The sad fact is if those cinemas put a movie already available to stream on TV into their biggest houses they would be playing the movie to mostly empty seats.
Here's something else that's true: Their biggest houses are playing to mostly empty seats much of the time anyway. The biggest houses of every single location for every single chain are all showing the current new release. They tend to be full-ish on opening weekends, but then for two and a half weeks (sometimes three and a half), they are all but vacant. There are exceptions, sure, but that's excactly what they are: exceptions.
Some of us do care about seeing movies on big screens. We care about image and sound quality and will drive out of our way to visit a location offering better presentation quality. But we're in the minority. Most people are only going to look at what something costs.
Well then stay out of the chains, if you know they're so bad. Aren't there any locally-owned, cared-about theaters in your vicinity?
- A bunch of Regals and AMCs, which are absolutely terrible.
- Four Landmarks, which, owing to their arthouse roots, have never really been know for delivering an impressive presentation.
- Three Cinemarks. I've only been to one of these, but its small constant-width screens didn't impress me. There are enough presetation complains in Google reviews for me to not bother with the other two, which are far away.
- Three Alamo Drafthouses. These have one or two decent auditoriums that are always booked with the exact same blockbuster and a bunch of embarassingly small screens.
- One Metrolux. I looked into this theater a few months back when I was desperately trying to find a theater showing a "mid-level" release on a decent-sized screen. I saw multiple reviews complaining about torn screens. They were knowingly projecting movies onto torn screens.
- Two Harkins. This is the only chain in town that seems to care about quality, and my main go-to location. But their large screens are always booked with the current big release. If I want to see anything else, I've got to weigh the one-hour round-trip drive against a screen that really isn't that impressive.
- There is a nice indie chain in Wyoming called WyoMovies with 7 locations. In the past few years, I made the 3-hour round trip drive to see Jaws and the LotR: EE up there, but 99% of the time, their big screens are booked with the exact same title playing at the Harkins that's only an hour round-trip.
I guess we have to keep in mind that both you and Joe R. live in Colorado, which (apparently, from many posts in the past by him and others) is home to the absolute worst theaters in the country.
Nobody should go to movies there anymore.
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