Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

I used to love going to the movie theaters. A lot of things ruined them over the years. The cost: A family of five plus snacks is topping out around $60-70 nowadays. Totally ridiculous for a movie. Fellow moviegoers: people aren’t there for the movie anymore. They’re talking, they’re on their phone, they’re talking on their phones, doing selfies with flashes. I remember going to see Contact opening night and during the silent part at the very beginning you could hear a pin drop in the theater. Would never happen now. Nobody even gets kicked out for shitty behavior now. The physical facilities: everything just seems dirtier and grimier and just falling apart now. The whole thing has just turned into a terrible, expensive, uncivilized experience.

Meanwhile, home theater technology has never been better. 7.1 surround, amazing displays, you can pause, eat food that you like, and being at home is so much better in every way than being out with the savage public.

Good riddance to movie theaters.

> amazing displays

This is the thing that kills me about theaters. They've just not kept up with display quality at all. Your normal theater projector is 1080p, digital IMAX is 2k, and laser IMAX is 4k. Eventually they'll get 8k IMAX as well but so few theaters even have laser IMAX as it is. And on top of that you are generally going to have better colors, brighter whites, and blacker blacks on a high quality panel than is achievable with all but the top of the line IMAX digital projectors.

So the way I see it, there is absolutely no technical advantage to going out to a movie theater over watching at home unless it's something uniquely special and you happen to be lucky enough to be near a theater that offers that unique advantage (ex: Oppenheimer in 70mm analog IMAX).

And like you said, the social experience of attending a theater (at least in the US) is just not great. I could see the appeal if you were watching a comedy or something like a marvel film where crowd reaction could potentially add to the film but even then it's probably not worth the exuberant cost relative to watching at home.

I could have written this myself.

Maybe part of it is getting old and cranky, but it feels like the social contract is completely broken, and it's everyone for themselves. Or perhaps given the title, 1/3 of people broke it for everyone else.

nope you’re not getting old and cranky, i’m 21 and feel the exact same way. the number one reason i avoid theatres nowadays is the extremely poor behavior in theatres. it feels like i am in a classroom sometimes. if i’m paying $20-30 with concessions just for myself i want a silent, phoneless, smartwatchless, experience and that is becoming increasingly impossible outside of my home.

> A family of five plus snacks is topping out around $60-70 nowadays

I am in NYC. I went on a double date to the movie theatres for Dune 2. It was like $90 for the tickets, $35 for the pop corn and drinks, and $28 for the alcohol.

Where are you getting this family discount at?

My condolences. I guess I’m lucky then. We are still at $10/ticket which I think is also absurd but I’m glad I’m not in NYC!

Don't forget the prerequisite bad audio mixing in the theater. Movies are boomingly loud followed by incomprehensible dialog.

At least at home I can rewind or put on subtitles.

I've been trying to talk with desktop people, browser people and videoplayer people trying to convince then that volume normalization is a good thing,(people are sleeping in the next room)

But all i got was deaf ears.

I imagine you're on a very Metropolitan area? I've definitely heard of this but even right before the pandemic Ive had mostly quiet experiences at theaters in my suburb.

It's a shame for me. It's an easy way for me to get out of the house and out of my own head for a bit and despite having a nice TV, nothing quite compares to the silver screen and it's bolstering speakers.

I don’t know about “metropolitan” but definitely… urban? I hate to be ageist but I think it’s mostly teenagers ruining things. They are basically untouchable and uncontrollable and they fully know it and take advantage. The best recent moviegoing experience I had was at 1:00 in the afternoon on a Wednesday because all the hooligan kids were in school and the theater was about a dozen grown adults.

Yeah. I’ll only go to theaters for something imax worthy, which is pretty much only Dune part 2 for the year.

Dune 2 was totally worth it to watch in IMAX. Similarly I remember Interstellar being an amazing experience in IMAX. I wish more similar movies were made. That would make me go to the movies more frequently.

Incidentally, why was Oppenheimer promoted as an IMAX movie? It was a letdown and a waste for me to have watched it on IMAX, as it was essentially a visually unexciting primarily conversational drama. Barbie would have been a better IMAX movie.

Nolan just loves filming in IMAX and IMAX loves him back.

> a visually unexciting primarily conversational drama

Which may be why he framed it like a serial drama?

The 70mm imax that Oppenheimer was filmed on is 4:3.

An old standard aspect ratio for television serials.

If you watch Oppenheimer any other way, to remove what are usually large black bars on the sides for contemporary tvs, you are watching a cropped version of the film maker’s vision.

But also, there are plenty stunning vistas in that film.

Avatar 2 in IMAX 3D was a crazy experience

What kind of movies are you going to to? I witnessed zero bad behaviour at Dune part 2, Godzilla Minus One, or Poor Things in theatres. It's not even that high brow stuff. Just not the typical marvel shovel ware.

I'm going to go out on a limb and hazard "geo-specific demographics" as the core driver of typical behavior in pubic.

I took my daughter to a local theatre to meet some friends. I was nervous and definitely maintaining awareness. That didn't happen again.

I recently went to see the Deep Sky documentary with my family at the Omnimax Theatre. Much better experience. There were people crying, the JWST images were so overwhelming.

I agree with this, with one exception: the drive-in.

If you can find one, it remedies most of these problems. The entrance fee is usually even reasonable, seeing as how they're generally double features.

I still love going to the movies, but I stay with my 40-seat local. Grab some popcorn, a cold can of beer or glass of wine and settle in. Always showing great, old classics too. Best cinema experience I’ve ever had.

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