Moviegoing Fell to a 16-Year Low in 2011

[barts]

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Moviegoing Fell to a 16-Year Low in 2011.

...the holiday uptick wasn't enough to close the gap in domestic box office revenues. Ticket sales came in at an estimated $10.21 billion in 2011, down 3.4 percent from 2010, or roughly $370 million.
More grim [news] was the drop in attendance, which tumbled to a 16-year low in 2011. An estimated 1.28 billion people went to the movies, down 4.21 percent from the 1.33 billion who went in 2010.

Perhaps it's just me and my wife, but despite voraciously watching movies downloaded from iTunes or premium cable channels, we rarely go to theatres. The reason is that movie going for us has become a painful and miserable experience.

We enter the cineplex (or should I say gauntlet) and are viciously assaulted by video games, ear drum cracking music, and outrageously priced junk food. Taking our seats in a beautiful theatre with comfortable stadium seating and a wonderful sound system, we endure perhaps two dozen ads and admonishments to buy popcorn, pop, and pizzas. Finally, the movie starts, and if the theatre management is being paid beyond minimum wage, the movie may be in focus and the sound set at a reasonable, rather than painful, level. If the movie is still on 35mm film, rather than digital, there will be scratches throughout.

Unless the movie is truly an event class production (Avatar comes to mind), we wait for the iTunes download or premium cable which today can happen within a few weeks of the theatrical release and watch it on a large screen TV with surround sound, all the while enjoying a glass of wine.

I do love movies. I do deplore modern movie theatres.

[Angry Citizen]

Have you tried different theaters? Places like the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin would twitch in horror at that description.

[MalloryKnoxious]

We haven't gone to the movie theater since setting up a home theater. Between work and school, we stay chronically behind new releases anyhow, so it works out.

[barts]

Have you tried different theaters? Places like the Alamo Drafthouse here in Austin would twitch in horror at that description.

The problem is associated here in Canada, at least, with the major chains. AMC seems better than Cineplex. The few independent theatres left are mostly rag-tag affairs with sticky floors and gum on the backs of seats.

It would be a joy to watch a movie that was shot for the big screen (one longs for a "David Lean" class film) in a great theatre with no ads (apart from upcoming attractions and, perhaps, a short). The "Premium" theatres that do exist near me tend to be small, art houses, and the experience there is little improvement on my flat screen TV.

There was a time when, for some movies, going to a theatre was a real event. I recall in 1963 going to see the Canadian premiere of The Great Escape. Props from the film were used for a lobby display. We entered the theatre by way of a magnificent red carpet. Once the audience was seated, the lights dimmed, music filled the auditorium and the curtains parted to reveal the screen. The projectionist rolled film and we were transported.

From the time we entered the theatre, the exhibitor was creating a vivid, coherent entertainment experience. Good stuff.

[The Decider]

Theaters may be going the way of big chain bookstores. They try all manner of money generating strategies from multiple pre-screening ads to high priced food and still they struggle. There will always be a place for the outstanding theaters like the one mentioned by AC in Austin. But they will apparently be the exception and limited to high traffic city centers.

I would be curious to know if theaters in big megamalls do better than their stand alone competitors. I think people like to eat dinner in say a Cheesecake Factory then walk a short distance to see a movie after a little shopping. Theaters not attached to a larger entertainment/shopping center may not survive much longer. Unfortunately for the movie goer, the mall theaters tend to be very small. I much prefer the large amphitheater style of older movie houses with gigantic screens. My hometown of Los Angeles still has a few of those left in Westwood and Hollywood but they are pricey.

[ChimneySweep]

When our kids were small, going to the cinema was a regular outing. As they grew older, and their appetites increased, it became an expensive option compared to hiring a DVD and providing our own snacks. The last movie we saw collectively was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and that was simply because it had become a family ritual to see each one together. 3D movies and one with effects like Avatar have sometimes drawn us back out of curiousity, but generally, as has been said, the time lapse between cinema date and DVD hire date is not long and if the trailer doesn't particularly intrigue the usual response is "wait for it to come out on DVD".
One answer might be to aim for a niche market. We had a small privately-owned cinema in our village. The seats are comfortable, you can take in a beer or wine and a hot snack, and it tends to show classic or film festival-type films. One rainy day, with nothing better to do, I went to a daytime screening of "It's Complicated". The cinema was three-quarters full, all women, most on their own and older. I have never seen a group laugh out loud as robustly, often or shout so many ad lib comments. I had a blast. It occurred to me afterward that this "club" atmosphere could be a real winner if it was marketed right.

[LetThereBe]

I agree with a few others here: it is cheap enough to get an impressive home theater that going out just doesn't carry as much appeal.
I love being able to talk and laugh with friends through a film... and have whatever kind of food I want (at a reasonable price). The seating in my living room is quite comfortable, and with a front projector getting a 100" screen is not prohibitively expensive. Netflix gives me more variety than a theater ever could.

I see very little advantage to a traditional theater experience.

[Night]

I love old movies, but they tended to be way too predictable.

I really hate movies where the character is like a damned mormon angel, where they can never do anything bad, and they have one heroic goal throughout the film. I like movies where the characters are more realistic. For some reason I always end up rooting for the bad guy anyways, they tend to have more ambition and are more creative.

[Angry Citizen]

I love old movies, but they tended to be way too predictable.

I really hate movies where the character is like a damned mormon angel, where they can never do anything bad, and they have one heroic goal throughout the film. I like movies where the characters are more realistic. For some reason I always end up rooting for the bad guy anyways, they tend to have more ambition and are more creative.

[Muckraker]

Aside from the headache-inducing 3D and the lame "5D" experience of having film characters spit stale water at you and jam pistons in your back, theaters haven't come up with anything new to compete with the home theater experience.

The cost of taking a family of four to the movies and buying them snacks ten times is roughly equal to the cost of buying a new 55" 1080p HDTV. Blu-Ray on an HDTV looks better than anything a movie theater could offer. A nice surround-sound system sounds better than what a theater offers. The couch is more comfortable than anything a theater offers. The pause button ensures I won't miss anything when I get up to take a leak. At home I won't have a roomful of strangers doing the things strangers do. I can watch sans pants at home. What can a theater offer that competes with any of this at a price that is compelling enough to consider?

The only thing they offer is the artificially implemented "see it today" feature, which is all discriminatory BS if you ask me. Sorry, guy dying of cancer in the hospital, you can't watch the new X-Men movie because you can't partake of the "theater-going" experience in a timely manner.

I'll go to a movie theater when I can insert the little plug from the seat into the little socket on my arm and truly experience something new. But even then, what would logically prevent me from just using the little plug dangling from my Lazy Boy at home?

[LetThereBe]

Aside from the headache-inducing 3D and the lame "5D" experience of having film characters spit stale water at you and jam pistons in your back, theaters haven't come up with anything new to compete with the home theater experience.

This is something I was thinking... what about the possibility of dynamic cinema?

To me one of the biggest drawbacks of movies in general is that there is very little motivation to watch a second time. I might get some novel enjoyment if I am with someone that hasn't seen it before... but otherwise I won't watch a movie again.
It is very hard to describe exactly what I mean (and I realize this would be far more applicable in some genres than others). I have noticed that the anxiety I may feel at the first watching of a good film is very similar to what I often feel in dreams. This anxiety ultimately is what makes for a more satisfying conclusion... and creates a more lasting emotional response. I often have repeat dreams, in which the same events unfold but there is some key moment... some tiny variable that has changed. Everything is familiar, but I have that same uncertainty and foreboding anxiety of the first instance.
What if you honestly did not know what was going to happen the next time you went in the theater? Of course it would be up to the writer's and director's artistic vision to determine where these subtle variables would lie. Naturally this approach would be marvelous for the horror genre.

I should elaborate that I'm not just talking about "multiple endings". I'm talking about real-time introduction of randomness. Today we could probably render "Toy Story" real time... and in so many years we could do the same with graphics comparable to Avatar. The computing power necessary would for a time at least make it prohibitively expensive for the average consumer, giving some justification for a theater experience.

Of course taking this a bit further, video games have been diverging into the cinematic and quick and mindless style. Perhaps this line between film and game could be blurred further, and the development of the story would directly follow subtle inputs from the audience? I could see real value here that would never be available outside of a large group.

[ironeagle]

There financial problems are mostly due to high priced tickets and gouging people on candies and sodas, quantity over price always brings in more revenue. In addition blame some of those problems on the movie studios who take almost all of the ticket revenue from the cinemas which is why they started gouging the prices of concessions.