A Tale of Two Theaters

We have just returned from a 10 day cruise to Alaska (amazing, BTW) and since it was hot, muggy and rainy this weekend, we went to the movies. Of course, we saw two of the hottest movies right now,?Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny?and?Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One. We did enjoy them both, but it was the experience around watching the movies that I want to write about.

I've written about my love of watching movies in the theater?here, but here's the main point:

Seeing a movie in a theater with an audience also creates a group catharsis that almost never happens for me when watching at home. Part of the issue is the many distractions that I have at home that don’t happen in the theater. I’m constantly looking up trivia or checking emails or doing something completely unrelated at home. In the theater, I’m focused on the screen and the story. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been totally engrossed in a movie in the theater and sometimes even questioned how I thought I liked the movie when watching it at home. Or thought a movie was really funny when surrounded by other people laughing and then sat bored while watching it at home.

And more importantly, I said this:

Plus, I can assure you that my wife will never count it as a date night if we watch a movie at home.

We saw Indiana Jones at the local?AMC theater?in Clifton Commons. This is a very good theater as far as tech goes, with all of the latest in projection and sound technology so watching a movie there is very good. AMC has worked hard to make sure their tech exceeds expectations of todays cinema audience. It's part of their effort to get people to watch movies at a cinema instead of streaming at home.

What they haven't done a great job with is really educating the audience on how to be an?audience. First, I get that sometimes people forget to turn their phones off, so they might ring during the movie. I mean, we've all done that. But people are on their phones throughout the movie. Person in front of us looked like they were going to record the entire movie. They had recorded all of the previews already. People text non-stop; people have conversations that don't have anything to do with the movie and generally treat the cinema like it's their living room. It's not the best environment for watching a movie.

In contrast, we saw the new Mission Impossible at?The Clairidge?in Montclair. Run as a non-profit by the?Montclair Film Festival?(full disclosure, I do a lot of work with them), it's a very different cinema. For one, the theaters and screens are much smaller. They have been upgrading all of the projectors and sound systems, but I don't think they're as good as what AMC has. But that's only one part of the in-cinema experience.

I don't know how to say it without kinda' sounding jerky, but they obviously have an audience that's better at being an?audience. It was certainly an older audience, although honestly I'm not sure it's as simple as that. I think it's more that the folks who support a film festival generally know what's expected of them as an audience. There was one woman who made excited utterances about the movie, but there wasn't the level of talking we experienced the night before. And no one was on their phone during the movie.

I don't think simply making the on-screen experience better will help drive people back into the theaters. And I don't know the answer to making an audience?better. I'm not even sure what I mean by that. For our family, the non-stop phone activity and talking completely takes us out of the movie and ruins the entire experience. I'd rather have the screen not as good but a quiet and engaged audience. How can we teach audiences to act in a theater? Should we be doing that? I get many distractions while watching from home, I don't want them in the theater. Am I just simply old? What do you think? LMK in the comments.