To add to all the other responses: My partner and I went to see Wicked For Good last week. We paid a few quid extra per ticket for the ‘Xplus’ screen that Showcase offer, so a screen that was a good 100’ across, and Dolby 360 sound. Plus comfy reclining seats. My partner has limited mobility, so we booked the accessible seats so they didn’t have to climb up the stairs.
The picture quality on that enormous screen was absolute shit. There was this distracting, swirling noise over it the entire fucking time. The sound might have been good, but the way they construct the auditoriums means that there was a fucking wall behind our seats, so the rear speakers essentially didn’t get to us. And because they put the accessible seating so close to the screen, I got neck ache from looking up at it for two hours.
Oh, and the first seat I tried, the reclining buttons didn’t work. Fortunately, there was almost no one in there, so we were able to switch.
We paid £45 (including some extra snacks to add to what we were smuggling in) for an experience that was demonstrably worse in every way than just waiting for the same movie to be available to rent (or more likely, when it turns up on the high seas) and watching it on our 55" OLED TV with Atmos-compatible soundbar.
I used to adore going to the cinema. Some of my most fond memories are going with my dad at the weekend to see that week’s big release. Add to that that most of the movies that can justify wanting to see on a huge screen look boring as shit and at this point I genuinely can’t see any argument for giving them any of my money.
The picture quality on that enormous screen was absolute shit.
At my local cinema, they have a system that opens a curtain automatically before the movie starts. Except it often doesn’t work right and only opens up halfway, so someone from the audience (usually me) has to get up and look for an employee to manually open it all the way. I missed quite a few movie intros because of that. 😑
When I watched Robot Dreams at another cinema, there was a small tear right in the middle of the screen. The state of cinema in this day and age is very sad.
My partner and I were discussing all this after our experience, and we came to the conclusion that the future of cinema is community. Smaller, local screens that show one movie at a time for a price that covers the running costs.
There’s a little community owned cinema in the town they’re from; one of the oldest purpose built cinemas in the world, no less. It’s not making anyone a millionaire, but it does show a good selection of new movies in a nice building that the locals are proud of. If it wasn’t a 2 hour drive away, I’d be inclined to watch most movies there.
I’m from Germany and I took a trip to Nuremberg this year. They have a very popular and massive cinema, because they understand the culture. You can find dancefloors in there, a big cafe area to hang out, an underground cinema where they carved the screen out of the wall (it’s like the batcave with a screen). They livestream soccer matches and you can even listen to audiodramas in a dark room or watch movies on the roof at night with drinks served.
It’s really amazing and I wish more cinemas would understand that surviving on endless Marvel movies will not work out for them in the future. Cinemas need to do more activities to draw people in.
To add to all the other responses: My partner and I went to see Wicked For Good last week. We paid a few quid extra per ticket for the ‘Xplus’ screen that Showcase offer, so a screen that was a good 100’ across, and Dolby 360 sound. Plus comfy reclining seats. My partner has limited mobility, so we booked the accessible seats so they didn’t have to climb up the stairs.
The picture quality on that enormous screen was absolute shit. There was this distracting, swirling noise over it the entire fucking time. The sound might have been good, but the way they construct the auditoriums means that there was a fucking wall behind our seats, so the rear speakers essentially didn’t get to us. And because they put the accessible seating so close to the screen, I got neck ache from looking up at it for two hours.
Oh, and the first seat I tried, the reclining buttons didn’t work. Fortunately, there was almost no one in there, so we were able to switch.
We paid £45 (including some extra snacks to add to what we were smuggling in) for an experience that was demonstrably worse in every way than just waiting for the same movie to be available to rent (or more likely, when it turns up on the high seas) and watching it on our 55" OLED TV with Atmos-compatible soundbar.
I used to adore going to the cinema. Some of my most fond memories are going with my dad at the weekend to see that week’s big release. Add to that that most of the movies that can justify wanting to see on a huge screen look boring as shit and at this point I genuinely can’t see any argument for giving them any of my money.
At my local cinema, they have a system that opens a curtain automatically before the movie starts. Except it often doesn’t work right and only opens up halfway, so someone from the audience (usually me) has to get up and look for an employee to manually open it all the way. I missed quite a few movie intros because of that. 😑
When I watched Robot Dreams at another cinema, there was a small tear right in the middle of the screen. The state of cinema in this day and age is very sad.
My partner and I were discussing all this after our experience, and we came to the conclusion that the future of cinema is community. Smaller, local screens that show one movie at a time for a price that covers the running costs.
There’s a little community owned cinema in the town they’re from; one of the oldest purpose built cinemas in the world, no less. It’s not making anyone a millionaire, but it does show a good selection of new movies in a nice building that the locals are proud of. If it wasn’t a 2 hour drive away, I’d be inclined to watch most movies there.
I’m from Germany and I took a trip to Nuremberg this year. They have a very popular and massive cinema, because they understand the culture. You can find dancefloors in there, a big cafe area to hang out, an underground cinema where they carved the screen out of the wall (it’s like the batcave with a screen). They livestream soccer matches and you can even listen to audiodramas in a dark room or watch movies on the roof at night with drinks served.
It’s really amazing and I wish more cinemas would understand that surviving on endless Marvel movies will not work out for them in the future. Cinemas need to do more activities to draw people in.