The media just won't admit that people LIKE going to movie theaters

[Mike Blakesley]

What is it with the news media?

Every time a new movie opens successfully, the media is flooded with stories about theaters now having "a glimmer of hope" or "one more chance" or "a sliver of good news" or other such nonsense. It happened with Shang Chi, it happened with Spider-Man, it happened with Dune, and others I can't think of right now.... and now it's happening again with Batman.

Enough with the "glimmer of hope" crap. People like to go to movies, it's been proven now. What we need is more good movies. How about taking the studios to task for devaluing their own content by throwing it straight down the video sewer?

I mean, the damn Batman thing opened $30 million above Warners' expectations. How many times do we as an industry have to prove ourselves before these idiots get on our side?

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

Depends on the movie theater. I'd go yo yours any day if it was closer. But around here tje AMC's are awful..Haven't been to a Cinemark yet. Tje three screen Art Theater here is also another gold one.

[Bobby Henderson]

What is it with the news media?

The news business rarely misses a chance to amplify any emotional angle to a news story, especially something negative. It's what the public wants. The general public gets bored to tears with news presented in dry, objective fashion. They're more entertained when the coverage makes them mad or scared. 24 hour cable news channels are essentially outlets of anger pornography. Emotionally manipulative practices in news coverage have filtered down to many local TV stations, due in part to most of those TV stations being owned by larger media companies.

Doom and gloom coverage of movie theaters is on brand for national publications and broadcasters.

Depends on the movie theater.

Yeah, the way people feel about visiting movie theaters is not a binary like/dislike choice. There is a pretty wide scale between great and awful. I would drive 200 miles to visit a top notch quality theater, like I did with the GCC Northpark 1-2 in Dallas. A great movie in a great theater is an awesome combination. Not many locations deliver that. There is a lot of mediocrity out there. The public has to settle for that or wait a relatively short amount of time to watch the same movie at home on a much smaller TV screen.

These days I have a hard time just driving across town to our local AMC. It was a good venue when Carmike opened it a few years ago. But AMC hasn't been doing shit to maintain it. At my last visit there (to see Dune I think) I couldn't believe how much visible damage had accumulated to seats and various fixtures in the freaking IMAX house. The sound was turned down a few decibels lower, either to make to some uptight fuddie-duddies happy or to try hiding issues with the sound system, such as blown speaker drivers. It was probably a bit of both.

[Steve Guttag]

It also depends on the people. It is undeniable that there is a portion of the population that didn't grow up going to movie theatres (and that is going to grow) and/or just prefer how they see movies at home. You could lead some of these people to the greatest movie theatre experience and they'd still not see the point and think their home experience is SOOOO much better, even if it is for trivial things like being able to pause the movie while going to the bathroom or getting snacks.

I say that is fine. I also say, you can have your movies...just about a year or so after they've played out of movie theatres.

I do think, as well, that theatres have, by and large, not represented a significant difference to the home experience aside from noisy neighbors and high priced snacks. Quite the opposite, theatres have clamored for the home experience (un masked screens with letterboxed/pillar boxed shows), no curtains, nothing that makes going out look and feel special. That will be lost on some but not on others, just like there is a perceived difference in a restaurant and McDonalds (aside from the "food" choices). One also has to know their market. Belfast is not going to play to the same market as Spiderman.

I hesitate to say "the" solution because things are almost never as trivial as being just the one thing, but cheapening the experience is not a good trend. It should not feel like your living room. It should feel special and not a place that charges a lot for snacks on a bigger (normally) screen.

I don't discount the communal experience, quite the opposite. It is quite real and can be positive. Then again, the person that talks through a movie like they are in their home-theatre is a negative too.

[Jon Dent]

This is hardly the first repeat doom and gloom topic for the news. I've lost track of how many "PC gaming is dead" articles I've seen over the last decade and a half.

[Bobby Henderson]

It also depends on the people. It is undeniable that there is a portion of the population that didn't grow up going to movie theatres (and that is going to grow) and/or just prefer how they see movies at home. You could lead some of these people to the greatest movie theatre experience and they'd still not see the point and think their home experience is SOOOO much better, even if it is for trivial things like being able to pause the movie while going to the bathroom or getting snacks.

Customer behavior and customer perspective figures into the situation big time. Some people are used to watching whole TV episodes or movies on a smart phone. The closest I get to that is watching some HBO TV show on my iPad Pro while laying in bed; the screen is quite a bit bigger and the sound is a whole lot better. I think a lot of people can't take watching an entire 2 hour movie uninterrupted in one sitting. The pause button has a lot of power for both good and bad at home.

The home-based viewing experience is extremely far better than it was 20 years ago. In the 1990's and earlier there was a very wide gulf between a movie on a square TV screen in 480i or 480p versus watching a movie in 35mm. Today a cinema has one version of 2K/4K digital. Viewers at home can watch shows in 1080p/2160p on much bigger and better screens than the old, square CRT picture tube boxes of the past. Severe pan and scan is mostly a thing of the distant past now.

Aside from all the technological stuff, one of the things I like most about watching movies at home is I don't have to put up with disruptive behavior from nearby people. No one is kicking my seat or making a bunch of noise. I don't see smart phone displays lighting up the room. Commercial theaters are stuck in a no-win situation when it comes to badly behaved customers. I applaud chains like Alamo Drafthouse for having no tolerance polices for mobile phone use. It takes some backbone to actually enforce those rules.

I do think, as well, that theatres have, by and large, not represented a significant difference to the home experience aside from noisy neighbors and high priced snacks. Quite the opposite, theatres have clamored for the home experience (un masked screens with letterboxed/pillar boxed shows), no curtains, nothing that makes going out look and feel special.

When I lived in New York City and visited a theater such as the Ziegfeld in Midtown Manhattan I almost felt like I needed to dress well to visit the place. It's possible for a multiplex theater to have a classy vibe. Most modern theaters are often pretty nice when they're newly opened. But they can go downhill fast via lack of maintenance and staff not motivated to pay attention to details. It's just sad if you visit a cinema and get the feeling the people working there and management higher up just doesn't care.

Our old single screen Vaska theater in Lawton lacks some key features many of us take for granted (like a full set of surround speakers), but the local owners have been spending a good amount of money renovating the place. They spent a lot of money replacing most of the old seats (with normal theater seats). Two of my co-workers have painted mural artwork on parts of the building. Characters from Rocky Horror Picture Show are painted on the neon tower sign. The venue at least has some charm to it. Since AMC has the only other theater in Lawton the Vaska is able to get first run content now; they were showing The Batman this past weekend.

[Van Dalton]

The news business rarely misses a chance to amplify any emotional angle to a news story, especially something negative. It's what the public wants. The general public gets bored to tears with news presented in dry, objective fashion. They're more entertained when the coverage makes them mad or scared. 24 hour cable news channels are essentially outlets of anger pornography. Emotionally manipulative practices in news coverage have filtered down to many local TV stations, due in part to most of those TV stations being owned by larger media companies.

Doom and gloom coverage of movie theaters is on brand for national publications and broadcasters.

I wonder if part of it isn't also a feeble last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, since conventional linear television is on its death bed (and the right-wing owned commercial mass media know it) with streaming, video displays and projectors being what they are these days. Attacking streaming is a no-go since most of these same linear broadcasters also go out of their way to plug their own nonlinear streaming services, so that would leave cinemas as their only viable target, to shape public perception of TV (with its commercials) as being the "superior" medium.

Who knows. The TV business is just fucking weird.

[Mark Ogden]

People like to go to movies, it's been proven now.

SOME people like to go to the movies, when there is no other choice. Some like to be first to the trough. You mention Dune, which you will recall had a strong opening weekend and then fell off sharply theatrically, mostly because it was playing on HBOMax as well. If The Batman were streaming simultaneously with its theatrical release, the same would be happening.

I am working these days with a bunch of twenty and thirty-somethings who discuss popular culture a great deal, and the movie-going experience is essentially dead for these people, D-E-D dead, UNLESS it's superheroes, and even then. A few months back, I mentioned that I had been to the movies, to see Licorice Pizza. None of them had even heard of it. All they do and all they are really interested in is gaming and game strategy, which they discuss endlessly. A few die-hards went to see the last Spiderman picture in a theatre, but the rest made it clear that they will wait for streaming. Meanwhile, a recently re-opened five-screen art house near me is struggling badly, and the AMC and Cinemark near me are trying to fill seats with Hindi and Telugu language programming.

And masking has NOTHING to do with it. The theatre going experience has become foolishly expensive and annoying. I am so very tired of AMC and their stoopid elitist 'Stubs" nonsense and their $7.00 small soda that I don't go into them anymore, and some black velour on the sides of the screen doesn't compensate for that. The local Cinemark is a pretty good place if you can get past the excessive ambient lighting on the screen, but, ya know, why bother? I'll always have time for The Coolidge Corner, and the Grand Lake, and the Bell Lightbox, and the Jacob Burns Film Center and the AFI Silver, but apart from them I have a large, carefully calibrated TV and a comfortable recliner at home. I despise HBOMax and it's infuriating bullshit API where you can't get a clean still frame or watch the credits without a lot of overlaid crap, but on the whole, it's become the lesser of two evils.

[Bobby Henderson]

I wonder if part of it isn't also a feeble last-ditch attempt at self-preservation, since conventional linear television is on its death bed (and the right-wing owned commercial mass media know it) with streaming, video displays and projectors being what they are these days. Attacking streaming is a no-go since most of these same linear broadcasters also go out of their way to plug their own nonlinear streaming services, so that would leave cinemas as their only viable target, to shape public perception of TV (with its commercials) as being the "superior" medium.

Who knows. The TV business is just fucking weird.

The news business is fairly easy to understand, at least on the national, mass distribution level: broadcast or publish content that is more emotionally inflammatory than your rivals to grab attention. It generates ratings and ad sales. There doesn't seem to be a limit to how low a "media personality" can stoop to get attention and gain a following. Calling these people "whores" would actually be an insult to sex workers.

The entertainment side of the media industry (actual movies, TV series, etc) appears to have a very illogical, almost self-destructive business model. The relentless obsession with investors and bean counter types of trying to squeeze all the money they can out of a "property" in as little time as possible has cannibalized a bunch of their business.

Physical media sales (DVD, Blu-ray, etc) used to be a gold mine for movie studios and their parent media companies. It has cratered lately. All that got cannibalized by streaming. The streaming services have given way to lots of "cord-cutting," -people ditching regular cable TV. The theatrical release window for first run movies continues to shrink. It's only a matter of a few weeks between when a movie first opens in theaters to when you can buy a download version and not much longer than that before it's on Netflix or premium cable.

20 years ago I was used to a first run movie taking at least several months to go from its cinema premiere to arriving in video sales/rental stores. Back then almost 2 years could go by before the same movie appeared on HBO. Then it would be at least another several more months or longer before the movie appeared on basic cable channels. A given movie would have ample time to play itself out on each platform. That doesn't happen now with the schedule radically sped up. It's like they've created a damned whirlwind with this rush. You can't grab dollars out of the air in a whirlwind very easily. Money can certainly be picked up off the ground if the wind is calm.

One thing that has really screwed the entertainment industry: the death of retail video rental/sales stores. The same thing goes for music and the death of dedicated music stores. Lots of copies of a physical product sitting on a store shelf would carry some serious advertising power. That's all gone. Any movie that's more than a couple years old can be easily forgotten. There is no in-person retail presence for it. A random thumbnail icon in a Netflix user interface is a very poor substitute. It's very easy for any movies to disappear in that crap.

[Geoff Jones]

...just like there is a perceived difference in a restaurant and McDonalds.

The problem is that when it comes to movie theaters, there simply aren't any that are the equivalent of a five-star restaurant. The range starts at McDonalds and maxes out somewhere around an Olive Garden with a B from the health department. Sure, there are a few decent little Mom & Pop outfits here and there where you know you'll probably get a good meal, but there isn't any theater providing a Michelin level experience. There isn't a single movie theater in operation that gets everything right.


As long as theaters operate as if the most important thing they have to offer is the vaunted exclusivity window, they will continue to fade from relevance.

[Mike Blakesley]

Any movie that's more than a couple years old can be easily forgotten.

A couple of WEEKS old, you mean.

As I type this, my wife is watching "DOG" in an AMC theater in Billings. (She's in town for work.) She said when she went in, their popcorn cases were empty and their butter machines not working. WTF? This is supposed to be AMC's "best" movie theater in Billings (out of 2). She also said the pre-show was playing without picture, just sound.

I do have to wonder why these big chains, knowing the industry is hanging by a thread these days, don't put a little more into giving people a reason to come out to the movies.

A few die-hards went to see the last Spiderman picture in a theatre, but the rest made it clear that they will wait for streaming.

This is the scariest part for me. Around here, there's not much else to do so we get quite a few of the high school kids and such, but even so, we don't have near the traffic we used to with the young people. People who do come continue to comment on how good our sound is and etc. So I feel like we are offering a good package. How can the industry spark up the young people again?

[Frank Cox]

I think I've mentioned this here before, but what about the excitement? I remember when I played the original Toy Story, Titanic, Jurassic Park, Lion King and so on. The whole town was just buzzing and the theatre was everyone's center of attention. I'd be answering the phone all day, and when it was time to open the door there would be a line down the block.

I'd be hard pressed to say when the last time a movie had that kind of a buzz around here. There are some fairly big movies that come along once in a while, but I'm considering a movie like, say, Billy Madison. That was huge when I played it here, sell-outs pretty much every night; today a movie like that would probably get a mid-range crowd.

I really don't know where the excitement went. Maybe people just have more things to do and more distractions these days so movies don't occupy such large a part of the public consciousness any more.

[Jon Dent]

I really don't know where the excitement went. Maybe people just have more things to do and more distractions these days so movies don't occupy such large a part of the public consciousness any more.

That's exactly it. There's so much else out there to draw attention and attention spans are miniscule now. Lots of people don't have the patience to sit in one place for two hours and focus on one thing anymore. Everything in life is just GO GO GO all the time. When I was in high school the theater was the place to be on Friday and Saturday, but we also didn't have Xbox or Wordle competing for our attention.

[Bobby Henderson]

Viewer attention is definitely fragmented among many kinds of "platforms" now. In the 1980's a broadcast network needed a 20 share or more to win the Nielsen ratings that week. Today a network can win with less than a 10 share. So many more channels are available. Most people have movie disc players and streaming boxes. We all have computers, smart phones, social media, etc.

Gaming via consoles, PCs or even phones is stealing a lot of younger eyeballs away from both cinemas and TV networks. There is even growth of younger adults just not spending all their free time in front of an electronic screen. They're doing other things, like over-training in the gym so they can look good and get followers with their TikTok videos. I never heard of "bigorexia" until just a few days ago.

A couple of WEEKS old, you mean.

At least a movie that's playing in theaters is more visible to the general public. Even bad movies. Only so many movies are in theatrical release at a given time. Most have active promotional campaigns, such as TV commercials, stars appearing on talk shows, product tie-ins, soundtrack music, etc. In big cities a movie might be promoted on billboards and other "out of home" ad platforms (display cases at bus stops, subway stations, etc).

Of course movie promotion isn't what it used to be. I think it was at its best 30 years ago when there were minimalist billboards teasing a movie release several months in advance, like Batman or The Hunt for Red October. Today movie marketing and promotion is now so much more abbreviated. With the theatrical window being so short a big national ad campaign has only so much impact.

Retail stores that sold movies and music helped give movies and their advertising campaigns a second life. It would take years for a movie release to fade into memory with that in-person, product-on-shelf format. Stores like Walmart and Target are the last vestiges of that physical media paradigm. And they suck for the very limited amount of product (and some of it censored in the case of music).

Today the main way people search for movies to watch is via a Netflix style TV screen interface. It's a handful of shows in a row. And it's row after row of just random shit. It's not easy to find anything. A movie that's still arguably new can be lost in that mess. I don't know how just one specific movie can make any money for itself on home video. Anymore the studios are licensing packages of content, not specific movies at a time.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Bad news sells copies, good news doesn't... The media at large loves to dramatize stuff, so the cinema industry is constantly dying...

Still, there is no thing like bad attention, I doubt any cinema will sell less tickets because some news outlet has predicted the industries imminent death. Quite to the contrary, it probably works similar as with the McRib... Limited time offer, if you want to go to the cinema one last time, you may better go now. You may actually want to thank them for creating a feeling of fake scarcity and triggering the "FOMO instinct" in people.