Jul 03 2005
The Final Reason to Give Up on Going to the Movies
Walking through the front door of a multiplex movie theatre these days is like walking into a crowded video arcade: it’s loud, it’s chaotic, it’s not the place to be if you suffer from migraines. However, as a regular movie-goer, it’s what I’ve come to expect. So I brace myself knowing it’ll be over once I make it into the theatre where, if I’m lucky, I can sit in pure golden silence and read until the movie starts. If I’m not so lucky, I might have to listen to some Top 40 radio station playing through the front speakers. But I can tolerate it, because I love movies. I can even tolerate sitting through three or four commericals and an equal number of trailers before the movie begins.
But yesterday when I walked into the theatre 20 minutes early to get a good seat for “War of the Worlds,” there was an Entertainment Tonight-style show on the screen, projected from a low-resolution video projector, with the volume set to ‘deafening.’ In between the banal interviews with movie stars (and by interviews, I mean 30-second clips), they played regular television commericals — blaring at me through every one of the theatre’s speakers. I thought, “Okay, they’ll turn this off in a few minutes.” But it played for the entire time I was stuck sitting there waiting for the movie to start — 20 minutes! And then I got to sit through the usual number of ads and trailers.
I enjoyed “War of the Worlds” when I finally got to see it, but the price I had to pay (on top of the usual $8 mantinee ticket) was enough to turn me off going to the movies for a long time, maybe for good.
The theatre chain responsible for this awfulness: Empire Theatres. The location: Empire Studio 8 in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The blessed folks who produced the ET-style torture show: Tribute.ca. I saw 50 movies at Empire Theatres last year. I think they just lost my business.
Part 2: How Empire Theatres Lost My Business, an overly-long post which includes the response I got from Empire Theatres.
That pretty much sums up what my last experience was like. But what other options are available in small markets, like Charlottetown or Sudbury? Maybe in larger cities there is more choice between chains and/or indy theaters, but not here or there.
Speaking of movies, have you seen “Black Swan”? Waste of time, except for the scenery.
Wah wah don’t pirate our movies, but instead pay money to have your time wasted watching our commericals for a production you’ve already just paid to watch.
I don’t like to double-pay to watch movies.
So, are you paying for the movie or are you paying for the commercial? I al so heard of a mayor from a big city, I am thinking Chicago, wanted to make theatres post the time of the Ads and the time of the real Movie. That way you would not be subjected to the crap.
I used to be diligent about arriving before the scheduled start time to ensure I didn’t miss any of the movie. I think I’ll start showing up 10-15 minutes late now.
I just sent a more polite version of the above as an email to Empire Theatres. I’ll post their response when it comes in.
its dissapointing when the commercial…(the car one where the kid gets eaten) has more of a plot, drama, humour and story line then the subsequent film….reagarding commercials I agree but hypocritically years ago at Wormwoods out east we would gleely spend our three dollars and watch an hour and a half of commmercials from around the world…they were great, like three minute shorts…funny,dramatic, and dare I say intelligent…yes i love north american “culture”….
Regal Cinemas also perpetuates this awfulness with their own version, called “The Twenty”, heavily laden with advertising by junk food pushers. They even have the chutzpa to exhort you at the end to show up 20 minutes early on your next movie-going outing so as not to miss their next installment. This is not clever 3-minute “shorts” or anything with remotely artistic merit. It is an inane, intrusive, soul-crushing advertainment extravaganza. What part of “I paid my admission fee now leave me the fuck alone” do these people not understand?
Creating a carnival atmosphere (which includes the tabloid entertainment news show I was forced to sit through) has become the winning formula for movie theatres everywhere — so there must be something about it that appeals to the general public.
James Berardinelli talks about how this kind of advertising is destroying the integrity of the movie-going experience in his “ReelThoughts” for July 3/05. I’ll quote him:
I have heard exhibitors argue that they show commericals as a way to avoid raising ticket prices. I can believe that of the $5.50 theater, but it sounds like a lie when voiced by AMC, which consistently has the highest prices on the block. But all of this is belied by the situation at the small Ritz chain (three venues in Philadelphia and one in Voorhees, NJ), which charges $9 for night adult admissions ($6.75 for matinees) and has no commercials. Not one. I spoke to a Ritz manager about this and his response was straightforward: “We don’t want or need them. Sure, they would make some extra money, but why alienate customers? Even if it wasn’t a matter of protecting the integrity of the movie-going experience and maintaining our reputation, the loss in revenue from losing customers would probably exceed what we would get paid to show [commercials].”
Sounds sensible to me. I wonder if and when other theater managers are going to understand this. Or if they won’t care until chains start going under because no one’s going to the movies any more…
I’m confused–where’d the theatre’s response go that I saw in my news reader?
Yeah, Darren, I screwed up. I was trying to make some revisions, and I pressed the wrong button and… anyway, I’ll repost the response later as a separate post — which is what I should have done in the first place.
Phillip