I'm surprised too, that seems way high. I was thinking 5% at most.

I'm not american but I haven't been for over 20 years. Whats the point of paying extortionate ticket prices to sit in a smelly theatre with a floor covered in popcorn and gum with the usual obligatory noise makers in the audience to watch a film that'll be out on streaming - or for us old timers DVD - in 6 to 12 months anyway?

I'm an American living in Egypt. Here in New Cairo at the richest mall, I pay 170 EGP ($3.25) for a movie ticket, 20 EGP ($0.38) for 500 mL of water, and 100 EGP ($2.00) for a large popcorn.

What about you???

People don't want to pay $$$$ to have Current Thing preached at them.

I think I went to 1 or 2 last year. Most films I weight is it worth the cost of going, dealing with parking, all the fees just to buy a ticket... often I do not care enough and rather wait for it to hit VOD or a streaming service.

I enjoy going to a movie theater too. Rather my wife does, and I like going with her. But there hasn't been anything worth seeing for adults. We are into action/dramas for adults but it has all been horror movies or family movies or superhero movies. We enjoyed Black Bag, and F1 (as much as I didn't want to like F1). I went to Wicked as a family thing but refused to go to the second one as I didn't feel it did a good job of reproducing the "world of Oz" and I'm not that into musicals anyway. That is l

Yeah, I saw that statistic and wondered what the problem was. That still sounds like a really good business to be in.

I was one of the people who did go a movie theater last year. After I threw enough ice cubes, he finally put the damn phone away. I don't know who he was, just that he was old enough for me to be disappointed that he couldn't put it away.

My last time going to a theater was Holtsville, NY and some dude changed his kids diaper in the aisle, then tucked the dirty one against the wall far from himself. I'm good watching movies at home now.

In my entire life, I've only been to, as best I recall, three movies where there was an intermission. One was a Star Wars/Empire double feature, one was the theatrical release of three episodes of The Chosen, and I just found out the third was in my imagination. When I saw Glory in 1989, it was the first time I had to get up and go pee during a movie. No intermission.

Oh! Wait a minute, didn't the Lord of The Rings movies have intermissions? Maybe my count was short by 3.

> I miss the intermission

Me too. I miss a lot of what made early theaters special: crowded rooms, decorated auditoriums. A lot of people like the recliners but I think they take away from the experience, making it feel like you are in a sparsely populated room even when most of the seats are filled. A rush to refill concessions at intermissions is another one of those experiences that may not be obviously desirable, but I think it would add to the atmosphere. And it would sell more concessions to boot. Win / win.

> Movie length has gotten so long that they need to bring back the intermission

I have to really want to see a movie to see one 2.5 hours long in a theater. Once the movie hits 3+ hours I'm watching it at home.

Doesn't help that inside the typical 3+ hour slog is a good 2 hour movie waiting for the fluff to be edited out.

> No thanks. I have a big screen and the Internet, I can pour a drink and make popcorn, and my couch is big enough to seat the people I want to share the screen with.

Which probably explains it.

The 53% are city dwellers - think New York and LA and likely apartment and other high-density living arrangements.

Big screen? Doesn't work in a shoebox. And big sound? Forget it - the neighbors will be banging on the walls.

If you live in a suburban neighborhood where you need a car to do basic errands, sure it makes sense to question why go to the theatres. If you live in a shoebox apartment because that's all that's affordable, then a theatre, expensive as it is, is better than the 50" TV and TV speaker experience.

(Of course, old and cranky describes why you're living in your house in suburbia. And why spending seems bass-ackwards. It's because when you were younger, housing was cheap, and luxuries (laptops, TVs, etc) were much more expensive. These days, housing is basically unobtainium, but luxuries are cheap - a nice laptop, a nice phone, etc., cost way less today than they ever did. )

I share your sentiments. Haven't been a regular movie goer for at least 30 years. When I saw Avatar in theater the sound was painfully loud. I wrote letters complaining about it to the theater chain, the distributor and James Cameron's company. Only heard back from the theater chain with a reply that couldn't even get the details of theater where I saw it right. The ticket prices have rise beyond what I care to pay and I can't tolerate large amounts of sugary soda and that fake butter flavored popcorn anym

Because that big screen is AWESOME!

I like going to the movies, I just don't like the expense, the ads, or most movies. When the Marvel movies were still good, they were great on the big screen. Dune was fantastic.

Invest in Miracle Ear. Theaters must be catering to the headphones at max volume crowd. The last movie I saw was Nosferatu and it was loud enough to require earplugs.

Thinking back, 95% of the films I've seen in theaters the last 20 years have been specticle films (action/sf: marvel, star wars, dune) where it's fun to be overwhelmed by light and sound.

The other 5% are offbeat films like Wes Anderson or Coen Brothers, where I want to support the film makers. Sadly, judging by the almost empty theaters (nice experience for us) is that most folks aren't going to theaters for such films.

The sound was crisp, the picture clear.

No it wasn't. Flickering image that after a few runs of the through the projector was full of scratches. Optical audio going with the same.

Move to digital (audio first, picture more recently) has significantly improved the audiovisual quality.

The largest problem I have with movies and pretty much any media these days is the mixing. For a long time, actors came from theater background, they articulated their lines clearly and the dialogue was also usually mixed with hig

I'm 48 and have almost no memory of what you describe. Ushers? Curtains? When I was very little, maybe?

I’m amazed you wrote that much and avoided the word “woke”. Hollywood is doing just fine. It’s the theaters having attendance problems. And yes Hollywood was always woke you just weren’t consuming right wing propaganda back then. First Blood is pretty woke. A war veteran with long hair suffers PTSD and is hassled by the town cops. Dog Day Afternoon is about a bank holdup so a man can get his male partner a sex change. Midnight Cowboy is another one. Dirty Harry is about a cop who realizes he’s gone too far and throws his badge into the river. All woke stuff.

I'm waking up from your coma. Movie theaters have been like they are now since mid 1990s at least.

Also the sound is better then it's ever been if you're in a good modern theater. The reason the sound was crisp is your younger and you had better hearing. I'm not saying that to insult you that's just what aging does and this is a website for old farts.

I will give you the advertisements. They have gotten freaking insane. It's one thing to have to show up 10 minutes after start time to actually see your

Date tip: dinner first, then a movie.

Do they schedule movies around prayer times?

In the UK I have a Cineworld Unlimited card so I don't pay per movie - just a flat rate of 12.99 GBP ($17.72). In practice it probably works out around the same as the tickets in Egypt given I go > 5 times a month. It's very cheap leisure compared to most things *if* you have the card.

This happened at the Glasgow Film Festival in 2013. We had a screening of 'Cloud Atlas' (which iirc was a very recent movie then) and the hard drive had been delivered and plugged in, but the distributor had given the unlock key for the wrong time. It took about an hour to track down the person in Los Angeles (mid-afternoon in Scotland, early morning there) who could issue a new key.

I just add half an hour to the start time.

> Its just a better experience at home.

I think this is the essential truth.

But even so, that still leaves theaters a niche: they're an out-of-the-house activity, when you explicitly want to leave the house for some reason. (e.g. house AC ain't keeping up with the summer temps, going stir-crazy from always being at home (especially if you WFH), or even just needing to get the fuck away from That Other Person for a while even though you love them.)

You've decided to leave the house: now what? There are lots of o

Sounds like you're triggered. Exactly how many girls have kicked your ass?

JFC, we get it. just yell WOKE HURT ME and close your account.