to be lucky enough to be near a theater that offers that unique advantage (ex: Oppenheimer in 70mm analog IMAX).
And like you said, the social experience of attending a theater (at least in the US) is just not great. I could see the appeal if you were watching a comedy or something like a marvel film where crowd reaction could potentially add to the film but even then it's probably not worth the exuberant cost relative to watching at home.
Maybe part of it is getting old and cranky, but it feels like the social contract is completely broken, and it's everyone for themselves. Or perhaps given the title, 1/3 of people broke it for everyone else.
nope you’re not getting old and cranky, i’m 21 and feel the exact same way. the number one reason i avoid theatres nowadays is the extremely poor behavior in theatres. it feels like i am in a classroom sometimes. if i’m paying $20-30 with concessions just for myself i want a silent, phoneless, smartwatchless, experience and that is becoming increasingly impossible outside of my home.
I still love going to the movies, but I stay with my 40-seat local. Grab some popcorn, a cold can of beer or glass of wine and settle in. Always showing great, old classics too. Best cinema experience I’ve ever had.
Luckily I have a small theater in a small town. It only shows a few movies at a time, but people there act like humans. I will never go to a regular theater again. Whatever part of the human experience causes a person to be quiet in a theater, it has diminished to the point where the chances of there being a person without it in a group of two dozen people is essentially 100%.
I wonder if the age of outrage culture has caused people to overreact to some bad anecdotes or experiences and extrapolate them to broad social trends, as they match it up to other people upset about the same thing on social media. Especially where it lines up with narratives you're already sympathetic to, or ones that online parties are trying to inflame for engagement. I don't see anything in real life causing me to think people act any more inhuman in recent years. Online is where I see it, but not in real life.
The theater experience isn't worth it anymore. It's way too expensive, doesn't feel 'nice' or even clean, and the food options are like a carnival. There's nothing special and movies are usually available a few weeks after theatrical release so why bother? Unless it's something like Dune 2 that is actually worth seeing on a big screen. More theaters need to copy the Alamo Drafthouse model and actually make nice theaters with good food and alcohol. Otherwise, why bother leaving my house where I have my favorite snacks and a comfy couch?
I guess I find the modern movie theaters so much better than they used to be. Things went from hard, thinly upholstered stadium seats to these giant leather powered recliners and assigned seating. Heck the assigned seating alone is worth the price of admission these days so I don't have to stress about a bunch of jerks beelining for the premium spots.
The price of snacks and drinks is what stings the most, but even there I do find the popcorn the best there is. Overall it's not an experience I can replicate at home.
Did you ever go to one of the older theaters like a Fox theater? New theaters have the ugliest architecture and nothing is fancy, if anything it feels like being in a fast food restaurant. In contrast, I remember going to a local Fox theater when I was a vid that had velvet carpets, chandeliers, and just felt like a big 'experience'. Sure, the chairs are bigger now and you can reserve your seats, but everything about the experience feels cheap and gross.
Some of the older theaters I've been to were retrofitted live theaters built during Austro-Hungary, and yes, they don't build them like that any more. A number of similar theaters still exist doing live theater, of course. The last I went to was the Wang Theater in Boston, and I swear I spent more time admiring the architecture and the design than paying attention to the show :-) Such a gorgeous building.
I see several comments noting phones in the theater. This also bothers me, but it also feels like this is a generational thing. Younger people who have always had their phones, for whom a two-screen experience is normal, and are socially active while passive watching. It feels like we’ve crested the peak here, and we’re rapidly becoming the “old man yells at cloud” rather than the voice of reason and consideration.
contrary to most of the comments here, I actively enjoy going to the movies. Have always, and still do. To some of the points raised, I live in a decidedly rural area. So consequently, grabbing a movie at 10pm fairly frequently leads to me having the imax all to myself.
Another contributing factory might be that I tend to go during week nights, and after the opening weekend.
It's true that the home experience has improved tremendously over the years (I've had a projector+retractable ceiling screen for over a decade), it doesn't come close to an imax sized screen.
We like "going out" to a movie ~5-6 times a year, just for something different. The cost is getting pretty hard to stomach, but...
Right now we really wish we had the option to watch Dune 2 at home. My FIL is staying with us this week and we're all excited about seeing Dune 2, but my wife is in the middle of chemo and had to miss last week's treatment because her white blood cell count was really low. We don't really want to go to the theater and possibly expose her to illness.
Can't believe no one has yet mentioned the full volume commercials they play beforehand. I'm not talking about trailers, which are benign or even enjoyable sometimes. But you used to be able to arrive a little early and chat with your friends before the trailers start. Now they blast ads at you. Who would even buy those ads? People know not to show up on time to avoid them, so it's a mostly empty theatre anyway.
It's because the advertising industry in general has gotten utterly abusive of what they believe to be their god-given right to your eyeballs, ears, and attention at all times and in all places that it's possible to advertise at you. If they could beam advertisements directly into your brain like the joke in Futurama, you'd never get a moment's peace.
Though I’m not american but I go to cinema as often as I can. Pretty much a hobby? Saw 3 movies this week so far and I’m going today and tomorrow again.
Haven’t had many issues going to the theater in the past, even with phones or people talking. I might see phones at the beginning, but people seem to put them away pretty soon after the main feature starts. If anyone’s talking close enough for me to hear, I just politely ask them to stop (rare, but never had an issue with someone reacting badly). Maybe it’s the time or movies I go to, but I rarely see kids or teens in the theater, and if they’re there, their behavior is fine. Ticket price isn’t a big concern either, as I want to support the types of movies I want to be made.
The biggest change with Covid/streaming is the removal of time pressure to go to the theater. For years leading up to 2020, it seemed like the number of weeks a film was in the theater kept getting shorter, and you had to really decide to go see something in the week or three after it opened, otherwise you’d miss it, and I’m sure I missed many I would have seen. With streaming, I don’t think they’re missing out on too many ticket sales from me, but I’m definitely seeing more movies I would have missed otherwise.
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[ 5.6 ms ] story [ 65.7 ms ] threadThe cost of keeping a variety of food offerings, and the equipment to prepare them, and the people to run all that, may simply be too high for the current levels of attendance.
I guess tastes just change. Dinner and a movie did not use to mean dinner AT the movie.
If you want a full restaurant at the movies why not also have an oil change as part of the deal? Watch the movie, all you can eat soup, salad, breadsticks with your meal and at the same time someone changes the oil in your car.
I think the fact that so many people want a good theater experience and the fact that they’re largely crap is a (current) market opportunity.
AMC has been rolling out upgraded experiences across their chain (food to seat service, reclining seats, etc), but I don’t know to what extent.
Alamo is literally the only place I'll watch a movie due to their "No, really: no using your cellphone" policy, so I'm happy to give them my business, but I draw the line at mediocre food. It's too bad and kind of ironic because they messed up their menu in a drive to greater profitablity and lost a lot of their most profitable business as a result: the margins on food and alcohol are far better than ticket sales.
What a silly deduction. 2/3 might watch them in blu ray, or from a torrent, or from cable when and if it is aired, ppv by cable, and finally, streaming online.
Also, they don't show any serious information about the survey. It could be bogus, flawed or serious.
Pirate, comrade! Comrade pirate!
Classic HN
The big "issue" is the US itself. These kinds of things do exist in Asia and some parts of the EU and works great, because housing is tiny and basically only for eating and sleeping. The US meanwhile has more land for bigger houses and backwards thar are the subject of house gatherings.
This may be on the fall right now, so the idea ironically becomes more viable later for newer generations. but as it is there's not much incentive to rent out a large club room when you have a house to go to instead.
I hate to be “that guy” but in retrospect, that doesn’t really seem to have been a great idea during a worldwide, deadly, airborne pandemic… at least until the vaccines were widely deployed. I guess that’s what you mean by late pandemic.
The three times I’ve been to the theater since 2020 have been utter nightmares. People have forgotten how to be considerate in public. I won’t go into details but let’s just say that two of three times were really unpleasant, and the third was kind of gross, and all three were expensive and not particularly memorable.
I’ll take a cold drink and a clean comfortable chair at home with friends, and the ability to pause something for the bathroom any day.
So, no thanks.
After the movie people were complaining and I told them to ask for a refund, because I did and got one. They thanked me for finally saying something to those idiots. I don't think I went to the movie for 10 years after that horrible experience.
One major reason for me is the lack of courtesy from fellow moviegoers, especially with phones. A bright smartphone screen in front of you is jarring, especially in a dark theatre, and especially with 3D movies. I've even seen people take phone calls in the theatre.
Stadium seating solves this problem as the gradient usually hides phones in front of you. I have started to either sit in the front row balcony, or stadium seating, or just refuse to go to theatres.
I was utterly baffled a working professional at this particular company could behave like this around their co-workers, thankfully no member of the general public has ever done something like that around me.
Oppenheimer was the first movie I considered going to in a long time but still did not. I am going to finally watch it Sunday. Even if I love it, I know I won't think about how much better it could have been at the movies. I will actually just be grateful it wasn't ruined for me by some negative aspect of going to the movies.
Meanwhile, home theater technology has never been better. 7.1 surround, amazing displays, you can pause, eat food that you like, and being at home is so much better in every way than being out with the savage public.
Good riddance to movie theaters.
Which may be why he framed it like a serial drama?
The 70mm imax that Oppenheimer was filmed on is 4:3.
An old standard aspect ratio for television serials.
If you watch Oppenheimer any other way, to remove what are usually large black bars on the sides for contemporary tvs, you are watching a cropped version of the film maker’s vision.
But also, there are plenty stunning vistas in that film.
It's a shame for me. It's an easy way for me to get out of the house and out of my own head for a bit and despite having a nice TV, nothing quite compares to the silver screen and it's bolstering speakers.
I am in NYC. I went on a double date to the movie theatres for Dune 2. It was like $90 for the tickets, $35 for the pop corn and drinks, and $28 for the alcohol.
Where are you getting this family discount at?
At least at home I can rewind or put on subtitles.
But all i got was deaf ears.
I recently went to see the Deep Sky documentary with my family at the Omnimax Theatre. Much better experience. There were people crying, the JWST images were so overwhelming.
This is the thing that kills me about theaters. They've just not kept up with display quality at all. Your normal theater projector is 1080p, digital IMAX is 2k, and laser IMAX is 4k. Eventually they'll get 8k IMAX as well but so few theaters even have laser IMAX as it is. And on top of that you are generally going to have better colors, brighter whites, and blacker blacks on a high quality panel than is achievable with all but the top of the line IMAX digital projectors.
So the way I see it, there is absolutely no technical advantage to going out to a movie theater over watching at home unless it's something uniquely special and you happen to be lucky enough to be near a theater that offers that unique advantage (ex: Oppenheimer in 70mm analog IMAX).
And like you said, the social experience of attending a theater (at least in the US) is just not great. I could see the appeal if you were watching a comedy or something like a marvel film where crowd reaction could potentially add to the film but even then it's probably not worth the exuberant cost relative to watching at home.
Maybe part of it is getting old and cranky, but it feels like the social contract is completely broken, and it's everyone for themselves. Or perhaps given the title, 1/3 of people broke it for everyone else.
If you can find one, it remedies most of these problems. The entrance fee is usually even reasonable, seeing as how they're generally double features.
The price of snacks and drinks is what stings the most, but even there I do find the popcorn the best there is. Overall it's not an experience I can replicate at home.
Right now we really wish we had the option to watch Dune 2 at home. My FIL is staying with us this week and we're all excited about seeing Dune 2, but my wife is in the middle of chemo and had to miss last week's treatment because her white blood cell count was really low. We don't really want to go to the theater and possibly expose her to illness.
2024 is shaping up to be very good for movies so far, so we'll have to see how attitudes towards movie theaters evolve.
The biggest change with Covid/streaming is the removal of time pressure to go to the theater. For years leading up to 2020, it seemed like the number of weeks a film was in the theater kept getting shorter, and you had to really decide to go see something in the week or three after it opened, otherwise you’d miss it, and I’m sure I missed many I would have seen. With streaming, I don’t think they’re missing out on too many ticket sales from me, but I’m definitely seeing more movies I would have missed otherwise.