The Multiplex Malaise

Endless ads, reserved seats, and cringe-worthy bumpers sap the joy from going to the movies. But there is a solution.

A few months ago, I was sitting in the cinema of a well-known theater chain, waiting through the advertisements, which precede the trailers, which precede the bumpers, which precede the movie, as a late person climbed over me to stumble to their reserved seat in the dark, and I thought to myself, “I would do just fine with never experiencing this again for the rest of my life.” 

That was a disturbing thought for me, who loves movies and have always loved going to the theater. In the traditional model of advertising, the advertiser pays for access to the consumer. Yet as advertising has taken over every facet of our lives, intermediaries have realized they can raise profits from the opposite direction as well. They can charge the consumer to not be accessed by the advertiser.

In the movie theater, not even this decency is offered to you. Even after paying the exorbitant price of a modern ticket, you are increasingly subjected not only to film trailers, but bespoke commercials, food advertisements, and self-indulgent fluff, leaving you exhausted and over stimulated even before the movie begins.

This has created a subtle conflict between the movie-goer and the exhibitor. The incentive for the viewer is to arrive as late as possible, a chance they can only take due to the reserved seating that has been rolled out in the last half-decade.

It is odd to me that the exhibitors do not recognize the nature of the arrangement they have created. Reserved seats mean that their viewers can show up as late as they want, and therefore miss the advertisements they are intended to see. I have asked friends if they like the reserved seat arrangement or wish that seats were first come, first serve, as they have always been in the past. Almost all said they appreciate the reserved seats. The answer as to why was almost universal: to skip the advertisements.

As a more cynical aside, perhaps the exhibitors are indeed fully aware of this dynamic and use this mechanism deliberately to sell increasingly more advertisements to companies while knowing that few will watch them, and that their current revenue from advertising would quickly dry up if either the ad companies realized this or the consumers did not have the recourse to arriving late. I concede, there is a case to be made for reserved seating in certain instances, like sold-out opening night screenings, or IMAX special events, but less so the Thursday matinee. It’s also possible that reserving seats discourages theater-hopping, and produces additional revenue from “convenience fees” by encouraging online purchases.

We can speculate as to why, but the bottom line is that exhibitors have created a space so uncomfortable that one wants to be present in their domain for as little time as possible. If they are to win your attendance the hope of a quality movie must overcome the negative feeling about the overall experience of being in a movie theater in the first place. Here is a novel idea: what if you enjoyed being in the theater enough to actually want to be there for the experience itself?

Growing up, there was a certain excitement of walking into a movie theater and being surprised to find it almost full, looking amongst the aisles people to find a good seat remaining, wishing you had only left earlier or not spent so much time in the snack line, but all with a feeling of anticipation. These days, hemming and hawing over the seat selection screen online, I have certainly refrained from buying a ticket or inviting friends to see a film due to finding few available seats.

Reserved seats certainly discourage interaction with your seat neighbors, except to tell them they have made a mistake in sitting somewhere, probably a mistake they have made because someone else has in turn displaced them as well. In spite of what people say about their preferences, none of this strikes me as becoming of a healthy movie-going culture. Theaters are not entirely to blame for this. Forces of neighborly distrust arise from problems far more deeply rooted than movie seating. We can see this as not so much a cause but a symptom of the low-trust environment that we now take for granted in public life.

Maybe it’s the introvert in me, but if I am going to a multiplex, I am hoping to be ignored, hoping to sit by myself, expecting or fearing that neighbors will be obnoxious in some way. This is an unfortunate mental pattern that I know I am not alone in this feeling, but of more interest to me is when I do not feel this way.

For instance, if I am sitting in the theater at a film festival, I am far more likely to strike up a conversation with a stranger than I would be at a multiplex screening. There are no surprises here. People who attend film festivals are more likely to be film professionals like myself, so we are liable to have plenty to talk about. The festival provides a common ground, a self-sorting function that tells both of us that we are far more likely to have a meaningful interaction than I would in daily life.

Of course, film festivals are microcosms, which we cannot expect to be analogous to normal life, and nor should they be, but if the multiplex does not provide enough of a common basis for conversation and interaction with a stranger, perhaps this is where local cinema can rise to the occasion.

In my own town, I have been rather pleased by the success of the Plaza Theatre under the leadership of Christopher Escobar and the Atlanta Film Society.

The Plaza and now the re-opened Tara demonstrated that a city like Atlanta can support a robust film-going culture. With special screenings and Q&As featuring luminaries like Roger Deakins, Francis Ford Coppola, Ewan McGregor, and Ethan and Maya Hawke, in the last six months alone, between the two venues, you never know who is going to show up. But more important than celebrity filmmakers passing through is community. A theater does not serve anonymous guests. It serves specific people in a particular time, who have a sense of taste and place within a larger culture. I know that any time I go to the Plaza there’s a chance I’ll see an old friend or co-worker. In this world, film viewer and film professional blend together. Most importantly, the seating is first come, first serve; the trailers are few; and the lobby and popcorn bumpers are brief and vintage.

These goings-on are not without the occasional technical glitch but I find myself having a lot of grace for these minor kinks due to the general excitement in film-going and the robust lineup of legacy screenings, often in 35mm or brand-new restorations. What is reassuring is that, unlike the multiplex, if there is that one-off technical error, there will indeed be an attendant nearby who actually cares and will address the problem.

A local cinema is not just a venue; this is an act of culture-building, which we cannot imagine to be anything but an organic, messy thing, likely to have the incumbent moments of growing pains and audio feedback. The success of a microcosm like this within a city of growing film production and film culture, will look very different than a local cinema in Maine or in New Orleans. But we would be thinking like the multiplex owners if we thought these things ought to look the same. Beyond meeting exhibition standards, the real thing that matters for a local theater is for it to be local. It should express the values of the community it serves. That’s going to look different depending on where you live. It is only in an environment that respects the humanity of its customers that an organic scene can arise. Otherwise, we’ll find our humanity in other places.

The question we should ask is why we go on tolerating places that do not recognize our humanity, but see us only as “seats E9 though E12.”