In addition to ridiculous ticket prices, the actual movie doesn't start until 15 minutes after the scheduled showtime. While you're waiting, you're expected to watch advertisements. I don't have any concrete data to back this up, but I feel it wasn't always this bad.
I timed it recently, and it was almost 16 minutes of straight ads (not trailers for unreleased films mind you, ads for movies coming out on bluray, newspapers, an anti-piracy PSA, etc.). This is in addition to having to sit through countless still ads for dentists, car washes, advertisements to advertise at the theater, etc. etc, before the scheduled start time.
The movies should be an escape from every day life. The theatrical experience should be a sort of sacrament, otherwise there's far less incentive to leave the house and pay 10 times as much to watch a film a few months earlier. Luckily there are still a lot of theaters in my town that are not so aggressively trying to capitalize on their captive audiences. Mark Cuban gets this, but I'm sure whoever he sells Landmark to won't. I'm done with going to see movies at the megaplexes though.
Not sure why you've been down-voted, but this has infuriated me more than any other single thing.
I pay a good deal of money to see a film in which I am so bombarded with ads beforehand that its ruined the film experience. The last film I saw had a full 15 minutes of ads and trailers before it started! My girlfriend asked me if we could just leave and get our money back.
I don't so much mind seeing trailers before a movie. It seems like a tradition, and trailers can be fun to watch. However, ads for other stuff like cars, or soft drinks cheapens the experience. I'm at a damn movie theater, don't remind me that it's really just a big TV screen.
15 minutes isn't even so bad any more. The last movie I went to see was 30 minutes of ads (seriously, I checked) and about an hour 40 long. That's a broadly similar proportion to TV, which doesn't make a good case for paying £8/person for it.
I feel like it's never actually been that good, but I think it has actually gotten worse than it used to be. Possibly doesn't help that I remember actually being interested in movie trailers, whereas mostly now I'm just bored by them. That ties in a bit with Ebert's point the first, but to me it feels like it goes further; most of them look rubbish and any exceptions I've normally already heard about via an internet.
Theaters which "do it right" (bright projection, good sound, more varied programming, anti-talking/texting policies) also tend to show fewer ads before a screening.
The problem across the board really seems to boil down to "megaplex chains are bad for movies." There are a lot of specific line items but they all end up sharing the common denominator of "this wasn't a problem until the rise of big box multiplex theaters."
I went to a movie a few days ago for the first time in months. As soon as the advertisements started for other movies/consumer good I had to walk out. I couldn't bear to sit through 10 minutes of all that advertisements anymore.
I've told my parents that I like movies but I hate going to movie theaters before and I think this might be why.
Growing up, I lived about an hour from the nearest theater. I remember we used to use 10 minutes as the rule of thumb for the movie to actually start after the posted showtime...no commercials exactly, but 3 or 4 previews in those days.
If we were more than 10 minutes late, we'd just go to the mall or arcade or something instead.
You're joking, right? How do all of the sites that require Flash also not fall under this same statement?
(Yes, I'm being somewhat snarky, but I'm also genuinely interested in your take on Flash-based sites. Is it an issue of "Flash is already installed and QuickTime is not" or something beyond that?)
Yes, Flash is already installed. It also opens instantly and is never slow. It doesn't open up weird framed windows that don't match the chrome of the rest of the OS. It doesn't try to trick me into installing iTunes to download it, and it doesn't try to trick me into installing iTunes and Safari every couple of days when its separately installed software updater pops itself up. Quicktime (and iTunes) are just terrible software on Windows -- they perform poorly, make no attempt to act like Windows applications, and are almost on the level of malware when it comes to the updater.
I've always wondered why movie theaters are showing ads, when you are charged to watch the movie. Aren't ads supposed to be an alternative to directly charging your customer?
At some point, research was commissioned by movie industry types to find the viewers' "time of highest alertness", i.e. when to deliver the best scene. It turns out that viewers are most focused in the first 20 minutes, which is consistent with most research efforts in other fields (see the usual stuff about 15 mins presentations etc).
Trailers were already being shown in that timeframe, to allow for latecomers, so adding regular ads was a no-brainer.
I don't live in the UK, so I'm going to ask -- is this serious? I know in the US there's about 15 minutes of previews/commercials after the presentation starts, but for the 30 min prior to the screening there's the "First Look" or some other less preview/ad thing running. That would make 40 minutes but only if you came significantly before showtime.
I've been to cinemas in a few places around the UK, and it's been The Twenty[0] - 10 mins of ads, then 10 mins of trailers, from the time the show is scheduled to start, before the movie - for well over a decade. However, of late at my local multiplex, it's definitely stretched out to more like 15/15, with 30 mins between the posted start of the show, and the start of the actual movie.
[In London at least, not sure about other places] Ranges from 20 to 40 mins of ads and trailers, although I've only heard of people complaining about the upper extreme and never personally experienced it.
Simple way out is to walk in to the cinema hall about 15 mins after the scheduled start of the movie - works for me every time.
I wouldn't be surprised to learn that they raised the timeframe from 20 to 30/40, and probably factored some randomness in, just to defy that sort of strategy.
