Why are movie theatres becoming auditorium versions of our own cable dominated living rooms?
Yesterday I went to see Breaking Dawn Part 1, the first half of the split Twilight fourth book movie adaptation (don’t worry: no spoilers herein). The movie was fifteen minutes late in starting: the rest of the time was taken up by an onslaught of features that amounted to nothing.
First we were subjected to cinematic-centralized programming that was designed to hold the interest of patrons who arrived early for good seats. The portion I saw was a behind-the-scenes look into an upcoming movie, the title of which eludes me. A quick segment mentioned the latest stuff available on eBay. I don’t shop on eBay, so I busied myself with the theatre’s free literature, which I wisely picked up before entering the coliseum that is the latest movie house layout.
After the usual warnings to leave our stockpile of toted-in devices turned off for the feature, an advertisement for Coke and a polar bear saving campaign came next, even though a blurb assured us that our feature presentation would begin momentarily (it turned out to be a very long moment). Since I do indulge in Coke products, I’ll probably save a polar bear now that I know about the program. Score one for the marketers.
Next came the fire department mandated blurb about how to locate exits in the theatre. Each is marked with a red “Exit” sign, and we learned where to find three of them, one by one.
Next came some quick logo time for the people who bring high-definition theatre experiences into our lives. One was called Cinedigm, which is apparently a digital camera system company. I don’t know why we need to know that, but at least the name stuck with me.
As to the ten or so (maybe 20) movie trailers, none of them caught my eye except for, maybe, the new Muppets movie (who couldn’t like them?) Sure, call me strange, but I didn’t feel compelled to see any of the other movies plugged while I was held captive in my seat. There was sci-fi and adventure and horror, all rated for “appropriate audiences” by the ever-vigilant MPAA. By the way, the color of the screen on any MPAA rated trailer means the content has been planned and edited for the viewing audience. If you’re a curious movie fan, you can find more at http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2010/09/the-color-of-the-background-preceding-movie-trailers-actually-means-something/, so nothing was shown that would freak out Twilight fans or their parents. Unfortunately they also didn’t impress anybody.
Maybe I was bound to have issues about this movie-going experience because, having read the Twilight books, I knew, in terms of the film’s content, what I was going to see. I didn’t know how complicated it would be just to get to the point where I would actually see the 117 minute movie.
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