In the wake of the Supreme Court's lamentable decision in the Grokster case, it's a sure bet the motion picture industry will be more aggressive than ever in its claims that it's suffering at the hands of Internet piracy. But there are a lot of other reasons for not going to the movies these days, as a discussion readers started in my Live Gripes section recently enumerated. Which one do you think is most responsible for the movie industry's purported declining box office receipts?
One factor almost all readers mentioned was the high price of movie tickets, not to mention the cost of food and drink. "My local AMC is $9.50 -- tickets for two are thus $19," wrote one reader. "That's the eventual street price of the DVD. We rarely get drinks and popcorn, but when we do it feels like I'm handing over my wallet."
Heightening that resentment is the increasingly common practice of forcing the paying customer to watch TV-commercial-type advertisements. "The industry is treating its customers as second class citizens and fodder for their revenue," wrote another reader. "I have stopped visiting my local cinemas for a few reasons. First and foremost are the ads. They are just obnoxious from the get-go. We pay high prices for the privilege of viewing these? Give me a break. Having to sit through them is just too irritating to make it a nice experience to view a new movie."
Readers also noted the decidedly poor ambience of many theaters in terms of noisy fellow patrons, rude theater staff, bad audio-visual quality, malfunctioning temperature controls, etc. "I went to see Sith on Sunday and was again reminded how awful most theaters smell -- like a boys high-school locker room," wrote the original poster. "As theaters get shittier and screens get smaller, why is there surprise that people are going to have a lesser desire to spend their money to visit them, especially considering how prices and advertising continue to increase, without any perceptible increase in value to the customer? And that's not even to mention the consistently rude/apathetic teens that consistently staff these places."
And then there's the strange fact that all those gargantuan cinema complexes don't seem to offer much choice. "The big (local) theater, Brenden, has more than twenty screens but rarely shows more than five different movies at a time, maybe a few more if it's a slow release week," another reader wrote. "They only play the guaranteed blockbuster hits. Signature and Galaxy are larger, with better seating and no parking fees, but even they only play eight to twelve movies at a time. Screen after screen of all-but-empty showings, and meanwhile the city's oldest one-screen theater with crappy seating and no parking is the only one that brings any indie films in town, or second-tier Hollywood stuff, foreign film, old movies rescreened, documentaries, and so on. It's disgusting, and I almost never patronize the big theaters on principle alone."
Which leads to the other thing that almost everyone said factors into the equation: lousy movies. "I do not go to movies because I do not feel that I have to, except for Polar Express last year to celebrate with my sons," wrote another reader. "About two-thirds of the way through, my younger son complained that it was too loud, too giddy and wanted to leave. There aren't any great movies to really watch at the movies. Even my older 10-year-old son says we should save the money and then get a DVD later. Furthermore, I see little need to enrich those movie stars, studios and the like - who are already so rich while we suckers are stuck in low-paying jobs -- for giving me such trash."
So what do you think is the single biggest reason for the motion picture industry's supposed woes? Are the studios, and the Supreme Court, right in saying that piracy is the big threat and must be controlled even at the cost of inhibiting new technology? Or is the real problem high prices, commercials, poor ambience, lack of choice, or lousy movies? Answer the poll in the right-hand column on my website and post your comments.
Read and post comments about this story here.
10:21:21 AM 
|
|
