The Problem with the Movie Going Experience

    Going to the movies is an experience like no other. You’re able to sit, laugh, and cry with a total stranger next to you while you’re fully immersed in what you’re watching. Movies can be a quick hour and a half laugh, or they can be a three hour crime fighting drama that you can’t look away from. Either way, you’ll be left sitting in the theater for about 30 minutes longer than you paid for. 

    I just went and saw Argylle, a spy thriller comedy with a star studded cast, but ultimately it was not a very good movie. Regardless of that, I showed up to my theater at 12:00pm, which was the start time of the movie, got my ticket, found my seat and waited for the movie to start. At about 12:15 the ads before the trailers stopped playing. That meant I had 15 more minutes of trailers. 

    Now I love movie trailers, especially when watching them in a theater, but for them to start 15 minutes after I sit down? It kind of sucks. There were good trailers before Argylle, with the likes of Dune: Part 2, Drive Away Dolls and few others, but I wish they took up less time. 

    Argylle isn’t the first movie to have so many ads before it either. This happens before every single movie, at every single showing, and I would imagine it happens at every single theater. I first became annoyed with it during Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and maybe that was because I was ready for that movie to be over before it started, but maybe not. 

    With the movie not starting for nearly 30 minutes you’d think you can just show up 20 or 30 minutes late right? Wrong. Most theaters won’t let you in if you’re more than 15 minutes late. That means if you’re 15 minutes late, you show up just in time for the trailers to start. Some people are always late, but some people show up on time. 

 

    However, showing up on time to the theater can be a drag. You sit through mostly boring Amazon or Coke ads, and see a lot of trailers for movies that you’re not even going to give a second thought about. So is showing up on time instead of 15 minutes late the right movie when it comes to watching a movie? It depends on what you want to get out of your experience. Do you want the soda and large popcorn? Are you going to a prime time showing of an Avengers movie? Do you need to get tickets at the theater or do you already have them?

    For most of these questions, my answer is an easy yes. Lines can be long for the concession stands for certain movies, and tickets aren’t always the easiest to get at the physical box office.

    Unfortunately today, I cannot provide a solution for the problem of the movie going experience. I really think it’s up to the individual for how early they want to get there, but things do need to change, even though I don’t think they will. Companies will always want their products to be shown and movie theaters are barely making money as it is, so they’ll show all the ads they want to show 

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