My Terrible Theater Experience

I actively go to the movie theatre every week. It’s rare for me to see just one movie. My local theatre is an AMC, which I am part of their A-List subscription, and I try to see their allotted three movies when I can. Generally, to save time, I see them all on the same day. You may think that based on this I am championing the theatre experience hardcore-like, but you’d be wrong. Over the years, long before the pandemic, I’ve grown to hate the theatrical experience. People talking, others on their phone, teenagers being mindless idiots, and the list goes on. The only difference between these actions before the pandemic and now is that there are more of them occurring more frequently.

I am very particular when it comes to watching a movie in a theatre. I’m lucky enough to have access to many different theaters within an hour of me. I know the ones that give me the least amount of displeasure, and if I have to go to one I don’t like as much (such as my local AMC) I tend to avoid the weekend crowd and try to see my movies during the week, like Monday or Wednesday. I try my hardest to avoid the most people, because while a packed theater can give you a great communal experience, movies these days rarely give you those moments. And thus, last Sunday was Cinema Day, and I broke my rule.

Cinema Day is a tactic to get people into theatres. Every ticket, no matter the format, had been discounted to $4 and some theatres even had concession discounts as low as that too. It didn’t help that rain had come that day, and if you’ve ever had to work retail you’ll notice a strange phenomenon in the hive mind of the public; if the weather is terrible they journey away from home and into your businesses. Still, I was in a good mood and had asked my mom if she wanted to go to the movies. She did, so I went looking for what’s available.

Barbie and Oppenheimer were sold out all day. Understandable. Good for them. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were sold out all day. Surprising. Loved that. Cinema Day brought back the Super Mario Bros Movie, which was sold out, as well as movies that recently left theatres like The Little Mermaid (remake), and Across the Spider-Verse. Honestly, every film was doing well except for Gran Turismo, and luckily that was the only movie I hadn’t seen and wanted to.

Gran Turismo was playing at my local AMC in IMAX. When I bought our tickets the theatre was barely a third full, and once the movie had started it was barely half full. For a day that had showtimes selling out left and right that wasn’t a good sign. However, the movie was very good. I was surprised multiple times at how much emotion they were getting out of what should have been a standard sports story, and I’m sure I would have liked it more if not for those meddling teenage boys.

Yes, the scourge of my theatre experiences seem to always be teenagers. Boys in particular. They arrived late and were looking for a place to sit. Whether they bought tickets or not I’m not sure, but the way they sat next to me, realized there wasn’t enough seats for them, and then bumbled their way back to sit next to my mom, I’d argue they didn’t have tickets. Throughout the movie they would talk, be on their phones, ask each other what’s happening, but the worst part came during the emotional scenes in the movie.

Gran Turismo showcases many car crashes, but one in particular is highly emotional and very well crafted. The emotional story is at its lowest and the main character is in bed crying, everyone in the audience is quiet, raptured to the screen, until the teenage boys start moaning. Yes, during the quiet part of the movie when the main character has his big emotional moment, the teenage boys who couldn’t pay attention and came in late started having a moaning contest to see who could be louder. My mother, who rarely raises her voice in public, yelled at them. We hadn’t had a theatrical experience this bad since Ready Player One where she had to yell at teenage boys too, who were guffawing at the nude The Shining scene. God I hate teenage boys.

Anyway, the movie finished with less distraction from them, but it was too late. The experience had already been interrupted many times, and no matter how good a movie is there’s nothing to fix it. Oh, and a separate group of teenage boys snuck into the movie fifteen minutes from the end and sat in the front row. Why? Who knows, they’re boys and they’re bored and they have no regard for others, but the teenage antics did not stop there. Oh no. It didn’t.

Our local AMC is located in a mall and on our way out we were met with another group of teenage boys playing baseball near the food court (which was shut down). Granted, their baseball equipment was plastic, they were still whipping it around with no regard to pedestrians. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone play baseball inside a mall before, and I just couldn’t process the day at this point. I was going home in a much worse mood than when I came in, thinking how much of a mistake it was to go to the theatre.

Cinema Day was a success, but our experience was not. This isn’t anything new but it sure has gotten worse. I’ll never break my rule again.

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