Is anybody else a bit surprised by the pessimism surrounding seeing movies in theaters?
I’m not surprised to see people shit on AMC specifically, given some of the moves they’ve made with acquiring smaller theaters and hiking prices. But, I’m also seeing a lot of people hating on the very idea of seeing a movie outside the comfort of their home.
I guess I love movies more than most. Enough to go to the movies and see three movies back-to-back-to-back in an evening. I mean, over the course of 2025 I saw over two dozen movies and only two or three of them were a bad experience (loud/distracting audience members, poor seating or outdated audio / visual infrastructure). The vast majority of the time, my experience was much better than watching it on my 60" TV screen at home. I can honestly say that my most tranquil and relaxed moments of last year were when I was free from all distractions and enjoying a cinematic moment with a crowd of other people.
I guess it’s just sad to see streaming services get rewarded for pumping out a ton of slop. While creative and unique movies only sell a few tickets on opening weekend. The people that fund movies definitely have to be noticing those trends, which I’m sure is why we’re seeing fewer and fewer interesting movies each year. We ultimately end up with endless sequels, live-action-remakes of successful animated movies/video games, and endless waves of things we’ve already seen before.
What a shitty time to live in: We live our lives with less money than our Grandparents. We see a constant stream of sad, frustrating, or disheartening news 24/7. Then, we try to take a second to relax and step away from the madness. But, many of our beloved hobbies are in a nosedive so it’s hard to truly get away from it all:
- Video games are crashing with crazy numbers of studios shutting down or laying people off. We have to lean on Indie games, and a few hit games to keep the medium bearable. Not to mention AI is making gaming far too expensive.
- Great movies are getting way less attention, and instead we’re getting Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 because it’ll sell tickets to the kids.
- And it gets continuously harder to watch good TV without being subscribed to a dozen different subscription services. No wonder people are sailing the seas like it’s the 1700s.
Long story short: Anybody else frustrated right now?
Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Same here, man.
I go to the theater a few times a month, and the amount of bad experiences I’ve had throughout my entire lifetime can be counted on one hand. I enjoy it better than my own home setup, for the same reasons you mentioned.
Sometimes I wonder if people here are over-exaggerating how bad theaters are, or am I just one of tbe lucky ones?
THANK YOU! I was starting to feel crazy 😵💫
Okay, I could get in my car, spend $3 in gas driving to and back from a theater, $30 on a ticket, $40 on popcorn and a soda, to watch The Continuing Adventures Of Scarlett Johanson’s Very Tight Pants, once, for maybe 2 hours? Or spend $15 on Stardew Valley and receive over a decade of content.
Why’d we even bother manufacturing projectors after 1977?
$28 ticket might have something to do with it. That’s what I just paid for a ticket to Project Hail Mary.
Was it good ??
Probably presale. Not out yet
Yep. Ain’t seen it yet.
The book was great so…maybe
Amazing book
For me, it was when I finally started to go back to the theaters after COVID and I found out all of the sudden, I have to actually pick a seat and if I don’t show up early enough or pick the seat early enough, the seat is going to be absolute hot garbage and then I just paid 20-some odd dollars for a ticket for absolutely nothing. and then have to pay another $60 or $70 for a soda, popcorn, or maybe nachos for me and the kids.
For less than that, I bought a professional gourmet popcorn maker, made popcorn that was actually fresh. I took all of the savings and used it to buy a NAS.
Regarding the picking your seat part, isn’t that much better?
The old system you absolutely had to get there early to get a good seat, as it was first come first serve. New system I can buy tickets in advance, and pick the perfect seat. If there’s no good seats, I won’t go. Or at least I know what I’m getting beforehand.
Totally agreed on pricing though, it’s fucked.
While I’m not trying to piss in your cereal hwre, from my point of view, I got there early enough for a great seat and some motherfuckers already took the seat, then the ticket cost, then the food cost…
Also, it’s not Intercontinental travel, I shouldn’t need to book in advance to have a good experience. The whole point of the experience for me is that you could spontaneously just go and have the whole experience. That’s all gone now, and I would have to plan way in advance to even get good seats. It’s not worth it for me.
There are still theaters like that, and they serve beer and pizza, so I go there instead.
Ain’t nobody going to watch one movie for 16-20 bucks when they can pay the same price per month to watch a bunch of horrible movies and shows and free video streaming sites
Every one will have their reasons, but for me it was
- No movie interested me enough
- High prices
- I live in a different continent
Not in that order
Just take your private jet to the cinema, it’s not that big of deal
Hey Tailor, nice to see you in Lemmy.
Melania
I haven’t seen any movies worth watching on streaming in the last 6 months. I dont know what people are finding to watch in theaters right now.
Scrolling the list right now I guess all the money was from: Avatar Sinners Bugonia Zootopia 2
I dont see Goat making good money and Send Help will probably do decent streaming but poor theater numbers.
I dont see enough for a strong Q1, and as lame as AMC is, I dont think its their business as much as the product available right now.
You forgot Wicked, that was probably responsible for a big boost around the holidays.
Oh yeah, I did. Its no longer at my theater so I didn’t have the reminder. Tons of chatter about that one too.
Say no to franchised theaters !
Every time I see a new movie trailer I like, seeing “Only in Theaters” immediately kills all interest I may have had in that movie.
I’ll just look it up again in a few months and stream that shit for free. Thanks.
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Consistently crappy theaters, other customers who don’t care about the movie, on their phones and talking, and staff that are both not paid enough and told not to deal with those problems.
All of that for now 20 per ticket, double that if you want snacks. My local indie house shows movies with none of those problems.
And half an hour of ads
I also don’t have any of those issues at home. Relative screen size is comparable (probably bigger at home, in terms of viewing angle). No annoying people at all. Snacks cost supermarket-prices. I also don’t have to travel there and back at specific times, can pause to pee, good stuff!
Movies may be a few weeks or months later, but who cares. If anything I got a backlog to still watch anyway. I can no longer see any advantage to going to a cinema.
I think that’s who they lost- casual viewers. The die hards still go but the casual viewers just simply prefer the home setup. I count myself very much in that due to all the reasons you listed.
My spouse has gone all in on the gd rumble-seats in Cinemark theaters. Even dumb movies we’d never go see, they’re like “does it have rumble seats? ‘cause I’m there.”
For me it’s just the comfy-ass recliners. One of the Regals near me swapped out all of the chairs with comfy recliners and— my god— sitting through a 3 hour movie was a comparative cakewalk to how it used to be.
I haven’t got any AMCs near me, but it sounds like they haven’t put in the same efforts on seat situations. You can have all the Dolby, XD, THX etc stuff you want, but the chairs are a big part of it.
—that said, we also have a lovely historic theater near us that’s oozing character and ambience, so… it’s an uphill battle for all chain theaters in our area afaic
I put my feet up in a recliner at the theater once… Zzzzzzz. I can’t do it.
If only they’d upkeep the recliners… my theather converted around covid, and half of the them are non functioning now. Broken buttons mostly, but it’s especially bad around the center positioned seats everyone always takes.
I used to be an usher a while back and cleaning the basic foldy seats are no bueno, especially on kid/family movies— people are slobs. Shrek 2 was the WORST by far to clean up after, and it was in theaters for so long.
I cannot imagine how long and how much work it would take to thoroughly clean some of the recliners I’ve seen.
Coupled with that, nearly every chain cinema near us has cut staff/concessions down to combining concessions and tickets into the same booth/register, and the ushers are a skeleton crew.
They’re looking for a quick-fix/lowest effort draw for an audience and are only halfway there ‘cause uhhh ineptitude or greed or both. And it sucks ‘cause I’d hate to see all of these places shut down.
…although, one of them shut down near us and got bought by a local guy who has spruced it the hell up, so. We’ll see what happens.
I’ve heard from a few friend’s kids that cleaning the recliners is basically easy mode. They’re not cloth like the old founding seats so everything just wipes right off.
Dunno if that holds for all, just local anecdotes
Came here to say pretty much the same thing. There are a few AMC theaters near us that my wife and I enjoy going to from time to time. But it’s clear they aren’t doing anything when it comes to maintaining & repairing their seats. They were awesome when the theaters were newly renovated, but the last time we went one of our seats was broken so badly we couldn’t sit comfortably in it. Luckily there were plenty of empty seats so we could move easily.
[off topic]
I’ve had it happen twice. I’ll be in an airplane, watching a movie, and there’s a big battle scene. The plane hits turbulence and the fight becomes much more exciting.
I can understand the appeal of the rumble seats.
the landmark “4d” seats that move/rumble make any movie with flying so fun. They still haven’t gotten the technology precise enough for well timed jump scares in horror movies though.
You should probably buy her a vibrator.
I found the rumble seats very off-putting, so I turned it off after a few minutes. Turns out, you can’t turn these ones off, just down. Very frustrating two hours.
I will say the small 10 screen AMC near me has nice seats. It has a bunch of small theaters that are pretty comfortable.
The giant AMC at the mall 30 minutes north of me has huge theaters full of crappy seats.
It depends on where you go.
I regularly go to the theater. There hasn’t been a movie released in months that I’m willing to go pay for
I’ll go to any Christopher Nolan and Edgar Wright movie. The rest…ehh
One Battle… was my last “go to the theater” show.
Only iron lungis is the only movie I’ve been to in 6 months and all the trailers that played in theater for other movies were boring. Odd it is though that a bunch of them were squid game style “what if the government/the elite was hunting people for sport”/other conspiracy tropes coming out around the time of the Epstein files
AMC had exclusive distribution rights to Arco in my area and decided to make zero screenings available with the original French dialog audio, just the English dub.
So I’m waiting for streaming, avoiding traveling across town, paying to park, paying a premium for mediocre snacks and drinks all for the pleasure of sitting through 30 minutes of ads before the movie I paid $20 to see in a language not fit for the movie. 👍
