I was reading the ‘Dark Knight’ thread and was really shocked to hear so many people whaling on the experience of going to the cinema/movies in the US, basically saying the people who go are so uncivilised it makes it almost unbearable, and also that the theatres themselves are sometimes really shoddy.
I have to say to contrasts starkly to my experience of going to the cinema in the UK. Everyone sits still in silence, maybe one person will get their phone out and text but generally get told to stop by someone close by, the seating and sound proofing are always as you’d expect them to be, and as long as you don’t go to an earlier showing full of kids you have an extremely civilised experience. I can only think of two times when I got annoyed enough with fellow patrons at films for it to impact on my viewing experience, and in both cases that was only temporary (one was someone whose phone rang and they wouldn’t reject the call so it kept going - after enough people yelled at them they eventually stopped it, and the other was sitting in front of two teenagers who were yakking through Star Trek IX who promptly shut up when I turned round and told them to).
I’ll never forget watching Scream 2 and there being a scene set in a cinema and people were running around, throwing popcorn at each other, yelling and fake stabbing each other with plastic knives, and wondering if that in any way resembled reality in America. Apparently, it does.
My experiences in the U.S. at movie theaters matches yours in the U.K. In my experience, noisy people at movies isn’t common at all. Furthermore, I lived in the U.K. from 1987 to 1990, and I don’t remember that much difference.
I’ve gone to the movies in PA, VA, ME, CA, LA, MS and WA, and I can honestly say they mostly reflect what the OP expresses in London. There are exceptions - no one expects that experience at a Rocky Horror Picture showing, and there is a lot of audience participation at some types of film festivals. But for the most part it’s quiet and enjoyable. But I hasten to add that I always go to matinees specifically so I can avoid those conditions. Occasionally you’ll get the kid kicking your seat (there was a kid doing this at Wall-E this weekend, but eventually the dad got him under control), but even in theaters that serve alcohol (New Orleans theaters have daiquiri machines in the lobbies and there are several that serve food and beer or wine at small tables in second run theaters) the audience is mostly there to watch a movie quietly.
The last movie I went to was in 2003. There was none of the running around or fake stabbing with plastic knives as mentioned in the OP, but the talking, yelling, cell phones, popcorn throwing, etc were in full display. I won’t go to a movie again, even if *you *pay for the ticket.
No way would I go see Batman at a megaplex on opening weekend. It might be civilized (civilised, to you) but I’m really bothered when it’s not, so I stay away.
I go to theaters that mainly attract an adult crowd and are well-managed. They at least have the reputation that ushers will take care of problems. Some theaters aren’t like that, and so I stay away.
But, I bet for the most part, it’s not as great a difference as it sometimes seems from this board.
I don’t really see that kind of behavior in the US theaters, either. Like the OP, every once in a while you see a tool texting or maybe there’s one person acting a little annoying, but widespread annoyances are few and far between in my experiences. I see movies at matinees, late shows, you name it. And at a theater that has tons of teens hanging out in front during prime time. Never an issue for me.
Based on a sample of one :smack: I felt there was a difference. A few years back we went to see Collateral soon after it came out at a cinema in Daytona. Not the Rock Horror Show but a straight thriller and there was definitely a noticible difference from what I’d expect in Britain. Much more audible cheers and groans and even applause at one point. (There was also a women with a crying baby who took ages to leave, but you get idiots anywhere.)
I got the impression that a US cinema is like a colosseum from reports on premieres that always seem to describe people rising from their seats, cheering and hooting, to which I always think “Its a film for fuck’s sake, sit down.”
Cinema in US was cheaper to go to, more room in seats, and there were ads at the start trying to recruit people into the army, but these were the only differences I noticed between there and here.
[nitpick]In **some **countries in Europe you can buy a beer at some movie theaters. Not at all here, not at all in Sweden, and at least not in the ones in Germany and France that I’ve been to.
Europe is not a country
[/nitpick]
As for the OP. I’ve never been to the movies in the USA, but I’ve had all sorts of experiences when going here. Most of the time people are perfectly well mannered and behave themselves, but sometimes you just go at a bad time.
I don’t go to the movies so often anymore, mostly because it’s way too expensive nowadays (€9,- on most nights, as opposed to something like three or four euros not that long ago) - you can buy a dvd, a sixpack of beer and a bag of chips and enjoy with your friends for that money. Also, unless you go to the small art houses, which is pretty much all I do nowadays, there is a lot of uncivilised behavior going on, and if you’re going to be bold enough to say something about the shouting and calling and throwing with popcorn ruining your €9,- experience, you’ll probably get yelled at. People that are rude enough to be such dicks in a movie theater are not likely to respond to any admonishments by saying ‘gosh, I’m so sorry to have bothered you, I will stop playing music from my cell phone speakers fortwith!’
So, where you’re at, do they still do intermissions? They phased those out here over the last decade. And if you don’t like the movie, do you just finish watching it because you paid for it and not watching it would be a waste of money, or do you leave? This is not very common here but I’ve been to movies elsewhere and I’ve watched in amazement how a significant part of the audience left before the end of the movie.
I’ve only been in Belgium. They also sold bags of chips - not those little vending machine bags, but the grocery store kind!
There’s a little independent theater here where you can get a Rolling Rock and a couple other kinds of beer. They also have Blenheim ginger ale, which is awesome.
So if I pack my bags real quick I’ll be able to catch the late show
(damn… I want to be able to drink beer at the movies. Stupid socialist system*…)
*not meant in a general political sense… just general frustration from the big-brotherness that sometimes occurs. I am not going to discuss politics here.
let’s not but just to nitpick: in most of the (formerly) socialist countries, beer consumption is a much more important and less expensive aspect of daily life, including movie-going.
The ‘intermissions’ was the first thing I thought of. Several years ago I was visiting Switzerland and went to see whatever the new Batman movie was. I was surprised when, right in the middle of an exciting battle, the film stopped and the lights came up. I asked another audience member what the deal was and he told me it was common there to have a break halfway through the film.
Now that I’m older and films seem, in general, to be longer, I think this is, bathroom-wise, a good thing. But since there are rarely any intermissions actually built into the films, this practice seemed weird to me at the time, especially since the breaks would come at the end of a reel, which wouldn’t necessarily even happen at the end of a given scene.
To take this even further into nitpick-territory. I’d call them former communist countries. With socialist systems, I’m referring to the cold north of Scandinavia with our state owned Liquor Monopolies
But I do realise I could’ve phrased that better. Sorry.
