Movies

Tags: real life, randomthought.
By lucb1e on 2011-12-30 18:40:20 +0100

I went to Mission Impossible 4 with some others lately, more for their sake than because I wanted to see the movie. I knew it was going to be some standard action movie without plot or thought behind it. And indeed, there weren't ever 2 minutes in a row where I hadn't thought "Oh come on, things don't work like that". Of course that's why it's a movie, but there is a difference between a plain stupid action and thought-trough impossibilities. I'm still trying to find a good way to explain this, but I'll get back on that.

During the movie I was also thinking, Why do we go to movies at all?
You stand 15 minutes in line to get a ticket, with which you then walk into the theater to get it shredded (why don't they do it like in theme parks or supermarkets, pay then go trough). Downloading a movie is so much easier.

Then during the movie, at a random point they stop it for a few minutes. Turns out the nicotine addicts, coffee addicts, chocolate addicts, toilet-go'ers and other like-minded species need a break. At home you can pause a downloaded movie whenever you like, and you don't bother anyone else with it.

If you go buy some food or drinks, you stand in line for like 10 minutes again. Also in a supermarket you can get five times as much for the same price. And the choise is much more diverse. Another argument for staying home.

Lastly, you can hardly ever watch the movie you actually want to see. I'd like to see Avatar in 3D, but it doesn't run anywhere anymore. Or a classic one like The Lord of the Rings, try finding a cinema running that one. You can only see recent movies. At home you don't have any trouble with this...

The only complain I hear from others about cinemas is that there are people using their cellphone, some get up for a toilet break or are plainly leaving, some are loudly eating something, people are chatting, laughing, you name it. Surprisingly, this didn't really bother me at all. Laughing together even gave a sense of community. If you are bothered by this though, you should stay home and watch movies by yourself or with a couple friends in your living room.

So all of this made me think, why do we still go to the cinema? Well why did anyone ever go to a (movie) theater? I guess it originated somewhere in like the middle ages where a group of people would perform an act to tell a story. Later this changed to simple entertainment, but originally I think it was to tell stories.
Nowadays, what can we get in a cinema that we can't at home? The obvious answer is the quality. At home you don't have a great surround system and a huge screen. Now I'm not a graphics addict so I don't really mind watching it on my 12" laptop screen. For sound, well the cinema really is better on that. A good headset won't cut it, and I doubt a good surround system will (but I could be wrong on that). But I won't go trough all the trouble just to get better sound.

Conclusion, the cinema is pointless to go to, for me at least. You might argue that it's also a social event, but if you want to act social you don't go to a cinema, you go to a restaurant or something. If you want to act social while watching a movie you freaking get some friends and watch the movie in your living room. At least you can talk then. And you can watch as many movies as you like, for the price of the movie instead of the price of the movie + the costs to maintain the cinema + all other expenses they have + their profit margin (assuming you download movies from a legal source).