this seems like a basically permanent death-spiral, and as i can tell it’s basically a three-hit combo of:
- COVID, which fucked everything up
- streaming, which is just a way more convenient experience for a lot of people that they got to do a lot of during COVID
- movie theaters are expensive as hell and don’t offer the same value proposition they do when you can stream most everything
going to a theater costs like $12 minimum now unless you’re lucky enough to have a dollar theater–that’s tough against even something like Netflix
it would also probably help if renting movies wasn’t basically a dead practice because of streaming, and if studios could learn to start making movies for less than $150-200m again
Coincidentally, the redbox kiosk at my local grocery store was finally decommissioned. I don’t even have the equipment with which to watch rented movies on physical media, and I’m still sad about it
It also seems like the writing on the wall for movies being too expensive was there a while ago, but instead of having more sensible budgets, studios are going in harder than ever.
I go to the theatre VERY occasionally, last time I remember going for something new was The Bad Guys. My local indie theatre did a run of video game movies and I saw a few of those. (TMNT, Super Mario, Mortal Kombat)
It seems like movie decline is a barometer of folks not having enough disoable income to enjoy a movie theatre experience. (in tandem with the clearly better value streaming offers.
They expect me to pay like $25 for fuckin popcorn and. like. what. come on. you forgot to hit the dot to ring that up for 2.50 right? right? it’s popcorn
I worked at a movie theater for a time and it was absolute shit. Its hard to call it the worst job I’ve ever had, considering the actual mental health breakdowns I’ve had at other jobs, but it was definitely the lowest quality job. Barely above minimum wage (Literally could not have afforded to work there if I had driven a car at the time), constantly getting sent home early to save hours, the popcorn machine broke multiple times and caught fire once (Right before christmas and one of the Star Wars sequels, too), I don’t think we got to take 15 minute breaks, just our 30 minute meal, no employee discount (two free movies a week, but… are you gonna visit work on a day off for that? Are you gonna stay late after an opening shift for it, or get there early on a closing shift?)… in all, it was absolute trash, cannot recommend the job to anyone, never apply to a movie theater unless you are desperate.
Yeah, abd there’s another thing that’s terrible of theaters that comes out as a symptom of not valuing their labor force: they’re filthy as hell. “There’s so much dried soda syrup that my feet are stuck to the floor” was a joke from like my childhood and earlier and it has to have only gotten worse since.
For that reason alone I struggle to imagine just about any cinema worker coming in recreationally