It’s the economy, stupid.
Movie theaters have done a masterful job of turning a visit to them into a bad experience. From the initial high ticket price, to the now mandatory “convenience fee” when buying a ticket, the 30+ minute of full volume commercials prior to the show so you can’t even converse with your friends before the show, to the push for subscribing to a paid service to get slightly lower ticket prices or concession discounts.
All of this is before the problems about who you’re sharing the theater with. At a minimum watching a movie today is one big screen in front of you and at least two small screens to the sides of other patrons txting or watching Tiktok during the show.
When my wife and I break down and go to an AMC theater we always plan to arrive 30 minutes after the “start time”. We still catch a trailer or two before the movie actually starts.
We just found an “art house” theater about 30 minutes away and saw Marty Supreme there last night. The theater probably seats about 80 people, the screen is maybe 15 feet wide. The sole guy working there (the owner maybe) was very welcoming, and concessions were reasonably priced. Two tickets & some snacks were still under $30. The guy also went up front to welcome everybody and point out the restrooms that were off to one side of the screen for those of us who had never been there before. Then he ran up to the booth to start the movie. Two trailers, no commercials, and the movie started. We’ll definitely be going back there.
When my wife and I break down and go to an AMC theater we always plan to arrive 30 minutes after the “start time”. We still catch a trailer or two before the movie actually starts.
The second most recent movie I saw was also at an AMC, and I discovered that AMC now no longer does: Commercials, Trailers, Feature
Now its: Commercial, Commercial, Commercial, Trailer , Commercial,Trailer, Commercial, Trailer, tease of Feature, Commercial, Commercial, Trailer, Commercial, Feature
For the past 15 years or so I’ve intentionally avoid trailers and find I enjoy the resulting movie more. This last AMC movie had the gall to include a trailer for the movie I was sitting in.
We just found an “art house” theater about 30 minutes away
There is are a couple theaters like this in town, but they are quite a drive and one has as problem of being located in a busy urban area with expensive pay-parking.
where do you live?
art house cinmeas near me are more expensive than AMC. the only benefit they typically have is they serve beer/wine. they also have ads and trailers up the wazoo post pandemic, or some person who comes up with a microphone before the show and begs you for donations/subscriptions when you already spend $20 a ticket and $10 for a 8oz of popcorn.
We’re in northeast MA. Here’s the theater we just found.
They are showing only one movie? I never saw a cinema like this. I used to go a tiny cinema in Cracow that 2 screens sitting maybe 10 people each but they still had different movies at the same time. This is the one I go to now: https://cinealbeniz.com/ It has 4 screens, tickets are 6 euros, they never show any ads or trailers, I never saw anyone buy popcorn there. There’s a whole network of cinemas like that: https://www.europa-cinemas.org/en/cinemas/map
oh, yeah i’m in Boston. everything is 2x your costs. you are in NH practically. cute little town you have, i have visited a few times never knew they had a indie theater.
2025 was also a really bad year for the economy in general.
In 2024, I’ve been at the cinema almost every week, but this year I just didn’t feel like it. I watched a few movies, for sure, but the excitement wasn’t there.
I don’t know if that’s just me, but I also think movies have gotten too long. I don’t want to sit at the cinema for 3.5 hours and watch a movie that doesn’t even have an ending (looking at you, Killers of the Flower Moon). I get my popcorn and my drink and after 2.5 hours I need to pee and having to get up is just annoying, having to endure my full bladder for another hour even more so.
It’s really weird why filmmakers have decided to make such long movies in this day and age. The Whale was under two hours and the room was flooded with tears afterwards, you don’t need to put a whole series worth of story into one single movie.
I am also tired of the endless remakes and re-remakes. Jurassic World Rebirth was terrible, just let it die already - and what the hell was that “I Know What You Did Last Summer” movie? The first one was bad already, it didn’t need a sequel.
Maybe 2026 will be better, but I don’t have a lot of hope.
I feel like the whole cinema experience has just dropped hard. People have gotten noisier in my local cinema, the prices are way up, and the movies are just as good, if not better in my living room 3 months later when it hits streaming services.
No matter how much I’m looking forward to a movie, something that hasn’t really happened this year anyway, I just can’t get myself to throw €50 at a ticket, popcorn and a soda that is mostly water, when I know I can watch it with better snacks and better soda in 3 months, practically for free.
Last time I went to a theater they played so many ads past when the movie should already have started that I very nearly left, thinking I was in the wrong room. My hand was literally on the door when the movie actually started.
Never been back. Fuck you. Start the fucking movie when you advertise the start time.
At my local cinema they usually play around 5 to 10 minutes of ads before a movie. But I still remember one particular movie where it just didn’t stop and they blasted jewelry ads left and right for a whole 22 minutes. It was “Wish” from Disney.
That whole ordeal made the movie even worse. I do like seeing trailers, because I get excited for new movies, but fucking jewelry ads? Those are the lowest of the low. I’m sure they would’ve played gambling ads next, if that was allowed in Germany.
A friend of mine is super anxious about being late for stuff. This did not jive with my desire to be as late as possible to films. My ideal time to take my seat is about a minute before it starts. I already paid for a ticket, fuck off with your adverts.
The wild part is that’s what we did. The ads I described were almost entirely after the movie WA’s advertised as starting.
It was genuinely like a 7 start time for the movie that didn’t actually start until something asinine like 7:40.
That’s exactly what I mean though - I want to be much later than the advertised start because it’s a damn lie.
With babysitting costs added in, we would spend €100 to go to the cinema without snacks and not going anywhere afterwards with friends. I can’t think of any film worth that when I can see it at home in comfort with no ads and no assholes.
I’m really keen on going to the cinema, but I can definitely see childcare costs killing that off in future. My local cinema is fantastic so I don’t mind paying for a (slightly) pricier ticket, but childcare would multiply the cost several times.
Yeah if you can swing free family sitters, that’s a gift.
I used to be an avid cinema go-er.
The truth is they just don’t make movies I want to go and see anymore. Everything is a big tent sequel, and all the smaller movies get no advertising and by the time word of mouth hits they are already out of theaters and on streaming. What got me into the theater was the foreign films, the second run stuff, and the b horror movies. None of that goes to cinema anymore, most is straight to streaming. if it’s in cinema it might be there one week and then it’s gone.
I feel like it’s 3 weeks between a movies premiere and streaming accessibility. 3 more weeks and you can watch it for free on a streaming service with no bullshit ads or trailers before it. I just paid 10 bucks for disney+ and watched all three marvel movies from this year, and frankly they were all pretty bad. very glad I didn’t shell out $50 to see them in theatres. I already canceled the subscription.
What is the cinema offering me that I can’t get at home? It used to be a great picture, a quiet dark environment, and people with other people who were there for the movie… none of that applies in my few attendances of the past few years. The 20 dollar ticket price doesn’t help either.
Honestly, the best experience I have with film these days is going to my local library and borrowing DVDs. They have a broad selection of 1000s of titles and it’s super fun to just browse the shelves and pick up some random movie that looks interesting and bring it home, watch it, and return it. No cost, no alogarithms, no bullshit.
but when I tell people I do this IRL they think I am mentally ill or something.
It used to be a great picture
I have a 300$ projector at home and the image is better than at the local cinema. People don’t go to the cinemas anymore, so they don’t have money to keep up their technology and fall behind. It makes me sad, because my local cinema is from the 1950s and it could be an amazing place with a really unique architecture, but the technology to really enjoy the movies isn’t there.
Heck, they show 3D movies in half framerate, but you still have to pay the full additional charge. I can get better quality with 140$ VR glasses at home. :(
The attention span from social media like TikTok has ruined people, too. It’s annoying when a movie takes its time and people start getting their phones and smartwatches lit up to distract themselves.
To be fair, DVDs look terrible on what’s a normal sized screen these days 😉
my ps5 upscales very well
To what screen size?
60" 4K
I’ve yet to encounter a good upscaler but I’m glad you’re happy with your setup!
i dunno, I have one of those super high end TVs, so that probably helps a lot too. It handles a lot of content very well. when shopping i did pick a model that was rated well for handing lower res content. some high res dispalys are awful at it
I’ve got a fairly nice 65" Dolby Vision/HDR10/etc. set with a decent NITS rating. I reckon your scaler is the defining difference. I think I was playing it through an Xbox One X and the results were hideous.
Maybe some libraries offer blurays although I have no device to play them, and they tend to be infested with DRM.
Yeah, I refuse to watch the DVDs I own anymore. I will download a higher quality version instead.
I put in my copy of The Hogfather a few years back and took it straight back out. I should probably check if there’s a better quality release available although I can’t imagine they did the effects for anything above 1080p.
Drop copyright to 5 years and theaters will be huge again showing older movies and shows at reasonable prices you either can’t get on streaming or prefer in a community setting. 100+ year copyrights owned by corpo monopolies are choking both independent and smaller project artists and theaters.
That’s a good idea.
Sounds expensive (to my pocket book). I would be at the cinema every weekend, making my kid watch some classic I felt they had missed out on.
100% this.
My local theater does “Flashback Cinema” on Wednesdays & Sundays. My wife & I went to see Jaws. I know I’ve seen that movie a long time ago and probably on TV, but there was so much I didn’t remember that it was like watching it for the first time. The tickets were cheaper and it was definitely a fun experience. I’ve got to say, I see why that movie scared the crap out of people when it came out in the ’70s!
Blazing Saddles was also one of the flashback movies, and I took my stepson who had never seen it. I’ve seen it over a hundred times on VHS & DVD at least, but seeing it on the big screen was a completely new experience.
Most films that recoup their costs only do so after a decade or more. A 5-year period would wipe out independent film instantly, and would leave AI slop as the only content being made.
2026 will be even worse.
I have no interest in going to theaters. I’m happy to wait months to watch whatever on my TV at home. Theaters could have more draw, but their ONLY advantage anymore is first run, everything else about the experience has gotten worse over the past 20 years.
Some theaters by me don’t even sell small popcorns anymore. Your choice is a gallon bucket for $7-$9, or a limited edition Marcel gallon bucket for $14.
that’s cheap. a small is 10 bucks where i live, the gallon bucket is 20 or more
I could be low balling it. In general, the cost of popcorn has gone up, even at grocery stores. Most brands seem to be only selling a 3 or 6 pack now. The cost per bag is over a dollar for the 3 packs, so yeah, you are likely right that my numbers are way off.
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.
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.
the future of cinema is community
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.
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.
Movie theaters can’t compete in part because movie studios own the streaming channels. Why would they bother releasing their movies in theaters when they make more money showing them at home?
I love theaters, and still do, but holy crap the prices are insane. It helps if you can find a rural theater, but even then it can be expensive. I can think of a whole lot more things and experiences I’d rather spend $150+ for a family (tickets + concessions).
Plus, most movies only stay in theaters for a few months or weeks, whereas it used to be close to a year between theater and home release, so the desire to see it — maybe even repeatedly — is greatly diminished.
That, and now that everyone has a huge screen and surround sound at home, there isn’t a lot of reason to go just for the features.
One of the best things I did at home was to buy one of those 12oz popcorn popper machines. Now I can make popcorn nearly identical to the theaters. It’s awesome. While it was a large initial investment, it will easily pay for itself in concession savings going to a theater.
The classic cinemas near me is fantastic, nice heated recliners, you can bring in a bag with blankets, and whatever else really, and I can take a family of 4 get popcorn and drinks and it’s under $55 usually, and the kids always love going to the theater. But a standard amc is lacking to say the least.
Cinemas are almost peak predatory capitalism. Unsurprisingly I’m not super keen on going. Sort your act out, cinemas, or piss off.
As a result I’ve got a small home cinema setup in my home. It’s only 5.1.2 Dolby Atmos but it’s a far cry from VHS on some 28" CRT on the other side of the room.
I don’t get why movie theaters don’t diversify.
I understand they pretty much only make profit off of the concession stand because studios rob all the ticket sale profit.
But the chain theaters especially could “easily” offer other options.
Basically turn the theater building into a mini mall:
build a restaurant that serves good food (not talking about dinner and show type restaurant although maybe offer that too)
have a gift shop (especially for the kid movies).
Take some of the massive amount of parking most of them have and turn it into a park/playground.
Hell even a small arcade.
Just other things to attract customers/offer other profit opportunities.
Mine used to have a row of arcade machines they removed. Like several full car racers and some actual gun shooters as well as more typical fighting games.
It’s just a giant sterile white room now
Look up ‘Alamo Drafthouse Cinema’
That was what I meant about dinner and a show.
