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Comment by pattusk | Hacker News Reader

> In fact, the price of a movie ticket hasn’t gone up much in the last 90 years. In 1929, a ticket was $0.35; today, it’s $9. Adjusted for inflation, that’s a fairly reasonable price increase of 108%.

I'm sorry but how is a 100% price increase considered "reasonable"? Inflation is already meant to account for the reasonable price increase. I don't think the rest of the moviegoing experience has changed enough to justify a 100% premium compared to 1925.

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Between resolution, sound, comfort, quality, and selection, it's not hard for me to imagine that the modern movie theater experience is at least 2x the value of what people had in 1925.

I pay 2x the cost of matinee tickets just to attend in the evening, and almost 2x of that to get a reclining seat as a "VIP" ticket.

I can't even imagine how much someone's mind would be blown if you showed them what we had in 2020.

1925-guy would have his mind blown in 2020 where you can watch any movie you want on a screen that fits in your pocket and only pay a whole 2x more than he has to pay for the ritzy experience of watching it in a modern movie theater.

Claiming injustice over a 108% price increase over the period of a century for a movie ticket in an HN thread is actually cracking me up.

The full crew list (per IMDB) for any 1929 movie I've found fits entirely on one screen. The full crew list for a current day movie takes many dozens of screens, often well over 1000 people in all.

The first 2019 movie I picked has more stunt performers than the top-rated 1929 movie has total cast and crew. I think it's incredible if we're putting 100x as many people to work (some risking serious injury) and only doubling the cost of the end product.

Economies of scale are great.

Have you seen movies from the 1930s? Not the few classics, but typical movies? Ponderous slow messes, by modern standards. Movies of the 2010s are more than 108% better.

No, they're mostly plotless, capeshit, superhero garbage flicks that pander to international audiences. To be clear though, 1930s movies are also bad. But the golden era was not the last decade.

To be fair those cheap entertainment sources are only known to you because of advertising departments more populated than many small countries. Art still exists, but you are looking at old established media just doing their thing.

Oh, there have been lots of great indie films, to be sure. Most of them made outside of America. The majority of Hollywood is garbage though.

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