I went to see "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" at the theater in 2019. I like Tarantino.

The action movie in then next theater bled a lot of sound into the one I was in, making the quieter parts hard to hear. The exit sign cast a red glow on too much of the lower left corner of the screen, and the picture was too dim. I think there was a blown bass driver too, that rattled.

And I'm like, pay extra for a shitty experience? My HT is just a 65" Sony A1E OLED and a 5.1 system with Denon AVR, Paradigm Reference V1 and V2 speakers, and a Paradigm Seismic 12 sub. Not cheap and sorta higher end than a lot, but also not an 80"+ screen and full Atmos setup either.

I still buy 4K UHD discs because they cost only a little more than buying the movie digitally and I get a free digital copy that Apple TV can play in 4K. Plus I have the disc forever. I do not like paying for a license that can be revoked in the future, or the publishing company can go out of business. But I stream-rent most stuff that I haven't seen first.

I've been told that the ticket money goes to the movie company and the theater lives on the concessions. I don't know if this is true but regardless, I haven't been in years. Too much content to stream.

The theater owner I mentioned earlier told me that 100% of the first two weeks went to the movie company and the theater started getting 10% the third week, 20% the fourth week, and so on. He then told me had to agree to show each film for a particular number of weeks and with only two screens he took a beating with that Spielberg classic, Howard the Duck.

My boss’s father had the only theaters in town for a pretty long time. They were what brought the family to the dance. Went on to banking, real estate, etc.. The father told me years ago it was the concessions that made the money….
They got out of the theater business a few years back.
I might go to a movie again if there is someone I like to support like Denzel Washington, Clint Eastwood but other than that, I can wait to watch it at home. The popcorn is better, the butter is real, I can drink my wine and there are no friggin idiots in front of me with their phone in their face!

Shitty business models is what's killing movie theaters. $10-$20 per ticket and another $20 per person for drink, popcorn, and 1 small candy? 2 people could kill a $100 bill quick. All you'll have at the end was a sore back from sitting in shitty chairs, sticky shoes, and a headache from the annoyingly loud Transformers movie on the next screen (my last movie theater experience anyways). I'm doing just fine grabbing a Redbox disc once in a while and streaming everything else. No screaming crotch goblins or millennials checking their twatface instawhore accounts every 3 minutes in my living room, so there's that too

There are a few drive in theaters that are doing ok. You are not subjected to cell phones, the behavior of unruly teenagers and adults and you can bring your own snacks. Acutually a better experience.

Going out to the movies continues to be a hard sell for an older demographic, of which I am very definitely a part. I have a great 65" OLED TV and Sonos surround sound system, so I'm content to wait for everything I might want to see to become streamable. The movie theater industry has not yet figured out how to overcome that reluctance, and it probably won't be able to until if/when new technology allows theaters to offer an experience that can't be closely approximated at home.

My wife and I most recently went to the movies to see West Side Story back when it opened -- it takes that level of movie event to get us to consider going and there's a scarcity of that type of content. My wife found the theater sound to be uncomfortably loud and I didn't feel like the entire movie experience was all that much better than it would have been if we had waited to watch it at home. But that was the rare movie we wanted to see sooner rather than later.

Now that Covid restrictions are relaxed, I suspect parents have gone back to dropping off at the movies carloads of pre-driving-age adolescents, for whom the experience continues to be a socializing rite of passage. At least, I remember how important it was to my daughter back when she was too young to date one-on-one. It was like dating on training wheels.

I think the movie industry is also relying on young males to repeatedly see the superhero franchise films.

The Elks Theater in downtown Rapid City is still going strong. Built in 1911 with many renovations and improvements since!

https://elkstheatre.com/

They were running on borrowed time even before the pandemic happened. I agree with the cinephiles that movies are best viewed in a theater, but people are just too disgusting nowadays to want to share the same oxygen as them.

I can not remember the last time I was in a movie theater ... has to be at least 25 years ago.

Guess I am selfish in wanting my own elbow space, not having to look around someone else's head and not listen to people chattering during the movie.

After breaking my tailbone in the mid-late 70s it is difficult for me to sit totally still and thus I fidget around a bit. Also, I want to take a bathroom break or get more popcorn or beverage without missing parts of the movie.

Now I have a big flat screen that I watch wearing bluetooth headphones so as not to disturb the ladies watching in the other room.

My movie life is golden ... no need for theaters.

I did jobs in Las Vegas around 3 or 4 times a year, always stayed in Sam's Town when I was there. They have a bunch of movie theaters there and offer free popcorn to seniors as well as cheap tickets so Mrs. Flash and I went to one movie each time we were there.

Don't think I ever saw more than a dozen people in the theater.

They have failed to implement policies to eradicate smartphone use in a dark theater. They’ve also increased ticket prices, concessions have always been too costly, and it’s just not a big deal experience to young folks anymore. I’ve talked to them. They state they can just watch it on their phone. What has happened to America is every little person out there think they are somebody, a superthar! It’s all about them, their social media pages, etc. They are unable to turn their attention, fully, to something else, for just a few hours. In their minds it’s all about them. So talking, loud eating, and smartphone use. Many do not give a fuck about strangers, at all, it’s all about them.

I quit going in 2019 and rebuilt my HT will all new stuff, even seating. The phone use and ADHD behavior killed it for me. I had already been annoyed when they were basically serving full meals. You sit down to watch a movie and the couple next to you has a full pizza, full order of chicken fingers. I’m like what the fuck is this? You here to watch a film or eat dinner for fuksakes. Snacks, have always been part of movies. Popcorn, sweets, even nachos or a hot dog. But when the couple next to you has an appetizer, pizza, chicken fingers, the smell is overwhelming and not what I’m accustomed to when watching a new release film I’ve been eager to see.

Let them all burn down. Please, lease just keeping making 4k discs so I get full audio. Streaming audio quality is shit.

quote:

Originally posted by old dino:
I can not remember the last time I was in a movie theater ... has to be at least 25 years ago.

Same for us.

My wife and I went to one or two movies together after we were married. Both experiences were so unenjoyable we never went back again.

We don't have a real big screen for the HT setup in the family room (55 in.), but it's big enough for us.

It's unlikely we'll ever go to a movie theater again.

At home I have a large screen and can choose from a very large selection of movies and watch at any time I want. I can pause, rewind, fast forward, adjust the volume, and turn on captioning. Popcorn and soft drinks are virtually free. No crowds, no sticky floors, no people talking on phones. I don't have to drive. Why would I go to a theater?

If you told me 10 years ago the final time I would see a movie in theatre was summer 2018, I would have thought I died that year.

Now, I can't imagine ever wanting to further waste my time being shamed by the "films" they show.

I haven’t been inside a theater since at least 2019. on top of the fact nothing has come out I want to see I can see Almost anything from the comfort of my living room on my 80” ULtra high def. I can put it on pause and use the can and not miss anything.

I may go see top gun 2 in the theater if it ever finally comes up.

Last time I went was when my wife wanted to see "Life of Pi," so that was probably around 2012.

quote:

Originally posted by Eponym:
At home I have a large screen and can choose from a very large selection of movies and watch at any time I want. I can pause, rewind, fast forward, adjust the volume, and turn on captioning. Popcorn and soft drinks are virtually free. No crowds, no sticky floors, no people talking on phones. I don't have to drive. Why would I go to a theater?

Exactly ... !

Had to check, my last 'movie theater' experience was Avatar 2009.

I would have loved the movie in an early era of myself.

I could have endured the loudtish crowd in an earlier version of myself.

I used to like to go to the movies. It was a date night thing for me and my wife.

The pandemic killed that for us. Know that the theaters are open again, I have no desire to start going again.