https://variety.com/2024/film/columns/where-have-all-the-cinema-lovers-gone-deadpool-wolverine-tar-1236108202/
The summer blockbuster season proved that the movie audience is still there. But where have all the cinema lovers gone?
People who use the word "Cinema" over "Movies" are finding not much to like in your Deadpool/Twisters/insert big franchise here.
The last film that excited them was Oppenheimer.
Im in the UK - I don’t believe we have AMC. And I havent seen a locally run theatre in a long time
I've got one near me - I went to it as a nipper and it is now community-run and lovingly restored. They're even working on bringing the wurlitzer back to life.
No.
The very last time I was in a theater, the woman ahead of me freaked out because she found bugs crawling on her. Movie off, lights on; the chair she was in was covered in lice.
That got me thinking a lot about the environmental conditions of movie theater seats: large crowds of a cross section of society, rotating multiple times a day. And given seat could have had four different people sitting in it by the late night showing. And that, seven days a week. Even if they completely fumigated the entire theater between showings (which they don't), then you'd only be trading a potential infestation with exposure to chemicals likely to increase your cancer risk.
Nope. No thank you. A decent big screen OLED and sound system, and I'm perfectly happy to wait until I can stream the movie. Plus, you pay once vs once per person.
If I were you I’d do something to put an end to this line of thinking or you’ll wind up never leaving your house again.
Haven't been to the movies since covid and no plan to return ever again. Sit in a room with a bunch of strangers and risk getting infected? Fuck that. Most of the people I know that got covid got it from the movies. Hard pass
we kinda need to separate the artwork from the activity.
i absofucking love movies, but if i never stepped into a 'movie theater' again i would be losing nothing.
Last time I went to the cinema it was a small screen, and had a bunch of teens just taking the piss. It's to be expected at this point, but it really compromises the experience of going to the cinema. They ended up getting shouted at and they eventually behaved, but for a movie with a fairly quiet first few scenes they wouldn't stop with shitty one-liners, saying how they'd fuck the lead actress, and throwing their food at the screen.
This is what I pay to go to the cinema for? When I saw Spectre there were a group of teens taking photos with the flash on, and laughing constantly. Entitlement and selfishness are what ruin the cinema experience for most people. Then things like the hygiene of others etc - being in a hot cinema with someone who hasn't bathed recently and is just stinking of a few days of BO is really off-putting lol.
It's expensive, often less comfortable than my own home, and I like theatre in which the crowd plays a part in the experience, in movies the crowd is often detrimental to the viewing rather than the other way round. Additionally upkeep of a lot of the movie theaters near me is dismal and the cost to benefit ratio of waiting to stream the same movie in my own home as many times as I want says no. There is the possibility of me buying a ticket to support a movie I'm really interested in but I'm probably not going to actually watch the movie.
It's expensive, often less comfortable than my own home, and I like theatre in which the crowd plays a part in the experience,
This is why I don't understand the "big action movies need a cinema, small comedies you can watch at home" argument. My home theatre can replicate the big-screen action experience just fine, but a comedy with a crowd is immediately 35% funnier.
Back in the ’90s, when the blockbuster age was in full swing, with the independent film revolution happening right alongside it, I knew who I was rooting for on a weekly basis. I’ll confess that I sometimes thought of popcorn-movie audiences as the “bad guys,” and the audiences for adventurous indie and foreign films as the “good guys.” The bad guys kept the engine of escapism whirring. But the good guys helped to sustain cinema as an art form. That may sound snobby or unfair, but it’s how I thought of it.
I am not sure where I fit into that (snobby and unfair) narrative. I go at least twice a week and watch most of the big movies and the majority of genre films. I'll also try and watch any foreign-language films that catch my interest, even though quite a few are only shown in a slightly more distant and inconvenient to get to multiplex.
Am I someone who loves the cinema the most? Dunno.
There's no particular reason a 1.5-3 hour self-contained video narrative that rewards your undivided attention needs to go away, but "two people talking in a room" doesn't need to be larger than life. The people with big TVs who are still going to Wolverine and Deadpool are doing so because making action choregraphy and explosions and shit as loud as possible makes it more appealing to them.
Marriage Story benefits from something more than a phone screen, sure, but how much more than a 55" TV and a soundbar is worth the other inconveniences of going to a movie theater?