Art and Culture # 124: The Death of the Movie Going Experience
Much has been studied as to what has made people not go to the movies anymore. Generally, there are studies, but this is more of a personal anecdote, so it will only reflect the perspective of sitting in the theater, watching the trailers, getting ready to watch the movie, and have a fun or interesting experience.
Movies were always part of my upbringing, even though I took to reading around 16 years old. My earliest movie experience in the theater was Beauty and the Beast. It was like being warped inside the boldest fairy tale you could possibly imagine. For my younger self, I was so intimidated by the Beast, but it makes me remember why I sympathized with anti-hero’s because they were part way loners. Much like Travis Bickle whose figure in society didn’t matter. Driving a taxi after surviving the Vietnam war. The way he couldn’t talk to his date, and taking her to a dirty movie, because he couldn’t articulate how he felt towards her. The way the movie put me into Travis’s head with Paul Schrader’s brilliant writing about “god’s lonely man.”
But being inside a theater is a perplexing notion. Nobody in 2025 has the luxury to go to a movie without putting a dollar cost to it. The pure act of sitting inside a movie theater, paying a baby sitter to watch the kids, while the “adults” have a date.
For me, it was always a lonely experience. Sitting inside the theater with no one to watch with. For me, being alone in a theater watching both Steve Mcqueen’s Shame, about a sex addict who can’t control his addiction, to Guillermo Del Toro’s remake of “Nightmare Alley,” a hopeless carny who does magic tricks only to become the trick himself after a failed robbery of a high profile government figure in 1940’s, were traumatizing movie going experience.
Being that I had only a vague idea of what Shame was, but I got over that easily enough. Nightmare Alley was when I had to consider going inside a movie theater alone. Both viewing experiences was soulless, as less than three people attended Shame. A tall attractive blonde, probably going to see Michael Fassbender piss in front of a camera, and have copious amounts of sex, was on her mind. While only two people attending “Nightmare Alley” were elderly, as they had remembered the 1947 Tyrone Power film.
But film going experience has been destroyed by Marvel, only to make people realize that waiting ten extra minutes after the credits, to find out what next Marvel movie will play out next, can be skipped in the digital or DVD release. Because only people who worked on the movie sets are used to seeing their names in the credits, not the regular movie going audience. Except the crews family’s who want a claim to fame, but nobody, except maybe film reviewers, look at the credits.
Who the hell wants to sit in a theater and watch all the credits to a Marvel movie, just to find out what happens in the next installment.
The back can only take so much sitting, but when you stand up all day, you fall asleep during the movie. But being alone, watching a difficult movie, isn’t appetizing to a single person. Because being alone in a movie theater, alone, isn’t appetizing. The people around me are younger and I don’t see the film the same way.
They get to hold hands and see this film in a different way. They can go out and talk about the movie. While I’m sitting there, digesting the scenes in the pit of my stomach, and talking to people after a movie, isn’t accepted anymore. Like people aren’t paying to be around other people.
But the other reason is seeing the bored partner pull out their phone and start scrolling twitter. So, it’s almost like two and half people are in the theater. It ruins the experience for everyone, and makes me feel worse for the other person trying to enjoy the movie, while their girlfriend, is unamused staring at her phone. Meanwhile, making it uncomfortable for others who want to enjoy the movie too with their phone screen shining a light in the dimmed theater room.
After all of this, I’m supposed to enjoy a film that by the end is turning me against going to movie theaters. Nobody is into the film, and the price of the film is starting to weigh heavily on me. And if the movie is written horribly, I’m making up new lines in my head as I’m watching it. The understanding isn’t that film is horrible, the movie going experience is ruined for me. And most likely, nobody is perfect. Everyone has to check their phone to see if they turned the ringer off. But nothing makes it worse than being interrupted during a movie. It used to be a sacred event but the terrible thing is the cost.
Because to me, nothing is worse than I have to make up the whole movie in my head, and I can’t just enjoy the movie. So, the theater itself is an open slum where the homeless sit to stay out of the cold. So, the movie itself is ruined by a foul odor, and is more or less, a bathroom/homeless shelter.
So, the movie theater is a dead package, a rotten fish with no future. An empty lake with no promise. The destruction of peace, serenity, and love is once again a foul tombstone with no future. Maybe the movie theater will mean something else. A theme park ride, popcorn event, with no substance. And being inside a movie theater with a bunch of homeless people isn’t the life I want to live. Besides, my home is the church. And I can let the phone ringer stay on, and turn the lights off with my Bose sound system. Besides, the movie popcorn is still all I want, anyway. I will miss that, too.