The Oscars are the heart of the problem. One definition of “celebrity” is “person who is celebrated”
Hollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results.
And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.
I put more stock in the the Sundance and Cannes jury prizes: even if they're comprised of the elites who can afford to go to these festivals, they've still got far more artistic sense than the ossified corporate board that the Academy has always been.
Berlinale screenings are open to the public and tickets cost between 15 € and 20 €. You have to be quick when ticket sales open every day but when I did that one year I watched about four films every day and could get tickets for nearly all the films I wanted, even if some were in large but truly soulless venues (“Uber Eats Music Hall“, the name alone is disgustingly dystopian). Though I also attended some film premieres with Q&As and all at the great Zoo Palast cinema. There is also an audience award and you can vote for your favorites – but also obviously a jury prize. But juries can be hit and miss and also always idiosyncratic. Unpredictable. And I think that’s beautiful. Including being annoyed about your favorite film not winning.
As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better.
So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.
The main issue was the content the movie industry produced which looked like a lot like some AI slop. I think the DEI lecturing was another nail in the coffin. Unless that changes and they magically add something new to the cinema experience I think they will keep diving into irrelevance because now everybody can produce AI slop.
Do people even want their culture democratized with just anyone being able to produce high entertainment? The recent popularity of "Harry Potter by Balenciaga (2026)" AI fashion parody retelling shows we might actually be stuck in this cultural rut forever with or without AI help.
$100 to go to the movies for a family of four. No thanks. There’s no mystery why the movies are dying. They’ve priced themselves out and then they give away the product on streaming several months later anyways.
If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
Is this article a weird cut-paste of older content? This passage makes no sense in the rest of the context, the tense is all wrong.
>Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership.
Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?
Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper.
And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans.
Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere anytime soon, but I think the economics of streaming is finally playing out in the loss of the geographical concentration of power in Hollywood and California.
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
Small but important correction: the biggest issue for the movie industry aren't streaming services or them filming in locations with good tax incentives like UK or Australia but Youtube.
It's hard to compete with millions of videomakers, some of them extremely skilled and able to produce interesting content on a budget.
> The cultural relevance of movies, and American made movies isn't going anywhere
It already has. People under 20 do not have the connection to movies. They don’t have a share experience around it - maybe picking up a handful of family movies and the occasional marvel or spiderman.
There just aren’t as many good new movies. Most movies we watch at home are from decades ago. If we didn’t have streaming maybe we’d go to the movies more often, but it’s hard to say.
A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
I can easily name amazing movies in the last couple of years and in the last decade. I think we're actually in a bit of a movie renaissance right in cinematic craft and storytelling.
Recent good movies, just going in release order off my letterboxd, although I have to be careful to include only "Hollywood" here:
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is
- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good
- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy
- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie
- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes
- Companion
- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric
- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage
- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie
- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie
- Poor Things
- Oppenheimer ...
- Renfield
- The Menu
- The Banshees of Insherin
- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)
- Prey
- Bullet Train - fun action movie
- The Northman
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen
- The Gentlemen
- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...
- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic
in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.
I haven't been in cinema in the past ~10 years and to be honest I wouldn't care if no more movies were ever made, simply because there are hundreds, if not thousands, amazing movies made since the beginning of the cinema that I didn't watch. Most of the new movies are crap anyways, so why waste time and money when I can watch a classic movie instead which has a much higher probability of me enyjoing it.
Nobody else to blame but themselves. Of course, Hollywood is full of narcissists so they'll blame everyone else, e.g. streaming, prices, etc. but the reality is of the last 10-15 years of mainstream US cinema is:
- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.
- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.
- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.
- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.
Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.
Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
Actors being this wealthy and famous has always been a mystery to me. Oh so you are a good looking person that recites other people's words for money while faking emotions? And you can take as many takes as you can and your fuckups will be corrected in post-production anyway? Well I guess the work you do totally merits the hundreds of millions of dollars you've amassed.
Like even kicking a ball or whatever makes more sense to me because there is an objective measurement of what it means to do it well, while with actors its mostly about sympathy or preference
My 2c: They should stop concentrating on appealing to the broadest audience. Formulaic heros' journeys, franchises, predictable characters acted by the same narrow set of the the most-attractive people etc.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
Sure, but Spider-Man CXXVI is a sure bet for a safe ROI. Nobody knows what Chopper Chicks in Zombietown will yield.
Books are a great example - even popular books will now have a readership in the tens of thousands, at most. Nobody makes money - it’s an art, not an industry.
A few years ago, someone on Twitter had a really cool proposal for how to revamp the entire format of the Oscars, even taking the importance of commercials into account, but I can't for the life of me find it anymore.
I mean when you have Larry Ellison and other goons pledging investments in these major studios, it's no wonder people who actually enjoy watching movies don't want to give their money+time to watch some dumbed down bottom of the barrel slime that AI has decided people will sit through.
Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?
The little dinosaurs are ignoring the great big elephants in the room: gaming. The article doesn't mention it. The market for video games in 2024 was around $225B, compared to movies at around $33B. Hollywood has worked very hard not to realize that their industry has become niche and have succeeded.
My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
The biggest competition for movies is actually from Youtube.
While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.
On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.
I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
The time I used to spend watching movies is now spent on YouTube.
With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable.
My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.
They're trying to avoid thinking (or at least talking) about it because they don't control it. They're hoping that the next downturn (which will almost certainly include a partial collapse of the game industry as we know it) will present an opportunity to scoop up incumbents. At that point, they'll be open about their relationship to, and ambitions, for gaming. Until then, the most you'll hear is A24 stuff, Kojima stuff, and tut-tutting about Ubisoft (almost certainly their first target).
Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets.
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
It's not even price for me - I'm happy to pay for an experience. I'm more annoyed that the theater is basically the worst place to watch a movie now.
The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.
Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.
And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.
Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.
I still go to arthouse movies regularly, mostly because it forces me to give them undivided attention
Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house
Where I go it's about $33 for two tickets bought online and probably $20 for those snacks, though we usually share a drink and a popcorn. The theater is still usually empty.
The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.
Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.
I don't know where people get these crazy prices. Try to find a little hole-in-the-wall theater. I like the local Landmark Cinema. It is about $8 a ticket and I skip on the junk food.
There is another theater on the other side of town that does midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those kinds of places are also cheap.
The people going to movies regularly are playing a different game.
The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.
People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.
You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.
Here in Finland this would cost about 50 euro, which is still a lot, but for me the main reason to never go to a movie theater again is that even after paying all of this money, the first 15 minutes is filled with advertisement, then 15 more minutes of movie trailers, then some "IMAX" or whatever intro video. By the time the movie starts, I feel like I've been watching tiktok for a day.
Not a conventional theater, but I recently went to Vidiots in Los Angeles and enjoyed myself so much I went back a week later. The location I went to has two theaters—37 seat and 270 seat, both with comfortable seating and an excellent picture/sound. Most people who go are kind of movie nerds, so everyone was super respectful. And they don't really play blockbusters, so you don't get that kind of crowd. They seem to be doing well, and I really hope the model works and is reproducible.
Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.
Cheapest tickets are £2.50 where I am in London. Maybe £4.50 at a stretch. £10 worse care scenario.
Granted, I don't know about sodas and popcorn, as we always bring or eat beforehand.
Having said that, home theatre is hard to beat but I'd still check a cinema every so often just to experience the group vibe. Nothing beats the collective vibe around a great movie - and worth the risk of shitty neighbours. Maybe I just love cinema.
Where do you live? I'm in a HCOL area and just checked that same combo for a Friday night premiere and it's more like ~$70.
The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.
This isn't why Hollywood is dying. Hollywood is dying because it's cheaper to make movies elsewhere. We're (probably) still going to have movies for a long time. In the same way that we still have cars long after Detroit "died".
I stopped going sometime mid-2000s, not because of the cost or the quality of movies, but because of the quality of my fellow movie watchers, who were pretty awful to be honest (at least in Silicon Valley at the time):
- Lord of the Rings: a family came in after the movie started with a cluster of helium balloons, each of which eventually got loose and floated around the theatre. A small balloon creates an outsized shadow on the screen when it floats in front of the projector (e.g., sometimes a third of the picture would disappear).
- A Beautiful Mind: Several guys, in different spots in the theatre, would wait for a quiet moment in the movie and say loudly "Oh my beautiful mind". One guy had a squeaky seat, so each time he said his bit, he would squeak his chair 5 times.
- Panic Room: Two people directly behind us just laughed hysterically at seemingly every line in the movie.
Also, the advertisements went on too long (20 minutes maybe?) and were also rock-concert loud.
Last night, I watched Wolfs (Apple TV) in my living room with my spouse and we enjoyed it. It's not a great movie, but it's good, there are no ear-splitting advertisements, and the audience is well behaved.
Edit: Later in the 2000s I did see a few Coen brothers films in the theatre, and those were good experiences, but I still avoided the theatre for the most part.
we did the same thing and had to sit far right 2nd row because you need reservations long ahead of time to sit far enough back somewhere near the middle
meanwhile I saw a 50-inch tv at costco for $239, and a 98-inch tv for $1299
I remember my parents complaining about how expensive concessions were when I was a kid in the 90s too, and sometimes we would hit the gas station first and stuff snacks in my mom's bag to sneak them in to the theater. They also complained about prices if we couldn't do the Tuesday matinee.
Not sure anything's changed. The movie theater experience has always been expensive and I think your bill is pretty much in line with inflation.
Personally, I don't understand why people go to see films with a bunch of strangers and a nod to the HN crowd: with potentially disruptive or reactive people that distract the enjoyment. Unless it's some sort of film festival or a premiere where the director is there, movies are for teenagers and parents with children.
I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.
I don't mind the higher price. The place near me is a small cinema and not a chain, the food is excellent and they bring it to your seat. And if you go during the week it's pretty quiet. I'm sure they make most of their money from the restaurant anyway. There's another place like it a bit of a further drive but it to be even quieter, most times we've been it's just us.
That is the problem, everyone complains about Netflix, Prime and co, but going to cinema currently can pay for a couple of months in subscriptions.
I get the experience and that there are employees to pay, and such, but if companies want people to still go the movies, they need to ramp those prices down in some way.
In Europe I only go to alternative cinemas which happen to be part of the movie pass network, called Gildepass in Germany.
Regals unlimited pass and their snack saver has made movies a no brainer for me and my friends
coupled with their monthly themed events showing older movies we almost always have multiple things we want to see and often go multiple times a week, especially during the gloomier winter months!
At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight
I don't wanna come off as defending any of this, but even 20 years ago I'd bring my own snacks or eat nothing at the movies, the stuff they sell was always considered overpriced. So I'd definitely skip the sodas and popcorn.
That being said, I don't go to theaters anymore either. I'd rather watch stuff from the comfort of my home, at any hour of the day. If I have to wait a few months for web/BD releases, no big deal. I have plenty to watch in the meantime.
So many more products are competing for finite attention now. And the solution to that problem is not to productize your commodity imo, art created for the sake of selling is not art.
Most recent in theater movie I was was "F1" because I thought the audio experience would be worth the ticket price. While the audio was good, seat quality was sub par, popcorn stale and soda was from a Freestyle machine (YUK!)
I watch a film every single day since Covid. There are great films everywhere every year. I'm not american but the sooner you ignore the american cultural imperialism is the better (or at least the films that don't premiere at competition festivals). There is a whole world outside of America.
When compared to the nascent asian cultural imperialism, I'd rather have american media, to be honest. Over here in the global south, Hollywood was a pretty good influence compared with what I see around the anime/Kpop crew.
There is a whole world inside America. You can say that about every single country on Earth, but not every country on Earth produced The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Toy Story 2.
Good riddance. It won’t be missed. Very little of Hollywood benefited humanity - it was mostly a tool of the rich and governments to propagandize. It was just an another opiate for masses. It was built on ruthless exploitation of labour and consumers.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 89.7 ms ] threadHollywood is so used to getting high on its own supply that it really thinks we want to see an AI slop video of Brad Pitt fighting Tom Cruise. People there just don’t have any information at all about what anybody outside their bubble thinks so of course they make samey big budget pictures and samey small budget pictures. Unless they shut down their communications channels and disperse geographically they are going to keep doing the same thing over and over again and be wondering why they keep getting the same results.
And that gets us to why they will never reform, they know their numbers are terrible but think this is (1) cyclical and (2) due to technological changes so they’ll never get it that running ads that make it sound like somebody else cares about Tom Cruise doesn’t really make people care about Tom Cruise, it just makes them ignore advertising messages.
As always with any kind of film festival you are exposed to the bleeding edge - so yeah, you are going to see some bad films. That’s part of it. Though I noticed that even bad films – especially well made ones that I think are totally misguided in the ideas they express – help me broaden my horizons, understand myself better and maybe also understand the world better.
So yeah, long story short, I don’t think film as an art form is dead and it also won’t be in the next century or so. Maybe certain films won’t be made in the future – I’m currently mostly sad about practically no mid-budget films being made – but I’m totally certain that there will always be great films.
https://youtu.be/gtnt84CDP-s
If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
>Starting in 2029, the Oscars will also be streamed globally on YouTube, which the academy hopes will attract new audiences and reinvigorate the ceremony’s popularity after years of declining viewership.
Edit: I read 2019 not.. 2029. That's actually incredible. Are they going to get in on tiktok for 2039 next?
Market forces know no culture except what consumers pay for. Absent real care, stewardship and focused investment, the product will always get cheaper.
And of course consumers' tastes are under attack from another direction: their attention spans.
Some load-bearing pillars of human culture are weakening.
This is the endgame of the feedback loop of streamers causing industry consolidation... the direct connection of dollars people spend to sit in a theatre seat was slowly declining, but now I think it's gotten so small that it no longer matters- and once the whole box-office feedback loop disappears a lot of the economics of how films are produced are being forced to change.
One of the reasons that people have loved to make fun of Hollywood for literally it's entire existence (besides the fact that the meta talk is self-indulgent artist stuff) is that making movies with so much money and waste is fundamentally ridiculous.
The optimistic viewpoint is that maybe new AI production tools will trigger a re-democratization of creative movies in the next wave, like in the 70s and the 90s indies.
It's hard to compete with millions of videomakers, some of them extremely skilled and able to produce interesting content on a budget.
It already has. People under 20 do not have the connection to movies. They don’t have a share experience around it - maybe picking up a handful of family movies and the occasional marvel or spiderman.
A few movies we watched are not worth the money. To stay afloat they have to raise ticket prices, but if we’re paying so much, the movie better be absolutely outstanding, and the are just not usually, so we stopped going.
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is
- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good
- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy
- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie
- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes
- Companion
- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric
- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage
- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie
- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie
- Poor Things
- Oppenheimer ...
- Renfield
- The Menu
- The Banshees of Insherin
- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)
- Prey
- Bullet Train - fun action movie
- The Northman
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen
- The Gentlemen
- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...
- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic
in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.
- Frankenstein
- Dune and Dune Part Two
- Star Trek: Section 31 (just kidding)
- Scripts that sound more like an HR meeting than a good story.
- Blockbuster superhero movies that are all the same movie.
- Lots of remakes that added modern CGI flare and destroyed the artistic value of the original.
- As consolidation of studios happens, way more "safe" stories that aim to not offend anyone. I think the only one able to get away with it right now is Tarantino.
Prices, streaming, theaters, etc. -- they're all accessory to the problem. People went to the movies for enjoyment, why would they go to endure them? There's no cultural collective experience anymore in the sense of going to see Lord of the Rings or Matrix with your friends for the first time.
Also this is happening throughout all media. Music and video games have the same kind of discussions.
Safety and mass-market appeal over creativity.
For contrast: Books, non-AAA video games, and movies from smaller studios still produce high-quality, creative efforts I continue to be excited about. Big-budget movies (and games), and Netflix shows are mostly bottom-feeder stuff.
Books are a great example - even popular books will now have a readership in the tens of thousands, at most. Nobody makes money - it’s an art, not an industry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood...
Thankfully, filmmaking is becoming more and more independent. It's never been easier and cheaper to make a movie and share it to millions of people on YouTube or Vimeo. Why go through Hollywood, investors, or give money to festivals for a chance at success when you can just upload the thing and see what happens?
My last week may be an indicator. I've watched zero TV or movies but have spent about 40 hours helping a small colony of scrappy hard working beavers survive on post apocalyptic earth. Steam got my money, Hollywood didn't.
While the streaming business led to a growth of the movie industry, pre Covid and pre strikes at least, it's difficult to compete when millions of people can produce good content for low prices.
On top of that, it doesn't help that movies stopped innovating, 2025 box office was entirely dominated by prequels and sequels.
I don't care about avengers, I really don't, the first bored me enough.
With the high quality cameras and drones at approachable prices, it's amazing to watch individuals create videos at such high quality but also has a bit of that DIY vibe that makes it more relatable and enjoyable.
My current fav is watching 4X4 overlanding videos of people driving along some stunning landscapes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundreds_of_Beavers
I checked what was playing and:
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
$86 dollars.
Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
You can't have it both ways.
Tickets are a bit more for IMAX.
Less than an hour outside Philly. The theater is recently renovated too and has nice recliner seats, and everyone has their own armrest.
The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.
Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.
And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.
Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.
Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house
The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.
Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.
There is another theater on the other side of town that does midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those kinds of places are also cheap.
The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.
People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.
You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.
Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.
Cheapest tickets are £2.50 where I am in London. Maybe £4.50 at a stretch. £10 worse care scenario.
Granted, I don't know about sodas and popcorn, as we always bring or eat beforehand.
Having said that, home theatre is hard to beat but I'd still check a cinema every so often just to experience the group vibe. Nothing beats the collective vibe around a great movie - and worth the risk of shitty neighbours. Maybe I just love cinema.
The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.
Because my local AMC has tickets right now at $20, and soda+popcorn is another $20.
- Lord of the Rings: a family came in after the movie started with a cluster of helium balloons, each of which eventually got loose and floated around the theatre. A small balloon creates an outsized shadow on the screen when it floats in front of the projector (e.g., sometimes a third of the picture would disappear).
- A Beautiful Mind: Several guys, in different spots in the theatre, would wait for a quiet moment in the movie and say loudly "Oh my beautiful mind". One guy had a squeaky seat, so each time he said his bit, he would squeak his chair 5 times.
- Panic Room: Two people directly behind us just laughed hysterically at seemingly every line in the movie.
Also, the advertisements went on too long (20 minutes maybe?) and were also rock-concert loud.
Last night, I watched Wolfs (Apple TV) in my living room with my spouse and we enjoyed it. It's not a great movie, but it's good, there are no ear-splitting advertisements, and the audience is well behaved.
Edit: Later in the 2000s I did see a few Coen brothers films in the theatre, and those were good experiences, but I still avoided the theatre for the most part.
meanwhile I saw a 50-inch tv at costco for $239, and a 98-inch tv for $1299
Not sure anything's changed. The movie theater experience has always been expensive and I think your bill is pretty much in line with inflation.
I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.
Skip the sodas and the popcorn. Go eat before or later. It still won't be cheap, but at least the meal will be better!
I get the experience and that there are employees to pay, and such, but if companies want people to still go the movies, they need to ramp those prices down in some way.
In Europe I only go to alternative cinemas which happen to be part of the movie pass network, called Gildepass in Germany.
At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight
That being said, I don't go to theaters anymore either. I'd rather watch stuff from the comfort of my home, at any hour of the day. If I have to wait a few months for web/BD releases, no big deal. I have plenty to watch in the meantime.
There is a whole world inside America. You can say that about every single country on Earth, but not every country on Earth produced The Godfather, Citizen Kane and Toy Story 2.