As I said upthread, I saw the second two PotC movies in the theater, and it was not ruined by obnoxious people at all. No cell phone rings or lights, no obnoxious talking over the movie, and it was a packed house both times (opening night) so the sense of communal experience was in full swing.
I think they’re both better on the small screen, and I would have missed nothing if I hadn’t seen them in the theater.
Tell me another one.
On the 1st page of this thread, salinqmind calls people “sad” for watching DVDs at home, and you follow up by jumping on his bandwagon about the “full experience” mantra.
Now on page 4 of this thread, you wonder why people take it personally?
Amazing.
Here’s a heads up… a lot of us are fully aware of what the “full theater experience” actually is, and we don’t give a shit. The vast majority of us have actually been inside of a real theater and know what it offers.
“As good” you say? Those are fighting words. 
When I watch movies, I typically use PowerDVD at the 2x playback speed setting. The movie gets done in half the time. Seriously, that’s how I usually watch films. A 2-hour movie? I finish it in 1 hour and I can move onto something else. Also the actors speak faster at 2x speed which makes them sound more energetic. This is the method I recommend for people to watch films especially if it’s something they need to study for school.
I say your movie experience was not “as good” as mine because you took twice as long to view it! I’m not aware of any movie theater that plays films at 2x speed and until they do, you don’t have the edge in enjoyment that I have. Sorry.
Yeah… maybe the director never intended for the film to be viewed at accelerated double speed but I don’t care; my viewing preferences override the director’s wishes.
Yeah, sorry about that. I was almost positive you were female, but not quite 100%. And I know a lot of guys get really offended if you refer to them as female. (I don’t know why; I get referred to as female several times a year around here but never correct it because I just don’t care.) But then when I tried to word it it got tricky. “Girl” is the natural word to use but many women look for offense in the term. “Gal” is outdated and awkward. “Woman” is so stilted in that sentence. At this point I gave up and just went with the tiny uncertainty that maybe I was mixing your name up with someone else’s and you might just be a dude.
Anyway, this is a totally unrelated tangent. Just wanted you to know that I’m familiar with you and wasn’t trying to be dismissive on the basis of gender.
The first movie I ever saw was Star Wars. I was two when it came out. Saw it I-don’t-know-how-many times in the theaters when I was a little kid. Eventually, it wasn’t in theaters any more, but about that time, VCRs were taking off, and when my folks finally got one, at least once a year I’d rent the entire trilogy and watch them back-to-back. When I was a bit older, and they started marketing movies as something you’d own, instead of just rent, I picked up my own copies, and watched them I-don’t-know-how-many times. This was a film I’d been watching regularly for 25 years, about 15 of them exclusively on a TV set. And while I still loved the films, I was a bit jaded about them. I knew 'em so well, they didn’t really effect me anymore, except in a pleasant nostalgic sort of way.
So I was a bit surprised, at the 20th anniversary re-releases, when the opening shot of the Star Destroyer hammered me right into the fucking ground. I don’t know if it was the crowd, or the Dolby, or the giant screen, or all three, but seeing that scene in a packed movie theater had way more punch than it ever did on a television set.
No problem Ellis Dee.
Trailers.
You also get everything you don’t get from the home theatre experience. I don’t need to see a movie like Gosford Park on the big screen, but parts of Tron and The Incredibles, to pick a couple of very visual films at random, made me woozy when I saw them on the big screen. For lots of films, bigger is better. The Matrix is an interesting example. I didn’t see it on the big screen, in fact it’s the movie that convinced me to buy a DVD player in fact. But I sure wish I had seen it all proper. It must have been a roller coaster. I haven’t had any bad theatre experiences concerning overly loud moviegoers or too many cellphones to turn me off going out to see a movie, although I’ve seen too many dirty screens.
When I was in high school, going out to movies was what we did. Going out to see Alien 3 or Terminator 2 or The Doors or Batman (especially Batman) was something to look forward to. Something like a concert.
Oh, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show on DVD is nothing compared to going out to see it. You get a lot more out of seeing that in the theatre.
Okay, I think you’ve lost the debate with this.
Got more of a laugh out of these four characters then the four main characters in Epic Movie, which I regret paying to see in a theatre.
dnftt.
When I saw it you could get a lot closer, and it blew me away. It’s sad that they have to protect it now. I think we all would agree that seeing any movie while peering through a door would make it lose some of its appeal. Being able to walk around some of the statues was pretty good also.
Do not call other posters trolls outside of the BBQ Pit.
I don’t know, when I was at the Louvre in 2008, I could do all that, too. If it changed, that must have been recent.
Add me to the chorus of people who don’t know where all these disruptions happen in the theaters. I see stuff in the theater somewhat regularly (once or twice a month) and disruptions are rare. Most recently, I saw Avatar on 12/23 with a packed crowd. Everyone was silent and respectful. Then I saw Sherlock Holmes on 12/28 to a packed crowd in a different city - same. The way some people talk here, you would expect people to be shooting off flares every five minutes when you see movies in the theater. Of course, in my experience, someone having the glowing screen on their cell phone open 35 rows below me isn’t enough to distract me from the massive screen and booming sound so YMMV.
If this post is for real, and not just calculated to get a reaction, then yeah you don’t really have anything to contribute to this thread. I can think of a couple thread titles for a discussion of this post, but nothing CS-friendly.
I’m already subscribing to Ruminator’s newsletter.
Yes! I absolutely love the pre-movie ads, and also the pre-pre movie ones (but the preprepremovie ads are terrible). I don’t know why, I just do.
And yes, theaters do add something to the movie experience, IMHO, but I say the true test of of a movie is how far away from optimal conditions you can get before it starts to suck. Something like, say, Attack of the Clones, looks lame as soon as you get out of the big-screen theater. It has no staying power. But not all visual movies are like that. I watched T2 from the midway point, on a 10-inch TV with commercial breaks, color issues and an intermittent signal with noise in the background and I was still blown away by it. A movie like that, it has more to offer than just visuals.