Do you pay more attention to a movie when you see it in a theater rather than on television? Or, is the reverse true? Does it even matter to you? That’s what this poll’s about.
Yes, I pay more attention to a movie at the theater, but I still prefer to watch at home.
I am more likely to casually watch a movie on TV (e.g. doing something else at the same time), but that’s probably because going to a theatre (a) costs money, (b) requires travel time to and from the theatre, and © has specific rules restricting other activities which all make it very unlikely that I would go there to play Minesweeper on my phone (say).
I don’t think it’s the viewing format, per se.
I pay much more attention in a theater. I never sit still at home - I’m always reading, doing laundry, looking at Twitter …
I like foreign movies, and I could never watch one with subtitles at home.
I much prefer theaters. Can’t wait until they come back, and with the movies I’m generally drawn to, social distancing won’t even be a probem.
I pay more attention to a movie when I see it in a theater because its expensive, because there’s usually people being distracting, and I can’t pause or rewind it.
But the latter issues are major reasons why I prefer to watch them at home.
The theater definitely; my phone is off or at least silenced and in my pocket, the room is dark and there are no distractions. At home my computer is right there (convenient for IMDB lookups; who is that actor? He/she looks so familiar.), the kitchen is nearby and so is the bathroom. The big advantage of watching at home is that I can pause the movie to use the bathroom.
It seems like an odd question, along the lines of “Do you eat more junk food at home than in a grocery store?”
I’m too ADHD… no, a better way to put it is “Thanks to my ADHD, I have way too much fun multi-tasking when I try to watch at home.”
To really focus on a film, I have to watch it in a theater.
(Even then, I’m thinking “Geez, why is it socially unacceptable to bring a book and a flashlight to a movie?”) (Yes, I did that once… older movie, mid-week matinee, I knew I’d be the only one in the theater)
I treat a home movie watch much the same way as a theater movie watch. Dark room; settled in for the show. No playing with gizmos; no checking computer stuff; no working a puzzle. No doing household chores. Just me and the movie. Movie time is movie time. I guess the main difference is this:
That’s a plus.
Now, I might fold laundry or iron shirts or something while watching a baseball game, but never a movie.
This.
Also, I ALWAYS have the captioning on. I like to pause and rewind if I need to. Or pause to go get more FREE snacks.
I never go to the movie theater any more. I’ll wait for the movie to be available on TV and if it never is, then I never see it.
Definitely the cinema. But, I’m glad for watching films at home as well, it is helpful to be able to look things up
Ideally, seeing a movie in an actual theater is an enjoyable social experience, even with strangers.
Yup, thats my view. Going to a theater requires an intentional act which means you really want to see the movie, what you watch at home is more just to pass the time.
if I had a full size home theater and watched TV and movies on that I’d probably check my phone more there too.
I definitely pay more attention at the theater, but watching at home allows me to go back to catch a detail or line of dialog I might have missed. Also, watching at home allows me to watch while perusing the IMDB page to get trivia and info on the production, etc.
Last year there was a reshowing of The Wizard of Oz at a local theater. We took our eight-year old granddaughter to it, and she sat enthralled. We had tried watching it with her a few times when it was on TV, but she kept wandering off or played with an iPad. But it’s not just her; the last time I watched it on TV I was also doing other things: checking my phone, reading a newspaper, getting a snack.
I’m among these who remember more details about a movie when I see it in a theater rather than on television. Maybe it’s the darkness and lack of distractions or the realization that since I’m shelling out money to see a movie, I should pay attention to it.
Yup. A 90-minute movie can take 2+ hours for me to get through just from pausing it to look things up. Actors… historical details… definitions of words … origins of phrases, etc.
If I go to a theater, I have to plan things out so I don’t have to run out during the middle of the movie. Avoid too much liquid intake before the show. Use the restroom before I leave the house. Use the restroom when I arrive at the theater. Then sit on the aisle just in case.
This has always been an issue, but aging isn’t helping matters. 
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Casablanca on TV, but I was blown away watching it at Moscow’s *Rossiya *cinema, which used to be the largest single-screen movie theater in the world (it’s since been turned into a multiplex :mad: ). The black and white photography was gorgeous, and the amount of detail in the film was astounding.
Every time I watch a movie on TV with my daughter, I feel sorry that she’ll probably never get to see it on the big screen, like I did. That’s the way they were meant to be viewed. Watching films like Tiger Bay, Double Indemnity, The Great Escape, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, The Great Race, American Graffiti, The Producers, and Goldfinger on TV in no way has the same impact as seeing them in a cinema.
Me too—if it’s a movie I’ve decided to seriously watch, I will give it my full attention.
But not necessarily if I’m watching a movie just because it happens to be on, or I’m watching it with someone who cares about it a lot more than I do, or rewatching it for the nth time, or if it was a movie I thought I wanted to watch but it turns out to be much less engaging than I had hoped. (And of course, watching a movie that’s being broadcast on TV with commercial breaks is definitely not the same as watching it in a theater.)
So, watching a movie at home on the TV allows for serious or non-serious watching: the kind where I give it my full, sustained attention, and the kind where I don’t. And the first isn’t a qualitatively different experience from seeing it in a theater, but it is still less immersive. The second is quite different. (But it’s something I, personally, don’t do all that much of, because if I’m not interested in seriously watching a movie, I’d probably rather be doing something else enturely.)
I focus pretty closely when watching a movie in either place, but yes, I pay more attention to a movie when I see it in a theater. Having the room be all dark helps.
My teenage sons are often if intermittently on their phones when we watch movies at home. Drives me crazy.