Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
...we have no problems with 1 movie ticket getting you 1 viewing, at a pre-set time & place, for about the price of a paperback book...
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Actually, it seems that we do. Look back a generation or two, and movies were a lot more popular than they are today. More people went to movies, and people went to more movies. The stories where kids would spend a Saturday afternoon in the movie house, or teenagers went there for a cheap date, or families went to a movie on impulse, were quite true.
A lot of things have changed. For one, of course, there's the competition. Do you want to see a movie, watch TV, read a book, put on a DVD, play a video game, or just hang out on your computer and chat? Another is the movies themselves. The movie palaces are long gone, replaced by multiplexes with all the charm of a shoebox. A sticky shoebox. You can guarantee that your movie will be interrupted by some wanker who
won't shut up. Prices of items like popcorn have gone from high to insane, and their response to people not buying them (remember when everyone had a tub of popcorn?) has been to raise the prices further. In most cases, going to a movie is no longer a pleasant experience in and of itself -- a destination. It's how you get that content before it's out in a more convenient form.
Now, it's down to a question of do you want to go somewhere, find parking, wait in line, pay a ridiculous price (two people can go out for a decent dinner for the price of a questionable movie), and endure an uncomfortable experience in order to see that movie, or do you want to spend a couple of bucks, watch it on your own big-screen TV, throw in some microwave popcorn, and not have to deal with that freaking kid who's kicking you in the kidneys?
It's been years since I've gone to a movie theater, but days since I've seen a movie. The same is true of a lot of people. People
do, it seems, have a problem with both the price and the "experience" (I hate that word) of attending a movie in person, and are increasingly choosing to watch it at home. Theaters are struggling and closing, but there's no shortage of DVD sales, streaming downloads, etc. There's a big market for direct-to-DVD movies, and they're not all porn. The town I live in now doesn't even
have a movie theater; I think the nearest one is about 20 miles from here. But it has several DVD rental places, Redboxes everywhere, and of course everywhere is within reach of Netflix.
Though I have wondered if there might be a market for a theater where people weren't allowed to talk (ushers used to take care of that, back when there were ushers), kids weren't allowed to kick seats, the screen wasn't increasingly shabby, and it didn't feel like cattle class on a cheap airline?
But as it stands, it seems that those people who do go to movies do it for the social experience -- often groups of teenagers who want to socialize free of parental oversight -- or out of inertia. There aren't any kids spending Saturday afternoon at the matinees anymore, and more and more people are just skipping the whole hassle and buying or renting the DVD.