The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
Sort of off topic, but almost the same can be said for music concerts. During slower or softer songs, people can be heard talking and laughing loudly. I get it, they paid their money, same as us, but we didn't pay to hear them.
A couple of years ago, I went to see Echo & The Bunnymen open for Violent Femmes. I had seen the Femmes multiple times, but was really excited to see Echo. These two old biddies that sat in front of us talked the entire show. In between bands, one of them dropped their purse without noticing. I picked it up and offered in exchange for the purse if they wouldn't mind talking through the next act. They were shocked at the nerve and said they didn't talk that much. I then told them all about their kids and their school work and other nonsense that I had to endure. The looked at each other like "oops". To my luck, the show was not sold out, and we moved down our row to get away from them. I obviously gave the purse back
People call the classical music audience prudish for demanding quiet during performances, but IMO when you go to a concert it should be ok to shush people who talk during the quiet parts.
On the one hand, you're at a social experience. On the other hand, aren't you supposed to have your senses engaged in a shared experience? The interpersonal conversation diminishes that. On the other other hand, as long as you're having fun and not doing harm, do whatever. As the Master of Ceremonies, I love it. On the other other other hand, talking pushes up the noise floor, making louder concerts a necessity. A louder concert is more dangerous to your hearing.
There is a difference between us all experiencing a shared artistic experience and us hearing about your kids while we are trying very hard to share an artistic experience.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
I'm so split on this. Ultimately I think I land on: "if there's chairs, engage in the shared sensory experience. If it's GA standing room only, it's a party and do whatever."
As a musician I ask if the music is so fragile it can't stand up to some extraneous background noise, is it really worth listening to?
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It really depends on the music and the background noise? Talking (more likely yelling) in the middle of a rock concert? Probably not an issue. I’m wearing earplugs anyway. Holding a conversation in the middle of a quiet passage during an orchestra performance? Everyone near you wants you to shut up.
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
Curious if you have a sense of how long this has been going on. My perception is that various sorts of rudeness and inconsiderateness have been on the rise for a while, but really jumped post-COVID.
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
Definitely post-COVID. I remember going to see bands in between or just after lockdowns ended, and even the bands were taken aback by the change in audience behaviour, commenting on it. Lots of self-entitled behaviour, talking and even yelling out during quiet moments, people walking up to the stage during a seated Nick Cave concert demanding to hand him stuff or shake his hand - I remember him saying "wow, you guys really forgot how to behave over the last couple of years". Now it just seems to be normalised that crowd behaviour is worse, more self-entitled. I'm not sure what's driving it - whether people who previously weren't going to gigs decided, during lockdown, that they wanted to go out and do stuff more, but just had never learned the etiquette, and/or social media making the experience about the individual rather than the performance.
> many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I went with my daughter to see Taylor Swift in Tokyo. It was an amazing experiences. Swift fans prefer recording Tokyo performances because fangs don’t sing along to the music or talk during the performance.
I saw Avatar 3 here in Tokyo where I live. It was great! I saw the Dolby 3D version. Popcorn was pretty cheap, tickets were reasonably priced, the audience was as quiet as the dead.
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
A couple years ago I went to a county fair because someone said the pie judging was worth seeing. I’ve been to fairs before but never really watched the judging part. They had all the pies on this weird low table, like not quite a kid’s playset table but close, so people leaning in to look kept bumping it with their legs and thighs without noticing, and after a while one of the pies just slowly started sliding toward the edge every time the table got nudged until it eventually tipped off and landed upside down on the floor while the judges were busy debating crust integrity on another pie.
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
The Beatles famously stopped touring, and stuck exclusively to studio recording (apart from the Abbey Road rooftop concert), in no small part because they got tired of not being able to hear themselves sing or play due to all the girls' screaming.
Just went to a very small show, 200 tickets but lots of no shows. Maybe 100 people there total. The folks at the bar were so rude to the talent just loudly talking over them. I just don’t get it.
Couldn't disagree more. It's a social experience, it's so unfun and antisocial to have some go to a large gathering of humans and get annoyed when their presence is detectable. Go listen to the song by yourself in a room
With current TV setups or projector technology I basically have cinema in my living room.
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
Well, rude behavior stemmed from lack of empathy for other people who have to listen to them. I am sorry you had that bad experience.
Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.
So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.
This is why I strongly endorse buying a projector if the space allows for one. Changed the home experience. I thought I might be making a mistake when I bought my first (720p) years ago but I'd never go back to a traditional television.
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.
Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.
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.
What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.
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.
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.
Our local AMC theater would be $13 a ticket, $8 a drink, and $11 for popcorn (rounding up and assuming the largest sizes, although the prices are in a narrow band so the price difference between the least and most is under a dollar).
So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.
I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.
But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
For a long time now I've felt that there's only situation where it makes sense. That's movies where it is something about it would make it much more enjoyable on IMAX or similar with a professional sound system. So something in the visual spectacle category.
For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.
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.
> 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
> $86 dollars.
> Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
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
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.
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.
It is surprising that such a large number of people continue to fall victim to fraud at the cinema. High-quality televisions and sound systems are now available at a reasonable price. It has been 12 years since I last attended a movie screening. All content will be available on-demand within a month of the theatrical release. Popcorn maker at home and drinks.
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 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.
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.
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.
If Sinners and One Battle After Another are up for movie of the year then it's no wonder no one is going. One is a fun but ultimately forgettable horror action movie. The other is a movie that just based on its major theme would attract less then half the country and even in those remaining is a very polarizing movie. It's up for best picture because to preach, not because it's actually good.
I started watching 1960s era movies with my kids and I understand why Hollywood had the power at the time. Entertainment and solid values crafted into a "picture".
I can imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
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.
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.
Everyone is complaining about movie theater prices. But, I'll also complain about streaming prices. I want to watch The Secret Agent and it's $9.99 to rent on Apple TV. It doesn't seem to make sense in comparison to month all-you-can-watch subscription prices.
What if all the good stories have been told? I conjecture Hollywood is out of ideas but there’s plenty new if you look elsewhere.
Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended.
Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.
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.
I was already complaining about the price when it was only $30 for two tickets, two drinks, and popcorn. To think it's more than double that now!
Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie.
Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed.
Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.
People like to point at prices and bad audience behaviour for the downfall of cinemas, but I'd suggest that it also comes down to availability and home experience.
When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT.
Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible.
The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package.
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.
> North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada.
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.
Every time there’s an article about the “good ol’ days of Hollywood” I like to trot out this comic strip- looks like last time I posted it was five years ago:
Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.
There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died.
Hollywood has been going through a similar cultural problem that gaming has. They have been extremely woke, and I'm sorry that people won't like that, and they have made movies to make far left critics happy instead of audiences. Not all are like this but this has dominated the industry. There have been some big moneymakers in recent years an the industry could try to make movies for audiences again but they have gotten into this space where they have to make the Academy happy. There was those Danish filmmakers at a press conference talking about their movie set in the 1700s, or something like that, and the press were whining about the lack of diversity in a historical Nordic film. I think if they decide to make movies people want to see and stop using Millennial vernacular in all script writing, they will see people wanting to watch movies again.
The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2].
The only reason I like going to the theater now is to see movies in "4dx". It's a ridiculous format where the seats move and there are other special effects including air, water, and smoke which are custom edited for each chosen movie. It's like a combination between a movie and one of those amusement park rides. I think most people hate it, but my kids and I enjoy it. Tickets are ~$30 each though.
Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
The promise er sorry propaganda used to be “attend the big blockbuster movies so they can spend the extra money on riskier indie films”. Essentially trickle down for the movie business. Here we are.
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.
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.
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!)
One new problem for theaters is that entertainment now comes in other time formats than the 1-3 hour movie or the hour-long TV show. Netflix is not constrained by the need to push groups of people through a movie theater.
$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.
I went to the recent re-screenings of the Lord of the Rings movies -- and maybe 30 minutes into the first film, I realized I'd never actually seen it in a theater before. It was glorious.
There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match.
We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.
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?
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
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.
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.
I can hardly wait for "vibe cinema". Type in a prompt and a 2 hour epic AI slop film comes out. Not much different from Hollywood is now making the hard way.
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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.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
The problem isn’t with “human presence”. It’s with the select few who can’t or won’t control their own behavior out of respect for others.
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
> many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
> don’t sing along to the music
What's wrong with that?
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-did-the-beatles-stop-tourin...
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.
So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.
Well, it suited my tastes anyway. :)
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.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
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.
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.
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.
So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.
I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.
But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced
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.
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
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.
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
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.
>
2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.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!
For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.
I'm not sure who is going to the theater or why, but I hope they are enjoying themselves!
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.
> 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn. > $86 dollars. > Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
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.
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
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.
I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.
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.
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.
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.
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 imagine back then eagerly awaiting a new release. Now, who cares. Some depressing trauma story of someone I can't relate to or rehashed superhero flick. Yawn.
- 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.
Recently watched a fantastic Chinese movie: Upstream (2024) - a dramatized view of a culture driven by algorithms where everyone is plugged in but opportunity does exist if you work hard. Optimistic and pessimistic, with an underdog you want to see win, and a bunch of beautiful human and touching moments. Highly recommended.
Hollywood will keep going maybe in a smaller form. It’s ok for industries to change or run out of steam, and it’s ok for new to replace told. It’s ok for a place to run out of stories to tell, because new stories will get told by others in other places.
Add in the fact most anyone can have access to a pretty good quality 60" display. It's not as large as the theater, but it's pretty good-sized, has better color reproduction than a lot of older (read: less-maintained) theaters' gear, and you don't have to deal with people using their phones or talking over the movie.
Lastly, let's just consider that for most people the number of movies you'd actually want to watch on a yearly basis has probably decreased in general while the cost of actually producing those movies has skyrocketed-- it's the same problem with AAA gaming. Your costs are so high that if a movie/game isn't an immediate massive hit, you're doomed.
Yeah, the bottom has dropped out of that market entirely. Gaming will be saved by indie and AA games, but I'm not sure if there's anything like that for movies; sure, smaller films exist but distribution, etc. doesn't really have anything like Steam.
When I was growing up we went to the cinema regularly, but the only options for watching a film were VHS rentals and the cinema, both of which required going out. Films were rare. Sometimes there would be a film on TV, but it would have ads every 20 minutes, and our TV was a relatively small CRT.
Now I have nearly every film made available to me to watch within minutes on a huge screen, in a quiet room, that doesn't smell, with no ads, at the time I want, without going out, and I can pause it to go to the toilet or get a drink rather than having to hope I don't miss anything. And I don't have a home cinema setup, I have a <$1k TV and <$200 speakers, no surround sound, very basic, very accessible.
The only time I go to the cinema now is for IMAX because that passes the bar of better than I have at home as a whole package.
Cinemas just suck.
> North Americans are going to the movies about half as often as they used to a decade ago, based on the number of tickets sold at cinemas in the US and Canada.
50% down in just 10 years is massive.
https://web.archive.org/web/20201112024059/https://www.gocom...
Hollywood has been a franchise and licensed IP sequel/remake/reboot farm since the ‘80s, since Star Wars and Jaws blockbusters killed off the experimental period of New Hollywood. And even before that it was Cecil B. DeMille bombastic productions and westerns and musicals everywhere. The movie industry has always been characterized by crowd pleasers.
There's already enough movies and TV shows to keep me busy for the rest of my life. If they stopped making movies and TV shows tomorrow, I wouldn't get through everything I would be interested in watching before I died.
And neither would you.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-03-13/hollywood...
The best movie of this year, a film called Sirāt, was in part funded by a grant from Spain's Institute of Cinematography and Audiovisual Arts [1]. Another incredible one this past year, a Brazilian film called The Secret Agent, was funded by various grants and institutes as well [2].
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sir%C4%81t 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_Agent_(2025_film)
Otherwise I would just rather watch a movie on the couch at home. They come to streaming so quickly there's no problem waiting for it.
> ... California doubled the annual assistance it gives to film and TV productions to $750 million to stop them from fleeing the state.
750M/38.9M = $19.28 per resident
Why can't we call a taxpayer subsidy by its right name?
If a movie costs O(Billion) to make, you need to be sure to at least earn back 1.x times the investment, the only way to do this is to play it safe.
Niche films / indie films don't get shown everywhere and unless your sometimes willing to drive over 150+ miles you just have to wait.
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 sound was always tinny and in mono from the small speaker you hooked on the window, but it was fun and very cheap.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoldOz5YyAw
Attendance drops at movie theatres is irrelevant. Most people have watched movies and tv shows at home for years.
Hollywood will be fine.
If they want theaters to come back then they’ll have to put movies behind a paywall again.
There seems to be a lot of gloating in this thread from people who haven't been to a theater in many, many years -- lots of disgust at the idea of a movie ever being a communal, social experience. I get the annoyance of other moviegoers talking or otherwise disturbing the movie, but you have no idea what we're missing when big films don't have big individualized social moments to match.
We can't go two hours without picking up our phones. We don't deserve the great experiences movie theaters once gave us.
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?