God I believe him. I went to the movies the first time in like four or five years a couple weeks ago. It’s gotten so bad. Prices have doubled since I was there last. Just 30 minutes of ads after the lights got dark. Not trailers mind you ads. It was just a miserable experience.

Course the worst part was it was the Minecraft movie. I took my nephew to see it. Even he thought it sucked. God it was so bad.

Man, it’s always wild to hear the varying experiences

We have a smaller chain of cinemas here that we prefer. But the larger chains in the area aren’t absurdly more expensive. We mostly go to matinee performances because we’re trying to avoid crowds, it’s something we took up during the COVID aftermath and have just enjoyed it as a family. That definitely helps with both the cost and overall experience.

Most films are less than $10 a ticket because of matinee pricing, we’re a family of 3. At this chain concessions are seriously not much more expensive if at all than when I was a teenager 30+ years ago. We buy one big tub of refillable popcorn and a couple drinks. We don’t buy candy at the theater. If we do want candy we tend to bring some that we pick up at dollar stores or 5 below and keep at home for movie nights. We end up spending $45-60 US for a family movie. At most we go probably 6 times in a year, and that would be a pretty blockbuster year of movies. When I was a kid we we never went to movies monthly, going to the theater was an event so it’s not really a change for me.

To those complaining about the ads, I say try to find a theater that offers reserved seating if possible. We do pay an extra fee per ticket to buy them online, but buying seats days or hours in advance means we don’t have to be there at the “start” time when the ads play and we still get a great spot. It’s worth the extra dollar or $1.25 a ticket our local places charge.

It sounds to me like people are probably living where there’s not much competition and so the experience has really degraded because there’s no alternative.

We’re in a wealthy but still mixed income suburb of Chicago so there are 3 theatres within 15 minutes of us. Going out here can be expensive, but the movies are still not that crazy for a whole family experience. If I was single I’d probably be hitting the theater monthly since my costs would be so much lower.

I’d go see movies in theaters, but they are too everything for my tastes, for just a movie. And movies haven’t been very good for like a while, so the movie itself isn’t enough of a draw anymore.

Too cold, too loud, too many people, too sticky, too expensive, and too far of a drive.

I used to live near a theater that had a bar and restaurant, and each seat had a table and a little light for placing orders during the movie. It was a great way to spend the afternoon, because the movie tickets themselves were fairly cheap; the draw was the food and alcohol. So we’d get a group of people together and go sit through 3-4 movies in a day, pigging out sharing food and talking between screenings (they only had two screens, and played a variety of stuff). That was worth it.

Most U.S. Exhibition Execs Think Traditional Moviegoing Has Less Than 20 Years as ‘Viable Business Model,’ According to New Survey

Well, as long as 0 is less than 20 I agree with them.

There’s still plenty movie festivals around the world, with quality movies, that still gather decent crowds.

What I actually hope is going away are those godawful mall places that are overpriced as fuck and only show “superhero of the day” movies and whatever talking animal comedy is trendy this week.

I suspect that’s what these experts mean, too - “we can’t make billions of our shite movies anymore, so the moviegoing business is done for”