Box Office 2014: Moviegoing Hits Two-Decade Low 400
mrspoonsi writes The number of people going to the movies in 2014 in North America slipped to its lowest level in two decades. According to preliminary estimates, roughly 1.26 billion consumers purchased cinema tickets between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31. That's the lowest number since 1.21 billion in 1995. Year-over-year, attendance looks to be off 6 percent from 2013, when admissions clocked in at 1.34 billion. Admissions have fluctuated dramatically over the years, and particularly since the advent of modern-day 3D, which can skew the average ticket price. Movie going in North America hit an all-time high in 2002, when 1.57 billion consumers lined up, thanks in part to Spider-Man, The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Star Wars: Episode II — Attack of the Clones, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.
blu rays are cheaper than the movie (Score:4, Insightful)
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
vs
$30 to see a movie once in a crowded theater and with crappy 3D unless i'm lucky enough to get a middle seat and then it's a big PITA to go to the bathroom after drinking a gallon of coke in the first hour
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Dude, grow a bladder
Geuss I'm lucky, I can go three hours in a movie on huge beverage (assuming I go before we enter the theater for the previews and the movie itself...
Of course, we went to a theater maybe once or twice in 2014, for Hobbit 3 and... maybe only one unless Hobbit 2 came out early in 2014....
The "movie-going experience" kinda sucks.
Yeah, the huge screen is great, but a lot of the time the sound effects or back-ground music tends to make it hard to hear the actual dialog (and there are no su
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DVRs and YouTube have reduced people's tolerance for unskippable ads.
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Time crunch even moreso.
When you have a job, work a good chunk of the day, have the commute to and from work, plus family obligations, your free time is more precious than ever.
Not to mention people are SICK AND TIRED of being advertised at.
I'm at the point where commercials are a "Do not buy this product!" list rather than a "promotional" tool that they are meant to be.
For the "unskippable" garbage on DVD/BluRays, turn on the player and pop in the disc a few minutes before you even switch the TV to DVD inp
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He doesn't look like an action hero, feeding the average Joe's need to think they themselves could be an action hero?
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There is always some demand for lone-wolf revenge movies. Remember all the Charles Bronson "Death Wish" movies from the 1970s? He also looked like an ordinary guy, living an ordinary life; not at all dissimilar from Liam Neeson.
Many people enjoy seeing vigilante justice, and for some reason they especially enjoy seeing a guy who has been wronged taking out an entire gang of deserving villains (with just a little help from his friends.) They also get to overlook the fact that in normal circumstances we'd
Re:blu rays are cheaper than the movie (Score:5, Insightful)
Going to a movie.
You really should go with someone. Sure you can see a movie alone, it feels really weird.
Movie Tickets cost about $9 - $15 bucks Being that you bring someone you will need to double that.
Even if you are able to cheap out and not get raped by the concession stand. The person you are going with may want something. So that adds $5 - $10 to it.
So you have spend $40 for 2 hours of entertainment, if you don't like the movie then that is a lot of money wasted.
For that money you can get 3-4 months of streaming movies. Where you can watch as much as you want.
If theaters want to improve movie going. They will need to treat their customers as guests.
Cheaper prices concession food. Don't nitpick about people who bring in their own food.
Put restrooms in quick distance from the theater.
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Sure you can see a movie alone, it feels really weird.
Strangely enough, it doesn't feel weird when I'm in a foreign country or out of town. When you think of the movie going experience, with the exception of comedies and perhaps romcoms, you're fully focused on the screen in an independent way so it seems the greatest aspect of what 'feels weird' is the consideration for what perception others may have for 'you' going to the movies by yourself.
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The problem about making the movie concessions cheaper is that is where the theaters make the majority of their money. Upwards of 80% of every dollar spent at the concessions stand is profit for the theater.
Whereas, in the first week of a blockbuster, theaters keep about 10% of the ticket price.
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and then it's a big PITA to go to the bathroom after drinking a gallon of coke in the first hour
Diabeetus, is that you?
I used to take snacks to the movies. Problem solved. Now I don't go to the movies. Problem more solved. Like you, I'd rather buy the Disc. It's cheaper and I can pause, like you say.
But seriously, lay off the coke. It's about the worst thing you can eat, you might as well just shoot up the sugar.
And wait a year (Score:2)
less than $30 i can buy a blu ray with a digital copy redeemable on itunes or ultraviolet
But you have to wait several months and avoid spoilers in the meantime. For example, the film Hop took nearly a year after North American theatrical release to be published on DVD and BD in North America. And most people's audio systems are likely not up to par with that of a theater.
Re:blu rays are cheaper than the movie (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just cost, it's also how far home theaters have come.
20 - 30 years ago, a really nice sounds system and really nice TV couldn't match the quality of a movie. I'm talking about big ass projection TVs that cost thousands of dollars for crappy picture quality, when movie theaters showed movies on actual FILM.
Now, with flat screen HD Tvs under a grand, and amazing surround system also for relatively cheap, we've changed the formula.
Before, I was paying for an experience I couldn't duplicate. Amazing sound, amazing picture quality, on a really big screen.
Now, I can duplicate the experience at home for cheaper. And there are a ton of incentives.
Besides cost:
1. I can drink whatever I want (including beer, wine, and scotch) with unlimited refills.
2. There's never an obnoxious pair of people who won't shut up next to me.
3. If the movie is really thought provoking, and as a group we discuss it, we won't be annoying anyone else.
4. Movies show whenever I want -- I can decide to sit down for a Matrix Marathon at 3am if I want.
5. Every movie I buy, I keep forever. I won't rewatch every movie I buy, but some I find myself going back to time and again. And in the off chance someone ends up stuck at my place (I've had friends need a place to crash because there was construction in their place, or maybe their block lost power in a storm), I can just give them my Apple TV remote and tell them to entertain themselves.
Theaters need to sell a unique experience if they want to get people. (Just look at how many people go for IMAX releases of things like Avatar). But recently there's been no innovation, just a constant increasing of costs for consumers: ticket prices, cost of food, etc.
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Yep, it's really simple - they've pushed the price too high.
If the price were $5 a showing, I'd be there every single week, probably twice a week. Since the price is $12 or so now, which means $24 for my wife and I, it's not worth taking a punt on movies that could be mediocre.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Seriously, the other movie goers don't want to listen to the OP chat with his/her/its friends during the movie....
If your only social outlet is in a dark theater where you're focused on the screen in front of you and not supposed to chat, you are doing it wrong...
As expected... (Score:5, Insightful)
When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
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Most of the movies I've seen lately made me want my time back, let alone the money spent on them.
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Most of the movies I've seen lately made me want my time back, let alone the money spent on them.
That's what I like about streaming movies form Netflix. Once I get to the point in a bad movie where I have had enough, I can just dump it and go onto the next in my queue. I am not compelled to sit all the way through a crap movie.
Re:As expected... (Score:5, Funny)
Star Wars: Episode XXII — Spider-Man & Harry Potter versus The Lord of Clones at A Big Fat Greek Wedding !
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When you keep releasing a slew of poorly written movies, yet continue to demand unreasonable fees, this is the result. People aren't willing to shell out the bucks to see a B grade movie. It's just not worth it anymore.
I'm not some movie-snob either. Most of the movies released have no replay-ability or just left a bad taste in ones mouth (Ender's Game).
Absolutely this!!! I've stopped watching movies, regardless of whether I have the time or the money. Week after week, I see despondent reviews of each week's releases, and shake my head. Also, ticket prices have also gone up, w/o movies getting any better, so that's even more of a reason. For a similar reason, I conscientiously chose not to have a TV at home, although I might change my mind and get one, but only for the sake of connecting it to YouTube, Hulu and DailyMotion
Re:As expected... (Score:5, Informative)
This gets mentioned a lot on Slashdot but, in reality, the number of "good" movies has remained reasonably unchanged each year.
Here are the movies in the IMDB Top 250 grouped and counted by year:
In fact, 2014 (Interstellar, Boyhood, Gone Girl, Guardians of the Galaxy, The Grand Budapest Hotel and X-Men: Days of Future Past) was actually a better year than 2013 (The Wolf of Wall Street, Rush, 12 Years a Slave and Prisoners).
The "prime" year was 1995 but that only resulted in 10 films (Se7en, The Usual Suspects, Braveheart, Toy Story, Heat, Casino, Twelve Monkeys, Before Sunrise, La Haine and Underground).
(Nitpickers will point out that I really should run this over the entire DB and not the Top 250 and all take into account all film ratings - they'd be right, but that's a lot more work which I don't have the time to do).
Re:As expected... (Score:5, Informative)
This gets mentioned a lot on Slashdot but, in reality, the number of "good" movies has remained reasonably unchanged each year.
Here are the movies in the IMDB Top 250 grouped and counted by year:
IMDB ratings have a serious problem as far as new movies are concerned, as the latest movie of any reasonable quality tends to get many people rating it a "10" (which should mean it's perfect). It takes a while before a movie settles down to what its real rating should be. This is caused by the "aging" algorithm and number of required votes per year that IMDB uses. It means that a movie that has a lot of buzz will be listed until everybody stops caring about it and it drops out of the list, even if it has a rating that is technically better than movies in the list.
Likewise, there is no reason for movies in the top 250 to be evenly distributed by year. It's far more likely that good movies should be much older, as being evenly distributed by year implies that this year movies have been good enough to push some other movies out of the top 250, which means that the best movies are getting better, which most people agree isn't true. Even, then, there are a lot a problems with ratings being inflated as time goes by. As little as 5 years ago, a movie could crack the top 250 with less than an 8.0 rating, but now some movies are left off even though they have that same rating.
If you use IMDB info, the "Top 1000 Voters" and "Metascore" are far better indicators of the overall quality of the movie, especially if you take into account the number of "Top 1000" that entered a rating for the movie. Basically, these are people who see and rate a lot more movies than anybody else, so even if their score is high for the movie, if a lot of them never rated it, that says something by itself. For example, Star Wars and The Dark Knight are two movies that have both been around for long enough for everyone to get a chance to see them and vote on them, and have ratings of 8.6 and 8.2 from the top voters, with 930 and 898 votes. Both ratings are close to the overall ratings. On the other hand, The Hunt from 2012 (also old enough for such die hard movie viewers to have seen it) gets a 7.3 (considerably lower than the 8.3 from all voters), but only 421 bothered to see it. Django Unchained from the same year, OTOH, gets 710 votes for a rating of 7.8 (still lower than the 8.5 from all voters, but not as much of a drop). The confidence that the rating on Django Unchained is more accurate is much higher. Even using overall votes, Interstellar has less than half the votes compared to the average of the two movies immediately surrounding it on the list, and as such will eventually fall to where it really belongs.
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Here are the movies in the IMDB Top 250 grouped and counted by year:
Isn't it amazing how the year with the highest box office revenues was tied for 2nd lowest number of movies that showed up in the top 250? (also, from the ones listed in the summary, which all were great revenue producers, only LotR Two Towers made it to the top 250 list) It's almost as if a movie being critically acclaimed (or IMDB user acclaimed) doesn't have a direct relation to how likely people are to go out and pay to see it.
As above plus (Score:2)
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If you're fine with waiting over a year (Score:2)
we know that if we wait two months we'll be able to rent it at Red Box for a dollar.
Not all movies reach Redbox that quickly. Hop took 51 weeks to get to DVD, and then 4 more weeks to get to Redbox.
Economics (Score:5, Insightful)
So movie attendance was at its peak at the height of easy money and is in a local 20-year valley at the bottom of a 60-year workforce participation chart.
Therefore, it must be the Pirate Bay's fault. Q.E.D.
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I think the rise of cheap home theater is why people aren't bothering as much with going to the theater (I stopped going to theaters years ago, my home theater is far more pleasant)
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Pretty much exactly this. In 1998 or so, home theater was exotic and for the well heeled.
Nowadays you can have a decent system for not that much, and larger screen TVs are pretty common.
Unless you like uncomfortable seats, random crowds, and overpriced tickets and food ... why would you?
When X-Men first came out on DVD, it sold more money in retail sales for the DVD than the leading ticket sales in the box office.
This did two things: it made the studios realize how big the demand was for superhero movies
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I've got a big TV from way back (sadly, not LED-backlit) and I got a Sony DTS receiver at the flea market and fixed some solder failures around some relays and now I have halfway decent audio, too. It's amazing how little you can pay for quality speakers used, these days. I've got MTX fronts and some sweet metal-cased cambridge rears and I'm maybe $100 into the whole non-TV part of the system including a blu-ray player.
There's just so much good stuff that other people are treating as crap out there. And I l
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Unless you like uncomfortable seats, random crowds, and overpriced tickets and food ... why would you?
So as not to be spoiled in the year between theatrical release and Redbox.
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Another thought that comes up though, is that maybe that's just a sign of growing up and me owning the TV. When I was in highschool and university, I used to go to the theatre all the time because it was the only place to watch a movie on good equipment. When I was in highschool, the good TV belonged to my parents an
Noise (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't go out to movies because of noise.
I'm sick of hearing people yelling at the TV, parents who won't take the screaming kid out, etc. No thanks, I'll watch it at home on my 60 inch TV with 7.1 sound.
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Movies are crap (Score:2, Insightful)
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3. Why would I want to pay that much in a theater (or theatre) for something I can watch on Netflix, Hulu, Redbox a month or two later for almost nothing.
I can think of a few reasons. For one thing, you might live outside the service footprint of Netflix and Hulu. These include places that can't get cable or DSL, such as rural areas, and countries where Netflix and Hulu have chosen not to operate. For another, it's not "a month or two"; it can be a year for some films. Finally, Klipsch ain't cheap. So it might take a lot of movies for a home surround sound system to pay for itself.
The main issue is (Score:2)
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Unless it's Superman or Ironman. These guys can fly.
Why I stopped going (Score:4, Insightful)
I stopped going to the cinema because of people talking to their mates (usually in any language but English) either because they were bored or couldn't understand what was going on. The second reason was people checking Facebook or something on their phone and causing a distraction.
That said, some movies simply don't work as well on the small screen. I watched Guardians Of The Galaxy a couple of days ago and wished I'd watched it in the cinema instead. The climatic battle at the end didn't feel as epic as it should have.
Provided it gets good reviews, I'll watch the new Star Wars film in the cinema, but as for everything else, I'll rent it off whatever streaming service hosts it.
Re:Why I stopped going (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup, thats my problem with movie theaters lately. They stopped enforcing common decency a long time ago, but overall people would be somewhat decent. There was always the ONE dick who wouldn't shut up, but now its the norm more than the exception. And all those people who just can't stop texting continually (if they're not downright talking on the phone). And if you complain, you're the one who "needs to deal with it".
So as everything else in our society, you just have to isolate yourself (because even if you try to just group up with like minded individuals, someone will slip in just to troll you). And then we wonder why there's such big gaps between various groups in the US...
Good (Score:2)
Hopefully this might convince them to make more movies that are actually worth watching, rather than 'CGI! Then EXPLOSION! LENS FLARE!'
It has to be a damned good movie... (Score:2)
...for me to want to pay to sit in the theatre. With the advent of larger TVs, the "movie theater experience" no longer has a lot going for it -- certainly not enough to justify the price.
I'm old (Score:2)
i'm going to the movies 2x a month at least (Score:4, Interesting)
These last few of years I was signed up for Lovefilm (DVD Delivery) and then Netflix. After a while the convenience was beat by the limited offering and the annoyance of Netflix UK trying quite hard to hide away what's available and what films will be on in the future. Last month, for the first time in years I watched 3 movies at the cinema and this year I'll sign up for a Cineworld £16/month subscription. There's a couple of months in 2015 that won't have very appealing releases but from the list I saw so far, there will be 2 worthwhile films every month, plus those that I will watch now and wouldn't if I had to pay extra. Yes, there will be road traffic to get there and noise from others eating popcorn but I'll be watching current films.
Why would I? (Score:3)
Why would I go to the theater?
Gee, let's see ... I can go to a place where my feet stick to the floor, where I have limited leg room, and the annoying teenager in front of me is texting the whole time.
Or I can buy the Blu Ray, watch it in the comfort of my own basement, which has a reasonable size screen, surround sound, recliners, and the availability of beer.
The home theater experience is now much better in a lot of ways. I used to only go to watch the really big block buster films ... now I just wait 3-4 months until I can buy it and watch it at home. By the time you buy the tickets and the over-priced concession food ... it's not even cost effective any more.
Watching a movie in the cinema these days is no longer an enjoyable experience. Precisely because it isn't as comfortable and under my control as in my own home.
Nobody should be surprised at this ... because in the last 10 years almost everybody has a big screen TV and surround sound. Precisely because the cinema experience is expensive and can be annoying.
I haven't watched a movie in the cinema in several years now, and that's unlikely to change soon.
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LOL ... no, my basement (ok, me and the wife) ... the man cave as I call it.
Pretty much set up for being an office and a media room with a fireplace.
My mother never had such a cool basement. :-P
Yet Adam Sandler still gets work (Score:2)
How is that POSSIBLE????
Quality of expirience is down (Score:3)
About the only exception to this is Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Sadly, they are not available outside of Texas.
Re:Quality of expirience is down (Score:4, Insightful)
Outdated distribution mode (Score:3)
I read somewhere that if the games industry had developed with the same protectionism as films then we wouldn't be able to buy games to play at home before they had had a 6 month exclusivity in the arcades...
People still want to see films, but forcing all films through the cinema is just backwards. The infrastructure currrently exists to release all films for home rental immediately! Big films that benefit from it will still play in cinema, but we simply don't need to push every single film through a centralised viewing venue anymore. Cinemas will still exist but they will be fewer, and for special occasions rather than the only route.
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I read somewhere that if the games industry had developed with the same protectionism as films then we wouldn't be able to buy games to play at home before they had had a 6 month exclusivity in the arcades
Fighting games in the 1990s had this exact release model.
Re:Outdated distribution mode (Score:4, Interesting)
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Yes and no. Hollywood wants same day DVD release, the only thing preventing that is Walmart. As efficient as their distribution system is, it still takes 45 days to get a product onto store shelves. Hollywood doesn't want to risk that leak window.
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Why would hollywood want that? They use a staggered release system so that every potential customer pays as much as possible. Those with money to burn go to the cinema, those on slightly lower budgets have to wait for the DVD, and those who don't spend money on films at all eventually provide their pittance by watching the advertisments when it's shown on TV.
Live theater is better. (Score:5, Interesting)
Once you've bought into the idea of watching recordings, it doesn't matter so much whether you watch them on an enormous screen in a theater or on a computer screen at home. Price and convenience then favor the computer screen.
If you want to put the "human" back in humanities, try live theater. I never used to like live theater because the only options I thought I had were productions in high schools (which are sometimes pretty good but often not as good as films) and fancy travelling productions with hundred-dollar tickets in intimidatingly fancy theaters (which are good, but hardly as casual as a movie). Then I discovered the Shakespeare Tavern [shakespearetavern.com] in Midtown Atlanta, which is a professional group that has cheap ($20!) tickets on Thursdays. Atlanta isn't an especially cultured city overall; if we have something like this, I suspect most other cities will, too.
I've seen six distinct plays at the local theater (and rewatched all of them at least once) and films in movie theaters are no longer the same. Sure, I enjoyed Interstellar---that movie's attitude towards science would go over well on Slashdot---but it tends to use dramatic [manipulative!] music to make you care about the characters. But when you're watching a live production, you care about the characters because they're people---live people. not a hundred feet away! The exchange works both ways; the actors are more animated because they're presenting to a live audience instead of a camera. I tried watching three film versions of Twelfth Night after repeatedly watching it live; none of the film versions even came close to the live one. (Of minor note is that the theater in *my* town doesn't alter or remove anything from the original Shakespeare scripts; your town's troupe may do things differently.)
This post isn't meant as an endorsement of Shakespeare in particular so much as live theater in general. Don't assume that live theater is either too expensive or poorly-done; in Atlanta, at least, you can watch professional actors for the price of two movie tickets. I would encourage everyone to take a look at what their cities have to offer.
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That's the one thing that pirated works can never offer.
Once a performance is recorded, it's "dead". It will be (barring damage) the same performance the 10,000th time as it was the first.
Granted, there are certain things that just cannot be done live and without studio support. And I wouldn't give them up, but the spontaneity - and even the flubs - of a live performance have magic all their own.
Of Course (Score:2)
Why pay to see crap in uncomfortable seats? (Score:4, Insightful)
1. A lot of the movies that are showing are crap (and that is being kind).
2. The cost of my going to a movie and wife along with some munchies, well, I can buy the DVD in a few months for less money.
3. We can pause the movie at any time and take a break or grab some munchies (and not the over-priced crap in the theatre).
4. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
5. We can skip the various 'ads' at the start of the movie. I want to see the movie, not pay to see advertising.
6. I don't have to put up with people talking about the 'good stuff' coming up and spoiling it for me.
7. I don't have to put up with the cell phones going off.
8. Did I mention most of the movies are crap?
We have very comfortable chairs at home and there is no line up to get food, drinks or when we go to the bathroom.
I wait a few months until the DVDs or Blue Ray versions come out. I then wait until friends and family give their feedback and then I may buy a copy, but, I usually wait a few more months and the video store discounts the movie. I have hundreds of videos, but, over 95% I have not paid more than $10 for. There are exceptions, but, they are for movies in a series that I (or my wife) love and want to see the next one quickly.
Again, did I mention most of the movies are crap?
Cost and Experience (Score:4, Interesting)
IMHO, ticket sales are tanking due to the cost of tickets and the movie going experience. I'd pretty much stopped going to see movies in the theater because I was sick of paying a lot of money for a terrible experience at my local Regal. Starting with the supposed show time, you'd get about 15-20 minutes of commercials, the MPAA PSA that accuses you of being a thief, a couple of trailers, and finally, a half hour after it was supposed to start, the movie. Then, during the movie, half the audience would be jabbering away, cell phones going off all the time, and even people shining laser pointers at the screen. And the theater wouldn't do anything to try to stop it.
Now that I have an Alamo, I'm starting to go to movies again because it's completely different. Tickets for regular showings are cheaper than the matinee showings were at Regal and the experience is FAR better. Add to that good food and drink, and it's wins all around.
Cost... (Score:2)
Today's movie theaters are crap (Score:2)
- The picture quality is ridiculously bad , I have seen only one movie theater years ago where the image was reasonably good;
- Popcorn is ridiculously expensive and bad;
- The sound is always too high and always exaggerates in the bass (ohhh explosions!);
These days I can buy a big quality TV at an affordable price, a home theater and so I can watch the movie I want whenever I want and with hot, quality po
Cinema (Score:2)
I don't do the cinema. I can count on my fingers how many times I've been in my life.
I'm not going to pay to sit next to a bunch of talking, chomping idiots who have no idea what the films about and ask stupid questions, then get up to use the loo at the critical point of the film, in a dirty, sticky seat with half-hour of trailers before I can watch a (usually substandard but not always) movie, having paid what could have bought me the DVD over and over and over and over again just to get in and buy a dri
3D (Score:2)
You know what would get me going again? No 3D! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what it is and maybe it's not the same everywhere else, but on both our Cineplex Odeon and Landmark Cinemas screens at three theatres, the action on a 3D movie is blurry and not at all as enjoyably clear as the normal version. It took weeks for Guardians of the Galaxy to have a non-3D release at our closest (15 away) location and by that point all the excitement was minimized to the point where we figured we'd just wait to watch it at home since it was downgraded to a smaller cinema room with no 3D and lesser quality audio. If we have 60" TV at home and 5.1 audio, why watch the movie at the higher price for a lesser experience when I could buy the blu ray for the cost of 2 tickets?
We also have AVX options from time to time and I actually prefer this and prefer the option to pick a preferential seat but this higher cost option may not be on par with what people want to experience.
So in summary, if you want more people heading to the movies, drop all the gimmicky BS and just give people the movies or at the very least, get rid of 2 x 3D screenings and have 1 x 3D and 1 x normal big screen with good audio.
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My wife and I stopped going to the cinemas a year or so ago because every movie we wanted to see, there was no option within a 45 minute drive to see these movies in anything but 3D.
I also dislike 3D movies. The goofy, uncomfortable glasses. The higher ticket prices. The fuzziness. Blech.
The good news is, Hollywood is slowly but surely discovering (for the second or third time) that people don't like 3D movies. You probably won't have to put up with them for much longer.
Make better movies (Score:3)
Make better movies. Yep, that's it. Imagine. Better movies. I was standing in the cold in front of a Redbox just yesterday. I've not seen a movie in months & there was still nothing that I wanted to see. Just crap movies. They even had sequels of crap movies!
Good thing there are still writers writing new good books to read. Kina makes me wonder why we still have good writers & good actors, but they can't seem to make good movies.
There's a simple explanation for this (Score:2)
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it can't be. It can't be that going to the movies has become some endeavor you have to financially plan before setting out on it (with parking, food and all you'd be lucky to get out below 20 bucks per person). Let alone that people have less money in a depression as well and movies is one of the FIRST things to cut back at (seriously, if your choice is to eat tomorrow or to see a movie tonight...). It can't be that we don't want to "enjoy" our movie in the presence of people who grew up in a barn. It can't be that we get headaches from the "invisible" flickering and whatnot introduced to keep us from using our cellphones to record the movie. It can't be that the script of the average movie fits on a legal page and the renarration of the content fits easily on a post-it.
It must be due to sharing platforms. Yeah, that's why.
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Informative)
In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Insightful)
A loaf of bread cost 5-10 cents during the depression, so 5 cents for a movie ticket was inexpensive. If movie tickets still cost the same as a loaf of bread today, theater attendance rates would be much better.
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That would mean movies would cost like a buck or two?
Even I'd go for that price.
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, $0.05 in 1930 would be $0.70 today.
Even calculating from 1985 when prices were around $4/ticket inflation should have only brought them to $8.78 - the last movie ticket I bought was $19.99 to watch the Hobbit on New Years (horribly disappointing). Funny thing about it though - the audience was smaller than the $6 tickets to see It's a Wonderful Life which was nearly sold out.
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That would mean movies would cost like a buck or two? Even I'd go for that price.
I wouldn't. Remember "dollar theaters" from the 1990s? They were built on that exact premise. It turned out the audience was primarily a bunch of noisy kids who could afford to go at that rate, so they went to the theater to socialize instead of watching the movie. They had all the manners and polish of a herd of goats.
Even though the dollar theaters had much higher attendance numbers than the first-run theaters, the local ones went out of business. I think it's due to the amount of cleaning staff they
Tickets the cost of a loaf of bread (Score:4, Interesting)
I loved going to theaters back when tickets were the cost of a loaf of bread. I had one growing up.
Back in Fargo, ND in the mid-to-late 1990's, there was a business owner who built the Fargo Cinema Grill. Tickets were $1.50. You went in, sat down, ordered food before movie started (or after if you arrived late), got it about 15-30 minutes into the show, and enjoyed a great meal with your movie. They served all your standard bar & grill food...pizza, burgers, fries, wings, popcorn...plus tall sodas and beer. There was plenty of space to eat, sit and relax. The community loved it, and, for a while, it was a viable business. Unfortunately, the local commercial theaters in town that were owned by CEC Theaters [cectheatres.com] had some kind of monopoly rights on movie showings with the big studios and wouldn't let the CG show a film until after CEC dropped it in their theaters. CG couldn't get enough customers to watch movies in their theater when the movies were already out on DVD. They closed up shop in '99.
While they were open, we always had a reason to want to go to the theater. It was a restaurant and theater in one. In fact, when you think of it as a restaurant instead of a theater, people go out to eat all the time, so why not enjoy a movie while you eat? I wish the idea caught would have caught on with CEC, but they said once in a newspaper article, "That's just not our business model."
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In the various documentaries I have seen regarding the First Great Depression, the movies were regarded as an inexpensive form of entertainment. Admission for a nickel ($.05). Granted, those were the days before television, so if you wanted to watch something, you had to go to the theaters. During the Second Great Depression, folks can stay at home to get a similar level of entertainment.
Agreed. Back then, only the middle-class or better had radios, and TV didn't exist. Also consider that with no competition and even in good times, going to the movies used to be a massive social event. Folks would dress up in their best for a Friday-night premiere showing, much like the upper crust did when they went to the opera, ballet, etc. Also consider that back then, going to the movies was very similar to what their grandparents did when they in turn went to a vaudeville show. You went to see and be
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The kids went to the Saturday Matene, which was another big event.
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I assume you didn't read the article? it doesn't mention sharing but does say this year's movies basically sucked (transformers, spiderman 2) or underperformed (mockingjay) and the only beacon of light was Guardians of the Galaxy.
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Depends on what movies you are after, surely?
I enjoyed the final Hobbit film, but aside from that both the Alan Turing and the Stephen Hawking films were ones I would recommend to friends.
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Informative)
To build off of that, from what I have read, the 2 main factors are:
1. Quality of the movies – or lack there off. If there are 10 quality movies in a year, people will go out and see 10 movies. If there are 2 quality movies, people will go out and see 2. Entertainment dollars are flexible.
2. Improved quality of home theaters, Video On Demand, and TV / cable shows. Why spend $10 to watch a romcom on the big screen when you can spend less to watch it at home. Some films demand to be seen on the big screen. Others not so much. Plus some long format TV shows are doing things that film can't do. Game of Thrones is a popular example.
For myself, I go to 2 or 3 full price films each year – and only because I think the film benefits from seeing it in IMAX, 3D, so something along those lines. I will see another 5 to 10 films at the local cheap seats theater, where my wife and I can see a movie and have pop and popcorn for under $10. And that is more of an excuse to get out of the house rather than anything else. Everything else is on the home theater.
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:4, Insightful)
I think another major factor is that people no longer consume content according to the strict and narrow release windows that content producers prefer.
DVD, DVR, on-demand streaming, binge watching, etc have immunized us against the hype industry that got people to line up for the midnight showings of new blockbuster releases.
As soon as we got comfortable with "we'll see it... whenever", well, game over.
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That's pretty much the premise of the article.
It's hard to put my finger on it, but something seems to be missing from that argument.
I think if you replace "Everybody" with "The people who still care to see movies in theatres", it clarifies the problem. Yes, there does appear to be an interesting trend in that demographic which concentrates opening earnings to a much narrower t
Re:Are people sick of the MPAA? (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact Alamo a few years back threw out a seemingly drunk individual for texting and turned it into a pre-movie PSA [youtube.com].
Re:The same old fucking tiring storylines (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood doesn't seem to be able to come up with new stuffs
I keep hearing it over and over again, but it's just not true - It's that people don't want to go watch 'new stuffs.'
Go to http://www.rottentomatoes.com/ [rottentomatoes.com] and look at new movies movies & new DVDs that were 'certified fresh' for 2014. Tons and tons of new stuff, all rated as good.
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Re:It's FUCKING EXPENSIVE and the theatre is ANNOY (Score:4, Interesting)
The last time I went to see a movie, I spent considerably more for my regular movie ticket, a popcorn, and a coke than I did for a 5th-row seat on Metallica's "And Justice For All" tour 25 years ago. There is something very wrong with that (aside from the fact that Metallica has since went to shit).
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I can see that and besides Master of Puppets and And Justice for All were the very peak of the genre. How can you out heavy metal either of those 2 albums? There was no where else to go except a different direction and the tides were turning with grunge anyway.
Re: Metallica had a movie, too (Score:2)
Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that matters (Score:5, Interesting)
Lol
It still fits, especially when you consider that, instead of putting the blame where it rightly belongs (mostly folks watching movies at home via PPV/Netflix/iTMS/etc), you just know the fsckers are going to shout the "P" word and demand that BitTorrent be made illegal or somesuch.
Personally, I think it has to do with a lot of factors, even outside of the Netflix effect; chief among them is that most movies sucked pretty hard this year, with very few good ones coming out. The same old formulaic bullshit just isn't going to pull in the ducats, you know?
To top that off, I noticed something else: There are some damned good (and compelling) shows coming out of television these days. It used to be that TV had crappy SFX and production values, while the movies had the best-of-breed in SFX, acting, production, etc. Nowadays, you can rarely tell the difference in many cases - when you have masterful series coming out of the networks which have nearly the same cinematic and production quality of the studios, then why bother with whatever the studios have to offer? There's still the adverts in most cases (outside of HBO/Cinemax/etc), but there are a zillion technologies which can neatly get around that, so...
Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that matters (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, the quality of your home theater is pretty damn good these days. When I was a kid we had a 24-inch low-def tube with two front-facing speakers. There's a huge difference in the experience between watching that little thing and seeing Jurassic Park in the theater. But today? Everybody's got a 50-inch HD flat panel and 5.1 (or better) surround. Nobody can argue the 24-inch tube was a "better experience" than the theater. But today...eh. For an awful lot of things I'd prefer to watch it at home anyway. Plus my couch is more comfortable than the theater seats, I can pause it when I need to use the bathroom, rewind if I missed something, have a beer, and popcorn costs $0.25 instead of $8.
And it's not like you have to wait that long. Used to be you had to wait a year or more after it left theaters for something to show up at Blockbuster. But these days? Biggest movie of the year was Guardians of the Galaxy. Theater release: August 21. Digital download available November 18th. Blu-ray December 9th. There isn't that feeling that, "hmmm, I'd like to see this movie, and if I don't go to the theater it's going to be a year before I can..." Today, if you miss it in theaters you'll see it at home in 3 months.
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All that plus, when you watch at home, you see it on your schedule without waiting in line, you don't have to listen to other people talking to each other, you don't have to be disturbed by someone else's cell phone, you don't have to listen to crying babies or whining kids, you don't have to have the quiet parts in your movie interrupted by thunderous booms from the theater next door, you aren't going to get stuck behind a tall person blocking your view, no parking problems, the floor isn't all sticky.
I ha
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Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that matters (Score:5, Insightful)
There certainly have evolved some rather sad trends. Average shot length in Hollywood films has plunged to the point that some films seem more like a jumble of barely coherent vignettes. I watch a Hitchcock film from the 1950s or a Sergio Leone film, and you see these incredibly long takes. I'm thinking specifically of the final standoff at the graveyard in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, or the even more drawn out opening railway station scene from Once Upon A Time In The West. Men like Hitchcock and Leone were bold directors who made highly commercial films that challenged the viewer, and they weren't the only ones. Can you imagine The Godfather, or even moreso The Godfather II being made today?
You're right. Filmmakers, from the writers to the directors to the cinematographers to the editors and other post-production teams have become incredibly lazy, despite having budgets in some cases that would made the great filmmakers of past generations spin. A movie like Psycho, for instance, was made with Hitchcock's TV crew, and not his usual movie team. The awful remake probably cost, in adjusted dollars, ten times as much, and, apart from any other flaws, the actual quality of the filmwork was dreadful.
Good movies are still being made, some on budgets so low that a shoestring would be an improvement, but mainstream Hollywood is just turning into one homogeneous steaming pile of dreck.
Re:News for Nerds, Stuff that matters (Score:4, Interesting)
I watched Seven Brides For Seven Brothers recently. What a wonderful film; the technicolor cinematography so warm, the dancing sequences, particularly the fight at the barnraising, just absolutely astonishing. No CGI needed there, just lots of rehearsal and some stunning choreography.
Is it just me or did some of those Technicolor musicals just some of the most beautiful films ever made? Even if you don't like the songs and dancing, just the look of the films is extraordinary.
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it's just you
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And millions like him, in his age group. The movies are different; the thing that stays the same is that old people have always, and will always, say that "it was better back in my day!" or even the days before they were kids.
You can call this point of view flamebait or trolling if you want, as some old mod did earlier today, but the fact is this: the stalest cliche on the planet is that old people don't like what young people are listening to or watching on a screen, whatever the size of that screen happe
Re:price tripled, quality dipped (Score:5, Funny)
What, you mean you don't want to see "Iron Man vs. Ant Man vs. The Fantastic Four While Spiderman Wacks Off In a Corner 2: Rise of the Who-Gives-A-Fuck"?
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why the fuck would I go to a movie theater?
I went to the cinema to watch Flash Gordon recently. It's a good experience watching a cult classic with dedicated fans. Then afterwards, the actual real living director came up on the stage in front of the screen for a live ,in-person interview with audience questions.
The 50" screen doesn't really compare. Neither are the seats sticky.