The new literalism plaguing today’s movies

In 2002, watching a movie at home for most people meant flinging a low quality VHS or DVD onto a ~27" tube TV (with a resolution so worthless it might as well be labeled "new years") using a 4:3 aspect ratio pan & scan of the actual movie. Getting anything recent meant going out to the Blockbuster anyways. In 2022, watching a movie meant streaming something on your 50+" 16:9 4k smart TV by pressing a button from your couch.

Box office ticket sales say people go to the theatre less often, not that people watch movies less often. Unless you specifically want "the movie theater experience" or you absolutely have to see a certain movie at launch you're not going to the theatre to watch a movie. The number of movie views per person may well be down (or up), but box office ticket sale counts don't really answer that question.

And probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality.

When I was an undergrad ages ago, going to the on-campus movies were a non-trivial part of the weekend experience. My understanding is that they're mostly dead at this point.

I was going to make this point myself. I think my wife and I have seen maybe three or four movies in a theater since COVID. Our theater didn't even close during COVID (they started marathoning older movies like Harry Potter), but once the big companies started releasing new movies directly on streaming services, we realized how much better seeing a new movie in the comfort of our own home can be.

So now we just wait for a movie we want to see to become available on Apple TV, and then we rent it.

^ All of that, and the COST. The last time the wife and I did a movie night for a big new flick we were excited about, we spent almost $80 when all was said and done for tickets and snacks for the TWO OF US!

Fucking absurd.

Also, I know this sounds like get off my lawn, but people behaved better. Or maybe they didn't didn't, but the penetration of flashlights kept in people's pockets wasn't 100%. Which is pretty annoying now that a movie for two is like a $75 experience with popcorn.

Why do you bring up 4:3 as a bad property? Honestly I find watching 4:3 easier on the eyes and mind since you know where to look.

You might be an outlier. Our FOV is wide, so it's a better match. Furthermore, the 4:3 version of a movie is almost always a crop from the intended ratio, so information and intent is lost.

Plus the 30 minutes of previews and messages from the theater.

> a movie for two is like a $75 experience with popcorn

A ticket is less than $15 during the expensive times, and $10 off peak. Where in the world are you seeing movies?

I get it, I don't go to the theater anywhere near what I used to, but the nice one near me with a bar and a player piano in the lobby is still nowhere near $75 for two tickets.

I know there are smarter ways to invest your cinema money, but I checked how much I could spend in a fancy cinema in Munich, Germany for the OPs experience and came up with 19€ per ticket (balcony plus a popular superhero movie), plus 16€ for a (big) popcorn and two drinks, for a total of 54€ or ~USD 63.

I agree that the average experience could easily cost half that, but the point of how expensive cinema can be (imagine adding a second popcorn or, God forbid, nachos!) is a good one.

That's now part of "the movie theater experience".

I miss the days of the slideshows that would play while people where getting seated for the film. I loved the occasional trivia slides.

It's less about whether one considers option A better than option B and more about whether the movie was shot for one option or "edited down" (pan and scan) to TV. If cinemas of the 90s had been 4:3 and TVs of the time 16:9, requiring crops to fill the screen properly, I'd have made the opposite statement.

> once the big companies started releasing new movies directly on streaming services, we realized how much better seeing a new movie in the comfort of our own home can be

As someone who is blessed to live in a city where multiple cinemas screen old movies and therefore go to the cinema very often, I must say I can’t disagree more. The experience of watching a movie in a cinema is to me incomparable to watching on a tv.

It’s not only the bigger screen and better sound system. The act of sitting yourself in the cinema with other people to actively engage with a movie transforms the experience.

Sadly, I have to say I agree with the article however in that 95% of the movies produced in the USA during the past two decades could as well not exist. Thankfully, the rest of the world still exist.

Also it doesn't take skipping many movies now to be able to put a decent sound system with your 50"+ TV.

There are still some fun things to do at particular theaters, like Twisters in 4dx. But there is little compelling reason to otherwise.

$40 for popcorn.

Pricing greatly depends on location. Full-price tickets are $28.99 in New York for non-IMAX or special showing. Los Angeles is $22-24. My local theater in a small Arizona town is $10 full-price and $5 off peak.

We just saw Superman in a Las Vegas IMAX and it was $85 including fees for three tickets. $75 for two seems perfectly reasonable in LA, SF or NY once you include concessions.

This is so frustrating for me. By the time the movie actually starts I'm exhausted and ready to leave. It's also the same commercials over and over. The previews are rarely something I want to see too.

It was a fancier theatre, but I saw Elio a few weeks back and each ticket at a Burbank AMC was $22 (this was on a Wednesday Night). That's just California for you.

the local theatre I normally go to is $12 off-times and $20 on-time. A nice special kick to the head that they need to separately specify a $2 "convinience fee" for saving their time and ordering online.

> almost always

Well, you've just revealed which kind of “content” you watch (by revealing which kind you don't). A lot of well known films were shot on full frame, and never had any other variant.

Frankly, seeing them in theatres “as intended” would require inventing a time machine, or not missing some special film screening event, as they were made quite some time ago.

Also, back then, when they still had to make film prints for distribution, and had to deal with wide screen theatres and regular screen theatres (you couldn't just ignore the other half, and lose a potentially significant share of income), both filming and editing took that into account. Shots in one aspect ratio were usually composed to look god when cut to the other, and professional cameramen (working with both types) constantly kept that in mind anyway. Same for possible TV screening versions later.

Now compare that to the modern nameless editors working for giant corporations which pretend that it's an impossible task that has never been done, and either crop automatically, or let the “smart computer” toss a coin to shift responsibility.

Edit: By “theatres” I've meant types of film projectors installed in their halls. Some had multiple, switchable lenses, etc., some had only one. Keep in mind that to show a multi-reel movie without pauses you need at least two projectors (or a special feeding system for spliced together film if the number of screenings is worth the work), and a third one is often added for redundancy and required maintenance work, so there's a lot of investment to make already.

The TV might have been 4:3, but most DVD movie releases were widescreen by 2002. So you lost upto 40% of that 27" CRT to letterboxing.

The pan-and-scan DVDs seemed to die out long before everyone had 16:9 TVs. Consumers seemed to decide they preferred letterboxing over cropping.

Each non-imax ticket at my local theater is $20.74. I just punched in the 2 tix, 1 popcorn, and 2x sodas: $61.08 + tax. And that's w/ no candy, and I love sour candy.

This doesn't account for the decline starting in 2002. I'd like to see piracy numbers though- particularly the "official" mppa and riaa numbers

> The act of sitting yourself in the cinema with other people to actively engage with a movie transforms the experience.

I very much agree with this sentiment, unfortunately post-COVID that transformation has often been a negative one in my personal experience. This is entirely anecdotal, but I feel like there is an increase in the frequency with which I have had a public movie experience ruined by people on cell phones, talking to each other, or even yelling in response to the events on screen.

I feel like when a movie comes out now that I want to see, I am in a constant tension between dealing with a potentially rowdy or obnoxious public, or a less ideal viewing experience at home.

I watch about 3 movies a week with my wife. The cheap ticket is 6.50€ (Mondays), the normal is 8.50€.

Dresden, Germany

We don't watch streams, as my wife constantly talks over it. Which she cannot in the movies

Went to see the F1 movie a couple weeks ago in suburban Northern California on a local theater's "LieMax" screen (ie not one of the ~30 real IMAX 15-perf film theaters in the world but just a slightly larger mall theater screen that (probably) has a newer bulb and more recently calibrated speakers). It cost just over $75 for two adults + a large popcorn, soda and bottle of water.

I was a bit surprised at the price too. Seems maybe 15-20% more than my last theater outing last Summer. We don't go often because we have a dedicated home theater room that's fully sound proof with total light control and 9 custom theater loungers on two levels facing a 150-inch screen with 4K HDR10+ calibrated digital laser projector and built-in 7.4.2 surround THX-rated speakers. While there was nothing wrong with the "LieMax" theater, the picture, sound, seating and overall experience at home are meaningfully better - even when everything works at the cinema and no one is annoying. And I say that as someone with fairly significant professional video engineering experience. Of course, one of the ~30 real IMAX screens is objectively better (when showing 15-perf 70mm film, which they don't always do) but the nearest one is nearly an hour drive, costs even more and has $15 in parking on top. The last time I went was for Oppenheimer two years ago. But short of going there, it's hard to see much reason to go to a local cinema if you have a high-end home theater rig (other than just having a night out).

There's not even an advantage to the claimed "big screen" at the LieMax. While I prefer a slightly larger theatrical field of view than most people (around 45 degrees), my FOV at home is 46 degrees sitting 12.5 feet from the floor-to-ceiling screen (https://acousticfrontiers.com/blogs/Articles/Home-theater-vi...).

> Our FOV is wide, so it's a better match.

It's pretty big vertically as well. IMAX is close to 4:3

Back in the year 2002...

Internet access was widely available.

Blockbuster video was a thing in almost every town.

Netflix mail service was getting big, making huge back catalogs available.

DVD players often included S/PDIF out for surround sound, which was becoming a more common part of home theaters.

Plasma TVs were becoming far more common, dramatically improving picture quality and size versus CRTs.

HBO and other premium channels had already gone digital with set top boxes (that also often supported surround sound), and the death of analog broadcast TV was (theoretically) scheduled for 2006.

So while I probably couldn't find any single specific reason for a peak in 2002, we had a whole series of tech improvements in place that were slowly chipping away at the edges in quality and content availability.

Tastes vary. I was on the executive committee of my college film group yers ago and going to weekend films was a lot of fun.

These days? Maybe an Imax film is a once a year experience.

I keep in touch with a lot of people I was on the film committee with and I'd say the opinion is pretty much split between people who still go to the theater a lot and those who basically never do like myself.

> It’s not only the bigger screen and better sound system. The act of sitting yourself in the cinema with other people to actively engage with a movie transforms the experience.

I think I understand that, it's just not for me. I've never felt that other people do anything but subtract from my experience in watching a movie. And I'm not saying that to be cynical or because I dislike social experiences – I'm an outgoing person and enjoy being around other people; I just don't want to watch a movie with them.

Plus I'm lost without subtitles, even if the dialog is crystal clear!

Nah, I don't buy this. In 2002 your "low quality DVD" was peak quality for us. Same way the blocky renders of PS1 was peak video-gaming for us. It only looks low quality when compared with today. For us at the time, it was magnificent.

> For us at the time, it was magnificent.

At the time, did you think the quality of that DVD was about the same as the experience you got in the theater?

The parent post is arguing that the gap in experience between home theaters and theater theaters has shrunk immensely. Right now I have a 85" wide OLED in my living room - That's not a thing that existed in 2002

I put almost $20k into a home theater setup. And with what I bought and how I set it up it punches way above its weight. I only have to wait 3 weeks to 3 months to be able to watch a movie at home now. Why would I go to a theater!?

I used to make exceptions for independent films when I lived near an IFC theater, but streaming/vod services now have me covered there too and I don't live near one anymore.

I will agree with you up to a point. Some cinema-going experiences are without parallel.

I saw a screener of The Matrix two months ahead of release at a theater in Harlem. It was the best movie-going experience of my life and nothing has come close to capturing that.

The problem is that was only possible one time. There are so few movies made anymore that really capture that kind of mass-audience wow factor that make going to the cinema worth it.

The great films that I've seen since aren't diminished by me seeing them at home. Sometimes it's a question of format where there are only a few screens in the country where you can really see a film unmolested but you have to be lucky enough to live there and those films still only come around once a decade.

The thing that attracts me to a theater is the sound system that I'll never have at home. However, on the last couple of ventures to the theater, the sound was too loud. I don't think it was the mix of the audio, but just the theater's volume knob turned to an 11. Would it have been different if the theater was full vs the half empty? I doubt it. It was just too loud. I no longer return to that specific theater

I much prefer going to the museum with an IMAX to see that content vs the next superhero tights wearing flick in IMAX

Yeah, I don't want to sound like an old man yelling at a cloud, but I've found myself wanting earplugs, especially with showings in Imax. Much much too loud, so loud it hurts. Who wants that?

> The act of sitting yourself in the cinema with other people to actively engage with a movie transforms the experience.

To share an anecdote to counter this, a group of ~10 people gathered at a friends house to watch a movie none of us had seen. At the end of the movie, we all got up in a similar state and we then spent quite a bit of time talking about that shared experience. It was probably one of the coolest group movie watching experiences to date.

> the frequency with which I have had a public movie experience ruined by people on cell phones, talking to each other, or even yelling in response to the events on screen.

I will not go to a theater that does not have a well established policy of not tolerating this. For me, that's Alamo Drafthouse.

I've wondered why they haven't done an anamorphic IMAX to use the full screen instead of cutting back and forth from wide to square.

Ye I think my FOV is fine I did tests for my driving license. I feel it has more to do with me being distracted by things in the peripherals.

And ye cropped is bad. Think STNG.

No, but it was good enough for most movies. The person you replied to is correct: It was glorious at the time. We were all amazed by graphics, even on those old tvs. The "movie theater experience" wasn't worth the hassle for anything but movies with good action and graphics - things like comedies didn't get uniquely better at the theater.

It didn't need to be about the same or better, it just needed to be good enough to appreciate that you weren't dealing with the downsides. The theaters weren't that good back in the late 90's (in fact, most of the ones I visited in my teens have renovated to be more current sometime around 2010 or something). All people needed was more realistic alternatives. More and more folks were getting cable, DVD players were more affordable, and places like walmart sold DVDs for a cheaper price than you'd pay for a full price movie. Netflix started in the late 90s too.

Yes, I know folks could rent videos before this. I remember walking down to rent NES games when I was young - right next to the movies at the grocery store. This was a far cry from the stores of the late 90s, though. They got better (and worse).

> At the time, did you think the quality of that DVD was about the same as the experience you got in the theater?

No, I didn't. I don't think it either today, with my pretty big TV. The experience still pales in comparison.

The big difference maker imo in movie theater experience is size and sound. You still need to drop about the same few thousand dollars you had to drop in 2002 to buy a proper projector and sound system today. 85 inch low pixel density screen and a sound bar ain't it, but if it is it for you, you are probably no discerning audiophile who would have probably have been fine with whatever was sold in a comparable market segment in 2002 (refrigerator width crt displays were in fact all the rage and very desirable at one point).

Okay, what happened in 2003 then?

Ask to turn it down. I've done this, I was with my daughter, it was hurting both of us. The cinema staff were totally fine with it, and not surprised.

I can make good coffee at home, but I still love going to coffee shops. It's the same for going to the cinema for me. It's an event. Something about being out in public. Also my local cinema serves beer. I haven't been in ages due to having kids. But I really miss it.

>$75 for two seems perfectly reasonable in LA, SF or NY once you include concessions.

Perhaps it's reasonable for a very occasional and special event, but it's not actually that expensive for anyone that cares about seeing movies in theaters. I'm paying $27/mo for effectively all-I-can-watch[1] movies via a subscription in SF, and includes IMAX. When I travel to LA I can use it there too, and it's available in NYC. I saw Superman for the cost of popcorn because I saw Elio earlier this month, it's a great deal.

If one doesn't go to theaters that often or cares for IMAX, there's other chains that offer 1 2D-only movie for $12/month and the tickets roll over.

[1] 4x movies/week, which is indeed more than I have time for.

A local non chain theater has no commercials before movies. Just the trailers.

Makes me want to only go to that theater.

Now you should sell tickets to people to come watch movies at your house.

> And probably add to the fact that streaming TV has become vastly more ubiquitous, popular, and high quality.

The first two I agree with, the third one is a stretch. The quality of programming that HBO was putting out in the mid 90s and 00s is far higher than any streaming series that has ever been released.

Are you saying you'd order raw quality differently than:

  2002 TV setup < 2022 TV setup < movie theater

Or are you just saying that a home TV setup is still not as good as a movie theater? The point for the latter was the delta between home and theater used to be much larger, not that the delta is now 0, hence a decrease in theater ticket sales would make sense even if people were watching more movies. If the former, what order do you see it and what leads you to order them in the way you do?

> No, but it was good enough for most movies. The person you replied to is correct: It was glorious at the time. We were all amazed by graphics, even on those old tvs.

I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. No it wasn't.

Movies on TV weren't glorious at all. They weren't "amazing." They were what you made do with. And when a classic movie played at your local arthouse theater you grabbed a ticket because it was so much better. The image quality. The sound. Seeing the whole image rather than a bunch of it hacked off.

That's why we went to the theater. Not just for action. For comedies too. Which is why comedies made tons of money at the theater!

You can drop about $800 on a great 1080p projector, screen, and a pair of AirPods that will give you better surround sound than most speaker systems will give you.

My projector screen takes up more of my vision than any movie theater screen I've ever seen except IMAX.

It's an event but one to put off for later.. Something good enough for right now where there's not much planning, anticipation or potential buyer's remorse is the kind of thing that is routine to do instead of consider.

I’ll chime in as a grey beard. Did we think the DVD was the same as being at the theater? It really depends on who your friends were. Some of us kids had techie parents that had things like VGA projectors for presentations. We would take these and play DVD’s off our full-tower Pentium 3’s at movie theater-like experiences. I fondly remember watching the Matrix bonus content with my friends over a giant 100ft wall.

Fight Club as well.

It was no IMAX but at 1024x1024 we didn’t care.

I don't have an HBO sub at the moment. But I do find quite a few mostly serialized TV shows on streaming.

There was a ~3% delta in absolute ticket sales.

I take it you really mean "so why wasn't 2003 the peak year instead of 2002" to which I'd say "I'm not trying to explain one needs a 55" widescreen 4k TV before you'll ever consider going to the movie theater less often, rather that this kind of difference over time is why you can't say movie theatre ticket sales in 2002 were higher so people must therefore have watched more movies then."

No, my question is why did it start going down in 2003 for the reasons you cited, which seem to be contemporary

Not sure I follow, why should there be a single year people started e.g. buying bigger TVs?

I didn't say there was, but what do you think changed that year that they went down? It's your assertion, not mine...

Honestly I wish I had put "(or maybe a new fangled DVD)" instead of "or DVD" because people seem to interpret that as "DVD wasn't good enough to have any impact on movie sales" rather than "either VHS or DVD at the time were still shit compared to the options now so does a decrease in ticket sales really guarantee a decrease in movies watched?"

DVD adoption (and later Blu-Ray) was certainly a huge factor in the gradual changes and 2002 was when people really started amassing them at home https://i.imgur.com/OHZ9H69.png. I'm sure piracy has a role as well too, but most of the deltas listed were also gradual changes which had their start prior to 2002, same as piracy. The only thing special about 2003 is it's the year the momentum changed, not that it's the year something brand new was introduced.

Now I'm doubly confused... where did I assert what about 2003? My comment is about why you can't look at movie theater ticket sales between 2022 and 2002 as evidence alone to say people have stopped watching movies as much. I don't think I ever said anything about why ticket sales peaked in 2002 specifically?

If I had to throw a guess at the largest contributors I'd say 2002-2003 is when people really started buying lots of DVDs for the first time as well as the start of the modernization of TV sets. Even though much better versions of these were common 20 years later I feel they very likely helped make the absolute peak of ticket sales be 2002. This is getting more into speculation of what did happen rather than saying ticket sale data is not enough to support the conclusion though, which is what my comment was focused on.

You didn't. You said the peak hit in 2002. Presumably something happened that caused the trend to start in 2003, which could obviously not be the fact that eventually in 2025 it would be more convenient to instead stream movies at home.

>In 2002, watching a movie at home for most people meant flinging a low quality VHS or DVD onto a ~27" tube TV (with a resolution so worthless it might as well be labeled "new years") using a 4:3 aspect ratio pan & scan of the actual movie. Getting anything recent meant going out to the Blockbuster anyways. In 2022, watching a movie meant streaming something on your 50+" 16:9 4k smart TV by pressing a button from your couch.

Is what I was responding to.

That quote doesn't talk about the peak at all though so why am I said to make such claims? The quote should have the same exact meaning even if you substitute in 2001 or 2003 when reading 2002 - if it doesn't then you're inserting claims not from the quote on my behalf and then asking me to explain these claims I never made.

The quoted section was in response to the claim movie watches are down on the basis ticket sales are down compared to the past:

> And this is highly relevant for things like this. People often argue that if movies were so bad then people would stop watching them, unaware that people actually have stopped watching them!

Hence the next line after the quote "Box office ticket sales say people go to the theatre less often, not that people watch movies less often."

No, what I mean is the 2002 experience was awesome for us in our time, like the 2022 is for people of today. But both experiences still pale compared with a movie teather. It's like for us at the time the DVD was a 8, modern TV is maybe a 10, but movie rather in both cases was like a 10000. It was, and it is, in a complete another level.

Note that most people in 2002 didn't have DVD players. DVD player sales didn't even overtake VCR sales until a year or so afterwards, and there was a huge installed base. Watching on a DVD would not have been the _typical_ experience.

DVD player sales were also just starting to boom; they overtook VCR sales the next year.

That's about when DVD players started becoming common; it's the first year that their sales exceeded those of VCR players.

DVD is 720x480

The projectors were 1024x1024 but yes you are correct. We just scaled it up to fit and used a black desktop background.

We watched a lot of films in divx or xvid or whatever that format was called where you could compress a movie on a CD. Quality was atrocious, but a good story is still a good story...

People don't just go to the cinema for the image/audio quality. Most people go to meet friends.

That's kind of my point. You don't need to go for image/audio quality at all now. It's purely social, or to see something sooner.

Whereas it used to be very much about image and audio quality.

I though IMAX was almost 4:2, but it looks like there are two ratios, 1.43:1 and 1.90:1. So 4:2.8 and 4:2.1.

I'm sorry but airpods and a 1080p screen from your couch are on a different planet compared to theater sound and even liemax or smaller formats. You can't feel sound from an airpod in your chest.

It wasn't that they were amazing. Good enough.

And while maybe not amazing, they were wonderful at the time. Do you remember folks being amazed at the graphics on the PS1 or heck, even the N64? Those weren't good, really, but at the time? Yeah, it was good enough. Late 90's started seeing bigger tvs and sound systems. DVDs brought options to see all that stuff on the sides if you wanted. You didn't "make do" if you are out there buying modern tech - maybe you made do with whatever brands they sold at walmart - but then again, they sold game systems so it really wasn't "store brands only" or anything like that.

I'm not sure where you lived, but absolutely no theaters around me showed classics, save for something like Star Wars or Disney movies. One played second run movies - the ones in the space between theater release and home video release. So no, no one went to things like that. I graduated high school in the mid 90s, and both local theaters were pretty run down places that treated employees badly. The ones in smaller surrounding towns, if they had it, usually only played a handful of movies and were old places. And this seemed pretty normal for Indiana, outside of perhaps Indianapolis or a few richer areas.