I went to see The Matrix in a theater recently (25th anniversary release I think) and they did the same thing. 10 minute pre-roll of some random person explaining scene by scene why the movie was so great.
I don't know who on earth needs some stranger to tell them why a movie is amazing after they've already booked the tickets, went to the theater, overpaid for refreshments, and sat to watch it, but I considered it an absurd waste of time.
Also, even though I saw the movie in the theaters on opening week 25 years ago and probably 20+ other times since, it _still_ felt like a spoiler for me. I can't imagine that ever being fun, or interesting, or useful to anyone. I know what I came to see, and why, please just let me watch it.
That movie in particular I feel like if you didn't see in theaters at the time of release that a big part of the experience is completely lost on you. Literally audiences had never seen anything like it.
I feel tremendously lucky having seen the movie the way that I did. I was given tickets to see a screener of the movie 3 months before they even started the promotional campaign for the movie. Nobody knew anything about it and my screener to see the movie was at a theater in Harlem. The audience was kinda rowdy and honestly that made all of the jaw-dropping moments of the movie that much better.
I've never been at a movie where audiences were that excited for what they were seeing and obviously it made myself and everyone else in that theater a promotional tool telling everyone they knew to go see the movie. This was probably my greatest lifetime cinema-going experience and I've seen thousands of movies.
I honestly don't know why film studios have lost their minds and their mandate since. We should be trying to replicate that experience for every generation of audiences. Not all this remake/sequel/multiverse slop.
I remember going in blind to the film and the first scene with Trinity completely blew everyone in the theater away. One of the greatest openers in action cinema history (if not the greatest)
Thirded - the early bullet time sequence with Trinity was mind blowing at the time.
More recently, when I've had the chance to rewatch the movie I've shifted my awe to the helicopter crash scene [1], which contains so many elements that were unprecedented at the time in an incredibly neat way. It's one of those things where they could have just settled for one of the effects and still do something incredible for the time, but they went ahead and pushed the envelope so much further.
The movie is pretty much that - just the plot would have been sufficient for an incredible film but they had so much creativity to spare that they also reinvented the genre's cinematography because why the hell not?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI4UpBjdJ3s
That link, and the releases after the original 35mm release and the DVD, all feature a colour-correction that wasn't there when the movie was first released. The movie had a slight green edge on its original release, but it wasn't THAT green. It's a shame they toyed with it.
Likewise. I was deep in grad school at the time, and didn't pay much attention to the rest of the world. My knowledge of The Matrix was that I'd seen some posters, some friends asked if I wanted to go with them, and I did. We didn't even talk about the movie on the way there, it was just "the move that weekend". Absolutely blown away is right. From the opening all the way through to the ending and credit roll.
Same with Transformers (2007). Audience was agog and cheering. But if you weren't there on the day, you'd never understand. The level of CGI dominance would come to be normal these days, but at the time it was unprecedented. I was lucky to see it opening weekend because it was a huge release (blew out Titanic's opening weekend). Nowadays it has the Seinfeld Isn't Funny effect but at the time it was unbelievable.
I immediately loathed the first Transformers film because of all the wasted talent for a movie with such poor writing and pacing.
I also found the CGI to be too busy to follow anything going on and it didn't improve with subsequent movies. I called it "motion soup" at the time and haven't come up with a better term for it.
This reminds me of our VHS box set of the Star Wars trilogy, I believe the second release but before the first special edition. Each movie had a several minute interview with George Lucas *before* the movie. I eventually memorized the timestamp of each film but it was such a waste of time in the aggregate to fast forward through. If they had it at the end sure why not, but before??
A Lord of the Rings Extended Edition replay recently went through the theaters a couple of months ago, so I took my two sons, one of which had seen it already, one for which they were new movies.
To my absolute shock, at the 7pm movie time, the movie... started.
No muss. No fuss. No previews. No ads. Just the New Line Cinema logo and the opening monologue. Be there on the time shown on the ticket or miss the movie.
How amazingly nice that was. Just fantastic. And those movies benefit from nothing else trying to wedge themselves into the mood, but I can say that about a lot of movies.
It was a bit of a trip and I was being causal about getting there on time. I did, but not by much. At least the next two days I knew what I needed to do.
Hoo-boy, had I gone I'd have missed the first 20 minutes of the movie. Since movies now have preassigned seats I generally aim for 15-20 minutes after the time on the ticket.
I took my kids to those as well. For Fellowship we took our time getting popcorn etc, not caring about missing previews… boy was I surprised when we walked in and it had already started.
Made sure to be early for The Two Towers so we did not miss the iconic opening scene. And to the point of the linked blog post… they ran several spoiler-filled ads before the movie started (to be clear: before the starting time, while people were filing into their seats).
Very loosely related: This is exactly how I feel about unskippable tutorials in videogames. I feel like it robs me of the fun when a game explains to me what to do and how.
I had a similar experience when I popped in an old DVD of Star Wars (i.e. A New Hope) recently. If I recall correctly, there are some short clips and audio that play as part of the intro before you even get to the main menu, and it includes the famous John Williams theme. I hadn't seen the movie in ages, so I wanted to go in fresh, and this totally ruined the experience.
I had the opposite experience when I popped in another old DVD, this time Amadeus. I hadn't seen the movie before, but I was shocked and pleasantly surprised when it literally started playing from the very beginning of the movie. No DVD menu or previews at all. It just felt so good to go straight to the story.
Yes, a pet peeve of mine is when a DVD plays the movie's opening theme music when the menu is displayed. Why play music that you're going to hear again immediately as soon as the movie starts? Why not play some soothing music that comes midway through the film instead of the opening bombast? For a menu display?
I 100% believe those menus were made for TV walls at retailers. I tell you, the number of times I saw The Matrix DVD menu playing on a loop at a Wal-Mart.
I agree 100% with the author. I've seen Alien,but I haven't watched it for a long time. So if I go to see it in the cinema now, while I technically do know what's going to happen - it isn't completely fresh in my mind. So to be shown all the suspenseful, scary bits I'm about to watch, out of context, immediately before the film, is absolutely detrimental to the experience.
That was my experience. For the recent rerelease I took my kids to see it for the first time in the theater. And we were treated to 20 minutes of spoilers before the movie started. Thanks, jerks.
I avoid trailers, even for the movies that I'm not going to see imminently.
Trailers have spoilers (both big and small), and/or are outright deceitful about the movie.
(Regarding deceitful, you might've seen amateur trailer cuts that, say, make a light comedy look like a dark thriller, but the professionals were doing that first. How would a director have cut this, if they were making a more marketable picture than was actually made?)
Similarly, I avoid seeing any reviews until either after I've watched the movie, or after I've started and am ready to abort it. I want to experience the storytelling, and also form my own impression, before someone spoils either for me.
I do often vet a title first by looking at its ratings pair on https://www.rottentomatoes.com/ (RT), and occasionally I look at the one-sentence review summary blurb. Especially for streaming services in recent years, where the majority of the titles are either mediocre or poor.
(SPOILER ALERT: Though, vetting with RT won't always save you from a bad experience. The other night's evening wind-down light movie, I picked what looked like a generic Jason Statham film, IIRC without vetting. And around halfway in, I was horrified, when the formulaic gruff antihero's redemption-lite arc suddenly reversed, to a double-down of violent and unnecessary pure evil, upon some innocent child. Then I went to skim the RT's summaries of professional reviews, and even none of those summaries warned of this.)
I liked the way Netflix used to automatically start playing whatever show/movie you're hovering over in the app from the first scene. If the first 30-60 seconds pulled you in, you'd continue on to watch the full movie/show without actually clicking "Play" (which also fixed the mental burden of deciding what to watch, since "stop scrolling through options" resulted in automatically playing whatever you landed on).
They've since replaced that with auto-playing trailers which seems to be standard these days. I really like when they just auto-played the movie/show -- most movies/shows already set up the plot decently enough in the first 60-90 seconds (well enough to know whether you want to watch it) and of course that also resolves the "spoiler in trailer" issue.
> I liked the way Netflix used to automatically start playing whatever show/movie you're hovering over in the app from the first scene.
I cancelled my Netflix subscription over that feature... If I want to watch it, I'll press play.
And these misfeatures spread like a memetic virus because PMs only clone() never new()
> Trailers have spoilers (both big and small), and/or are outright deceitful about the movie.
This feels like a strange take to me. Trailers are just advertisements for movies, and ads have to both inform about a product and hype it up. Do you also feel spoiled when you see an ad for a new burger because you’ve lost the mystery of what the toppings are? Do you feel deceived because the burger isn’t actually 3 feet wide like it was on the billboard?
Burgers aren't supposed to have plot developments and surprises like stories. That comparison makes no sense to me.
I would feel deceived if the ad showed off a beef burger and I got chicken. Or if I got some kind of meal that's the correct size but has a burger portion only 4cm wide. Now, sometimes trailers avoid big chunks of genre in service of not spoiling things, and that's a gambit that can work out, but most movies are a consistent genre and if they're trying to hype up a tiny portion of the movie because the rest is boring then that's not good.
Have you ever watch films because of plot, not just for entertainment?
It happened to me when I was reading a new edition of ”The Spoils of Poynton” by Henry James.
There was an essay in the beginning of the book that I started reading on inertia alone (yes, I know, I should have known better). In the first paragraph (maybe first sentence), it spoiled the dramatic ending.
Not only that, in the second paragraph it would give an interpretation of what that means. So I was robbed not only of the plot, but also of a interpretation of my own before reading it. I quit the book after those two paragraphs and never read it.
I am still mad at the introduction for “The Idiot” for spoiling as much as possible and analyzing every plot point or emotional moment and then bringing up the author’s life on top of that. I could only imagine anyone who willfully puts these before a work wishes that no one should feel joy from reading. I still overall liked the book, but it could have been so different. I’ve also decided to wait a while to digest books before looking deeper into others’ opinions, including the author’s.
This is super common in introductions for anything that might be called a classic.
If you prefer to go into a work cold and only consult outside help if e.g. something necessary about the setting is unfamiliar in a way that wasn’t intended, as I do, you have to skip those until you’re done.
Movies are even worse. It can be really hard to go in cold to any remotely-popular film, they splash so much advertising and promotion everywhere that gives things away, even if not exactly spoilers.
Well, the book is called "Spoils" and it delivered on its promise.
I’m sure the irony of the blog post spoiling several classic movie scenes is not lost on the blogger.
The issue is statistics. There are billions of blog posts and only a tiny fraction of them talk about content of story based media, and most of the ones which do so are prefacing spoilers or hiding them. Same on forums.
On the other hand 99% of all cinemas show spoilers of various severity before 99% of all movies. I've stopped watching movie trailers on streaming services a decade ago and the issue was severe even back then. Cinemas show the same or even longer trailers with spoilers for practically every movie in current season. It is rather offensive for me - to pay money to watch movie and get worse experience than pirates have.
I personally had zero expectations that a blog post around the subject of spoilers wouldn't talk about spoilers. So, not ironic for me.
Just like I expect that visiting a web page about how frustrating malware is would infect my computer with malware.
It's very vague about the other movies, I disagree.
Even for the subject of the post the only spoiler is the single word "chestburster".
How many kids are reading it though?
And further, would a kid want to be surprised by the spoilers contained in the entry?
I was careful to word it in such a way that I would NOT spoil the movies I discuss.
I have recently discovered that there is whole wast segment of human population to whom the concept of spoiler is as alien as the actual aliens. Apparently knowing the finale of the book or a movie in advance is not only ok for them, but actually a thing to strive for, like an optimization puzzle. "You, foolish author, thought I would spend 2 hours on this? Haha, I did it in 15 minutes!"
I don't even argue about that nowadays, those people are from different species, not possible to communicate between us :) .
Spoilers aren't generally an issue for me. If the content is good enough it doesn't matter knowing what happens at the end. Obviously some things are better unspoiled, maybe like the Usual Suspects, but that rewatched just as interesting as the first time I saw it.
I think you actually have more in common with the people you are lambasting than you think. You seem to all think the specific plot events are the point of the content.
Not about a puzzle. Neither me nor anybody in my family gives a rat tail about spoilers. I am not denying your argument, only several decades ago I hadn't met anybody who cared about any spoiler.
My first exposure to the fact was a Simpsons episode where Homer spoils some movie ending in the theater. But nowadays the antispoilers are everywhere.
Coming out of the closet or a fancy?
My favorite was for some of the marvel movies they ran marvel lego commercials that spoiled the entire plot right before the movie.
Wait those movies have plots?
In care you are really un-aware... Yes. They have plots, and they're very well made.
> They have plots, and they're very well made.
Were really well made. Kevin Feige just turned 50, and it shows. He lost his edge.
A sequence of connected events happening is practically the only major element of telling a story that they consistently have in good measure, so… yes?
Theme, characters that aren’t “cool quippy person” or “somewhat alien quippy person”, a message they not just set up but then commit to, use of action for anything other than spectacle, et c. Lots of story-things (to say nothing of film craft—score, scene-setting and shot choices) of other sorts they are weak on. Plot, they have.
[edit] and yeah, I’ve seen all of them except a few of the recent ones at least twice regardless. It’s fine to like things that are not, you know, great.
I watch for the plot, similar to another popular ignominious genre
This happened recently for the screening of The Matrix for its 25th anniversary.
My partner had never seen it, and sure enough they spent almost ten minutes spoiling it with a pointless featurette featuring some unknown new star reminiscing about the movie.
My partner closed her eyes and I held her ears.
Same thing happened to me. I had seen The Matrix countless times, but this was going to be my first rewatch in a few years and my first rewatch ever in theaters. Part of the reason I was going was to get that awesome feeling you get when seeing a perfectly-crafted scene "for the first time" on the big screen. That featurette was so silly. They just went scene by scene showing 5 seconds each of iconic scenes from the movie. Right before the actual movie was about to start. Ugh.
My younger kids hadn’t seen the Matrix and I thought the 25th anniversary release in the theater would be perfect.
Leading up to it I tried to create the mystery for them that I remembered 25 years ago.
All of the mystery was destroyed with the featurette.
I was so annoyed and disappointed. But they enjoyed the movie so that was good at least.
incredibly non-controversial take:
The majority of Re-release audiences have seen the movie before and don't want to sit through the credits for extras.
I get that this sucks for first timers, but they are not the target market.
I went to see Rocky Horror Picture Show and everyone kept getting up and singing!!!
Asshole! Slut!
At my theater some people used to get nude too. RIP Rialto Theatre - to add insult to injury it’s a church now. Dr. Frank-N-Furter is rolling in his grave.
So, the first time I went to see it I was there by chance, because it was in an amusement park and I really didn't know the first thing about what I was getting into.
And yes, at the time I thought the people were being rude, especially when they where howling at the usherette.
Then I saw other performances online and felt like a complete tool :)
> don't want to sit through the credits for extras.
Then have an intermission whilst the credits roll. Serve ice cream and refreshments. Make it part of the experience. It'll be fun.
Or sell tickets separaly for the pre-feature and the main feature (or just publish times when each will start and have an intermission in between so if you want to just see the main feature you can without disrupting anyone who arrived early for the pre-featured).
You have no idea who has seen these films and who hasn't. Yes, sometimes I want to go and see an old film at the cinema because I never got a chance to see it there the first time around (Star Wars was a case in point back in 1997). But sometimes I just haven't seen it so I want to see it for the first time, unmolested by spoilers.
There are better and more creative ways that aren't a great deal of effort to implement to handle this than showing a bunch of spoilers before the film you're there to see.
I like the idea of publishing the actual start times. People who dont want to watch the pre-feature can step out for an ice-cream.
Won't happen. Pre-features, like pre-movie ads, are not there for the benefit of the viewer.
I dont understand. for who's benefit is an interview with director about the film you are about to watch screened.
I think the interview is filmed primarily for the ability to say it exists on marketing copy, thus hopefully sell more tickets. It offer something "new" that differentiates the cinema screening of an old movie from any of the alternative (legal or otherwise) ways of viewing it.
The interview itself? Probably doesn't matter. But for the people involved, it would suck to see no one viewing it.
so you agree it should be showed after?
so many people say this as if it is a sufficient rebuke of the whole point.
OP agrees with you - the point is show it after.
I only pick on you because many people responded but at one time HN had people with critical reasoning skills reading
I was making an argument for before. If 90% of customers want it before so they dont have to sit through credits, it is very understandable that it is shown before.
That said, I have no clue what the actual percentage is. Maybe someone has A/B tested this
> but at one time HN had people with critical reasoning skills reading
As long as HN keeps people with reading skills at all...
The GP directly argued against the blog post, and in favor of showing the extras before the movie, because "majority of Re-release audiences have seen the movie before and don't want to sit through the credits for extras".
(I happen to disagree with the argument on the basis of "who on Earth cares about extras anyway", but still, GP correctly made a coherent point.)
Whenever I've seen theaters do this type of thing, they do it before the published show time. Related content first, then at the published show time trailers start, then a bit later the actual movie starts.
If you don't want spoilers, then you just don't go in until the published show time.
> and don't want to sit through the credits for extras
Everything's digital now, right? We have the technology to insert a featurette between the end of the movie and the credits without anyone having to go splice the film reels.
Showing my age here. A family member of mine used to run a local theater. The booth had multiple projectors, because films came on multiple reels (and once you knew what to look for, you could not unsee the reel switch indicators). So we've had the technology for a long time to pause a feature before the credits and roll another featureette and then switch back.
That’s actually a big no-no in cinema. You don’t just splice a movie you’re showing to insert stuff, much like museums don’t usually draw on their paintings. Showing the work as the creator intended is the whole point.
yes we do but that's disrespectful to the movie (and to the people who made it)
And slapping a featurette in front that spoils the whole plot isn't?
In most cases the credits are not integral to the artistic vision of the movie. Most people get up and leave when the credits start.
Ive also seen trailers for the movie I am about to see, that revealed things I didn’t know already.
Yes, the author has a good point in a vacuum, but used a bad example to highlight that point in practice. Even for the minority of the audience who hasn't seen the movie yet, they almost certainly know what happens due to cultural osmosis. Children are probably the only group who could potentially be spoiled and let's just say I don't think the rerelease of 40+ year old R rated movie is necessarily targeted at children.
I mean, I've got a kid and love when I can take him to see a rerelease of a culturally significant movie when the content is appropriate. Spoilers in the pre-rolls are definitely an issue. Even if it's just me going, some of the movies I go to see are movies where I've seen bits and pieces here and there and cultural osmosis, but it can be a bit of a bummer to have the 5 minute rehash of the film before seeing the whole thing.
OTOH, video disc menus sometimes do this too. You've got to put some content in the menus, I suppose, but it can easily be too much. I've got a few discs that just dump you straight into the movie, which is often a better choice.
Right. My 13 year-old's seen Jurassic Park on TV enough times but I still took him to the theatrical re-release because I figured he'd want to see it on a gigantic screen with dinosaurs towering overhead, and I was right.
>I mean, I've got a kid and love when I can take him to see a rerelease of a culturally significant movie when the content is appropriate. Spoilers in the pre-rolls are definitely an issue.
Yes, to be clear I'm not criticizing this. I am pointing out the actual percentage of the audience who would be impacted by this is tiny. Inconveniencing everyone else in the audience by forcing them to sit through the credits if they want to see the bonus content just to give this small group a slightly better experience probably isn't something the theater actually wants to do.
I absolutely disagree. As three article mentioned, a big draw of these screenings is for a person who watched and loved a film to take a friend or family member who hasn't yet.
Seems like people want different things. not everyone can be happy.
It's pretty easy to make almost everybody happy, because almost nobody wants to see the extras anyway, and certainly not before the movie.
You, who have watched the movie before, want to watch it again and relive the thrills (even if you know the plot), not watch a 10 minute featurette about the movie. If you can still be bothered, you'll stay after the credits. If you cannot be bothered, the featurette wasn't that interesting anyway.
Think about it this way: would you have the excited conversation of "wasn't it cool when so-and-so chopped whathisname's head with the sword!?!?" before or after actually watching the scene as intended?
>Think about it this way: would you have the excited conversation of "wasn't it cool when so-and-so chopped whathisname's head with the sword!?!?" before or after actually watching the scene as intended?
It really depends on if I have seen the movie, and how recently. If it is going to contextualize the scene for me, then before, so I can think about what they said.
Back when DVD was king, I liked directors commentary where they talked throughout the entire move.
Why would you watch a trailer if you didn’t want to see parts of the movie? I mean even “teasers” can give you significant amounts of info about the movie.
Trailers give away the entire film these days. No surprises allowed
I've seen some movies not knowing anything about them by avoiding trailer (this being much easier in the 1990s...) Movies seems to work better that way.
Though it can be jarring: Eg. Silence of the Lambs or Leaving Las Vegas.
The Onion had a good take on it:
https://theonion.com/wildly-popular-iron-man-trailer-to-be-a...
I saw “The Menu” and “Palm Springs” having never even heard of them. I would highly recommend both, especially if you know nothing about them.
Watch Society. Just watch it. Don't Google it!
I always do this, as far as possible.
I avoid trailers like the plague. When reading reviews I'll skip most of it. I want to know the gist of the plot, and I want to know the summary.
I enjoy movies so much more this way. Sure, sometimes I end up watching some duds, but most of the time I'm really engrossed and I love the surprises.
If I watch a trailer, especially the modern 5-minute condensed versions, I find it takes away >90% of the excitement. Doesn't matter if the movie comes out next year, the trailer will come back to me and I will recall the spoiled plot points.
I heard once that this is because the creators of the trailers are separate entities from the movie studio. Their job is to sell the movie. They don't care if they have to spoil the whole movie to get you to buy a ticket to see it.
I think some movies are so crap that they've only got 2 min of good material, so that's what they put in the trailer.
The editors of the trailers should be editors for the movies themselves!
That's pretty impressive.
Haven't seen the film, but read the book. I got what was being depicted (mostly), but yeah, it shows without revealing.
It helps that the story doesn't revolve strictly around action and combat, which many blockbusters do these days.
I can usually tell within the first third of a trailer whether I'd like to watch it. In those cases I don't finish the trailer. They give everything away.
One thing I always wished was possible is to see The Worlds End without any pre-knowledge. The trailer completely gave away the premise.
I saw that without any spoilers and it was one of the weirdest movie experiences I’ve ever had.
I have never seen it or the trailer. Thank you for the recommendation!
Yeah. Sometimes I've wanted to check out a new film on Netflix. I watch the tiny trailer that runs in the app, while I figure out whether it is worth my time.
Trailer ends, and I know all I need to know about the film. The plot is known, the story is more or less obvious. Pick another film, repeat, same thing.
Result: do something else entirely, or watch comfort series like Star Trek, where it doesn't matter that I remember the plotlines.
It’s been like that for my whole adult life (20 years). When I used to go to theaters, I would wait outside until the trailers stopped.
Knowing nothing about what I’m about to watch is my favorite way.
The reason in general is we don't have uncomfortable enjoyable experiences now, we have predictable things happen to us passively.
Huh? The end of the new Alien movie is deeply uncomfortable.
You have to put it up front while the audience is still hyped to see the move. And it's a movie from 45 years ago that was so culturally significant that even if you never saw it you know what happens because you've seen other media reference it. It's a showing specifically for people who've already seen it. Special edition VHS tapes with director commentary put it at the beginning for the same reason. Which yeah, who even has VHS tapes anymore but its the one of the few non-cinema formats constrained by having to make everything serial where you can see the norm.
I am talking about societal trends like "the trailer" now spoiling the entire movie before the movie.
The OP was talking about seeing it IN the theater. They are presumably hyped.
Alien is a wonderful movie, but that isn't my point at all.
"you" are what age in this?
Alien 1979 is rated: R - Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
It’s similiar to the feeling I get with DVD menus. I sometimes feel like watching some classic movie, and so I put on the DVD. But then the DVD menu already shows all the classic scenes and characters, so when I finally have navigated all the menus and started the movie, I no longer want to watch the movie.
DVDs are an insult anyways. No idea who and the idea that enforcing an unskippable piracy warning was a smart idea. Pretending paying customers might be bad actors.
(Of course when using an "illegal" player or pirated copy one could avoid it from the start ... a lot better experience)
When you go to a movie in towns like LA, Seattle or the Bay Area, you can always tell which people work in the industry because they are the only people who stay to watch the credits. Normal humans all leave when the credits start to roll, with a tiny fraction staying in the hope they include a teaser or surprise bit of story in the middle of the credits. Since the producers of the Alien revival had just spent all their money on the interview, they want to make sure people see it, so they put it before the film.
If it's not high enough value on it's own to keep people in their seats, maybe they should skip it. Or at least not put so much effort into it when only the die hards will enjoy it.
I'll go one worse: The trailer for City of Ember spoiled the big reveal that was at the end of the book.
I was at an animated film earlier this year where they put the recorded q&a on before the film.
Had the effect of making one pair of noisy kids totally lose their attention and proceed to run around the theater for the rest of the film.
Is anyone actually paying to see some recorded q&a? The live ones are usually turgid enough but at least the people are right there
Note, this blog post has spoilers for:
* Alien (1979)
* Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
I watched the 1997 Baz Luhrmann version of Romeo + Juliet online with some friends relatively recently, and I'm sort of proud that we managed to not spoil the ending for those who had never read or watched it.
This is why reserved seating is the best thing to happen to movies. I leave for the theatre almost at the time the movie 'starts', get my popcorn/soda, and sit down as the last trailer begins.
This failed me once where for some odd reason the movie actually started on time, but 1-2% failure rate is mostly acceptable.
A friend of mine REALLY wanted to see Transforms, when it was first released. He had it all planned out, we'd met up and get the ticket, 90 minutes before the movie started, go in, and wait, because he didn't want to miss anything. My girlfriend and I was less thrilled with that idea, so we went to get the tickets, got ours and went to dinner. We showed up at our seats 20 minutes after the movie was scheduled to start and didn't miss anything. The rest of the group had waited for almost two hours for a stupid action movie that isn't even all that good.
I have an idea to fix this.
- Start the movie on time
- Don't play trailers before the movie
- Don't play ads EVER for people paying for their ticket
This is the best part of indie theaters. You show up and when the clock hits about the time shown on the ticket, the lights dim and the film just... starts
My local indie cinema has locally produced indie ads for local businesses. It’s cute and part of the charm! They also play trailers, but just 1 or 2, not a whole bunch like big chain cinemas.
Playing ads in general is fine - I like to see trailers for OTHER soon-to-be-released movies ... BUT, don't show trailers for the movie that is actually playing, or maybe simpler (no need to make it movie specific) just don't show trailers for movies that have already been released.
I like previews and trailers before the movie... sometimes it's informative (new movie that I didn't know about). But really, for me, they act as a palate cleanser of sorts. It sets the stage that I'm about to watch a movie. It serves to separate the "before movie" time from the "movie time". They let my mind shutdown the outside world.
But showing documentary footage that spoils the movie I'm about to watch? Yeah... don't do that.
If you consider the trailer for the movie you are just about to watch a spoiler, then I would expect that trailers for other movies that you might watch at some other time would be considered spoilers as well, no?
What's the difference? (Other than the probability of actually at some time watching the movie being spoiled.)
I don't tend to remember details of trailers - just that it looked good (or not), and then the name of the movie may stick in my head (or I may mark release date on my calendar). By the time the movie comes out months later, I'm not going to have remembered much about the trailer.
I don't know, if the film starts at 9, start it at 9, don't start it at 9:15. I don't want to see the trailers, I'm just there for the film. Start the trailers at 8:45 if you want, but have the actual film start at the time it says, so I know how to skip the trailers I don't want to see.
Unfortunately, the lost revenue from marketing would just add cost to tickets. It's likely the theaters get a portion of that revenue if not most of it since it's time spent in their seats.
That ignores the lost revenue from my butt missing from the chair. I watch at home lots more because of such shenanigans.
How likely is it really that you'd go to a theater to watch a movie if they didn't have previews? If you want to see a movie in theaters, that's where you're going to be. If you're taking that view, you're probably not in their target (ahem) audience.
I suspect that people are more sensitive to ticket prices than they are seeing ads, so if you're trying to maximize revenue, you'd want to limit increases in ticket prices. The theaters showing ads aren't trying to attract new viewers, they are trying to extract as much revenue as possible from their existing customers.
(For better or worse)
I'd say your explanation is accurate, that's the calculus. It's the same everywhere.
Unfortunately, the calculus never factors in the fact that it's unsustainable and over time destroys the medium, by changing peoples' and society's relationship with it.
C.f. all the stories about "good old times" that are just remembrance of things before they got enshittificated.
If your time is worth a lot of money, you'll buy a home theatre anyways.
Only if you have the money to spend. $30.00 to see a movie every so often is a lot easier to afford for someone living paycheck to paycheck. A person could probably see movies for several years without reaching the price of a good home theater system.
Even all that won't fix:
- assholes looking at their smartphone during the movie
- assholes who won't shut the fuck up
Gave up the whole movie theater experience. My fancy reclining sofa and huge 4K OLED TV are way better already.
I go during the day on the rare occasions that we go.
My kid randomly decided that he wanted to see Deadpool & Wolverine while we were out doing errands, so we went to the theater on what turned out to be the opening day.
No way were there even 10 more people in the theater at 1PM on a Friday.
At least around here, the cinemas are never crowded during the daytime.
sure, those are completely separate issues from what's being discussed.
I think the point is that instead of asking cinemas to self regulate one could simply watch to movie at home.
I see it as part of a general trend where public spaces are tarnished by a general public that is unable to behave itself.
I think in time the process will accelerate and more and more public spaces will be replaced by private spaces. This is fine for people like myself who can afford such private spaces but I think it’s bad for society which I still have to live in.
> I see it as part of a general trend where public spaces are tarnished by a general public that is unable to behave itself.
It's easy to blame the people, when it comes to the folks who can't stop pulling out their cell phones many of them have been conditioned to act that way from a very young age. If we keep letting companies turn people into anxious iphone addicts it'll only get worse. They can't stay off their phones while driving, asking them to go for an hour and half without looking at their phone violates everything their phone has taught them about how to behave
If you're suggesting that accidently additive products and services be banned from use for the public good then I'm in 100% agreement. What I'm not sure of is how that could possibly be reliably achieved. I guess 'sin' taxes would a blend of freedom and prohibition but then you get a government that depends on the sin for it's revenue which sets up a rather perverse incentive. Like an alcohol tax in Russia, or indulgences for the Catholic church.
TikTok is slowly destroying my sisters life and there is nothing anyone can do about it since she does not think it's a problem and she is an adult.
We need to stop excusing bad behavior (by people with agency and control over their bodies) with "well, corporations made them do it!" Cell phone companies are not turning people into inconsiderate jerks--they already are inconsiderate jerks, and their phone just provides them another way to be jerky to everyone.
> they already are inconsiderate jerks
I've seen good people do it, and be embarrassed by it after I told them to put it away.
It just doesn't make much sense that we've allowed behavioral conditioning to be carried out on the population multiple times a day, every single day, since before they could even read, if we're then going to be mad when some percentage of those people go on to act in exactly the way they've been trained to.
Not everyone has been conditioned to that extent, or will be as susceptible, or at least not as susceptible to it all the time, but this should be the expected outcome. It'd actually be very weird and unexpected if no one ever pulled out their phones in theaters.
Unfortunately, society in general, not just cinemas, has decided not to hold assholes accountable to their assholic behavior, so behavior is only going to get worse. It's something voters (and consumers by voting with wallet) have the collective power to change, but we refuse to.
There is a general loss of civility, in my view nothing can be done about it and those who try will be simply throwing themselves against the gears of the machine to no avail.
If I was responsible for maintaining behavior in a public space, say as a restaurateur, the law would not be on my side. If I tell a minority woman that she needs to behave is that a hate crime or criminal misogyny? I'm sure my life would be destroyed while we found out. The state has in effect taken over the role of policing behavior and has done an incredibly bad job of it.
This isn't a figment of my imagination - I was pulled into a tribunal because I expressed amusement at something my female colleague said, I thought it was funny and I thought we were friends, she made a misogyny complaint to hr. Trying to explain why I thought it was funny didn't help nor did the explanation that I would have acted the same if a man had said what she did. I've since avoided working at large companies which has been an impingement on my career but at least I don't have to be stressed each day about some possible perceived microaggression.
Perhaps an intentional community which can use ostracism as a punishment to police behavior could be effective.
That's when you call the staff over
> - assholes looking at their smartphone during the movie
Solved by arranging seats so that the backs of the seat in front of you blocks off from seeing anything below the next rows' head level, and so your head is looking at the screen in resting position anyway.
> - assholes who won't shut the fuck up
Solved by turning up the volume.
Big cinemas with large viewing halls have a big advantage over studio cinemas here.
Where I am, this is deterministic: the "be quiet, the movie is starting" pre roll starts exactly 30 minutes after the claimed start time. I haven't seen an ad at a theater in years.
this is how it is in bay area. we just arrive 30 mins late.
> We took our kid to see "Alien"
As a parent, I simply loved that opening line.
The exact thing happened with the new Deadpool movie. I’d stayed away from spoilers about the movie, especially cameos, and the pre-movie basically gave a full recap of the movie BEFORE the movie.
My wife and I were livid.
Why do this before the movie!??!
Because the movie is 45 years old & in order to get the average person to see an old movie in theaters, you have to give them bonus featurettes in addition to the film itself.
I'd say it's the opposite: people go for the movie, they don't give two damns about the "bonus content" (who does anyway?), so they need to be force-fed with it, just like with ads, if they're to see it. As for why do it in the first place, I'd say that "old movie + exclusive premiere of new extra content" may lead some people to choose the cinema over countless other ways they could watch the same movie at home.
In that case wouldn't it make more sense to put the featurette after the film, so people will stick around through the old movie to see the new hotness?
I don't see why it would. As the author said, featurettes are traditionally shown before the movie & this was clearly advertised. This gives movie goers a chance to ask about it if it is that important to them. That seems like there's enough inertia for people to expect it to be before. Theaters also want people to show up early before a movie's start time so there's a higher chance they get hungry or thirsty while they're there and they also want people out of the theater asap after the movie so they can turn the theater over for the next showing or go home. If they get to start early because people are leaving during the credits, even better.
"The solution is simple: preserve the wonder for first-timers by putting these featurettes AFTER the movie. Tease it before the feature."
I feel like complaining about spoilers for a 45 year old movie is a bit silly.
By the way, did you know Jesus dies at the end of the Bible.
Star Wars: Episode V - I am your Father
It’s got to be some phenomenon where people can’t understand obvious things. Fully expect some Reddit post with “It’s hinted that Anakin is Luke’s father”.
I think the publishers etc. have identified that audiences actually don’t get stuff unless browbeaten with it.
Hence movie featurettes with spoilers and book introductions that describe the plot.
They’re trying to hit a full 80% of the population and that means you have to go one standard deviation below mean IQ.
The subreddit /r/yourjokebutworse is a showcase of this phenomenon.
The re releases are not meant for those watching the movie for the first time. It is assumed the audience coming for these one time events is already a fan of the movie.
Fans of a movie will often bring people who haven’t seen the movie. So sure 80+% of the audience may have seen it, but that’s not everyone.
I avoid trailers for films I intend to see and the enjoyment is much greater
I don’t think I’ll ever see a movie in a theater again. Enough people no longer know how to sit still and shut up that it’s a complete waste of at least $15.
you need to go to nicer communities to watch films without disruption.
That specialized screenings that target film buffs.
NYC's Film Forum is a good example of a nice well-run community and it's a great venue as well.
Specifically, Alamo Drafthouse's entire sales pitch is that, watching movies with other film buffs. No cellphones allowed. you want to do that, go to AMC.
We should all be so lucky to have one.
yeah you just have to deal with people getting drunk and slobbering down entire meals instead
one of the few times I walked out of a theater was an alamo drafthouse with some guy loudly eating wings and wiping his hands on the seats
I'd rather watch a movie on my phone on a bus, at least I can wear headphones
This didn’t used to be a problem and I don’t want to risk $15-$20 and my inner peace trying out new theaters.
I saw Megalopolis with 6 other people in the theater and all of them were talking the whole time. I’m just flabbergasted why they would waste their own time with such an odd movie.
It didn't used to be a problem for me, but cell phones didn't exist when I grew up. People suck, but it differs from location to location. I drive to places with more affluent and educated demographics to watch movies.
>I’m just flabbergasted why they would waste their own time with such an odd movie.
Lots of people don't and many theatres are struggling. If I understand your example, your theatre was 99% empty and you were the only non-talker there, haha.
You understand me correctly. I thought the film would select for either no one at all or only people actually interested in the movie.
There's a chunk of people who will pay to see a movie at a big multiscreen theater, then go from one movie to another and see a whole days worth of movies for the price of one.
As you said, a "weird" movie doesn't keep their attention, so they just distracted themselves with their phones to kill the time until the next movie.
As an aside, the funniest instance of this phenomenon I ever encountered was when I was at an evening screening of an incredibly embarrassing idol anime movie at an AMC and two extremely out of place people walked in partway through, lasted about 5 minutes and then had to bail when one of the singing numbers started lol.
I haven’t even seen the movie but I know about that iconic scene. This is a bit like complaining about spoiling the flood scene in the Noah film.
Since we're throwing around anecdata, I'll say that I clicked on TFA just because of this comment, and I don't recall having heard of this movie and have no idea what these scenes are about.
I haven't seen the Noah film either but I did read the book on that one! A bit tough to get through but there were some interesting bits. Rated R for violence, sexual themes and controversial politically charged subject material.