I wanted to see Finding Nemo, so I went to the theater.
The lights dimmed, the crowd silenced. The screen lit up… and I had to sit through not one, but two Pepsi commercials.
Now, I’m no enemy of advertising. I’m perfectly aware of the fact that advertising keeps media free and/or affordable. But darn it, I’m paying good money to go to the movie theater!
It’s almost insulting that I’m paying to watch commercials. Trailers I don’t mind. Trailers are entertaining. But argh, how I hate commercials.
And they’re not even new. They’re the same stupid ones I see on TV over and over again.
Good on ya, JB… I haven’t tasted an Adams product since they inflicted that awful Tom Waits soundalike Dentyne ad on us. First commercial I ever saw in the theatre – since then I’d be more inclined to attempt to freshen my breath by sticking my tongue up a dog’s behind than to give those rotten bastids another dime.
I’m not happy about how large the list of the undeserving is growing – mostly it’s things I can happily live without – but I saw a Star-Wars branded X-box game advertised in theatres last week. I’ve bought every LucasArts PC game so far, so it was with a little reluctance that I put them on the bottom of the list. I guess they’ve had enough of my money anyway. To hell with them.
GMRyujin has a good point there, I went to see Finding Nemo today at a tiny theatre in Burnaby called (appropriately) the Dolphin – They played two trailers (Disney Pirate schlockfest & The Incredibles,) the short, (Knick-Knack) and then the feature. Very nostalgic.
Here (Honolulu) we have a repeating slide show of local commercials sponsered by Coke. Including such incredibly stupid “games” like find the coke bottle in the picture. I’ve given up being pissed at them.
However I have quit all sodas. Haven’t had a single one in almost two months. Saved a lot of money I have.
I don’t really mind commercials in the cinema, but you know what really killed me?
Sitting here at 3 am in the morning, watching the superbowl (different time zone) and having to endure a Burger King advertisement every 5 minutes. After it was all over, I was so hungry and at this hour, no Burger King is open. That was a horrible torture, but at least it kinda worked from an advertisement point of view as Burger King is now forever burned into my mind and I will not ever forget how tasty a whopper looks
It featured this guy driving up to McDonald’s asking for a Whopper. After the umpteenth time we started yelling and swearing at the TV: “NO, THEY DO NOT HAVE WHOPPERS!!! GO TO BURGER KING FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE!!!”
A friend of mine works for the company and told me they received about 100 mails complaining about those Superbowl ads. (Quite a lot, considering they aired at 3 am and not a lot of people watch it over here)
Have not touched a Burger King product ever since.
Ha! It’s reassuring to know I was not the only one having some beef (pun intended, heh) with that commercial, Einmon! Strange enough, the advertisement didn’t spoil me on Burger King though; in fact it had the intended effect that I was craving a whopper.
It was quite the cruel mind game seeing the burger, but not being able to get one, heh.
I remember there was a thread that included a discussion about that sometime ago, when somebody sued a movie theater for having to sit through commercials…
actually quite enjoy the ads in cinemas, if they’re not recycling old TV ads and if the commercials don’t run to long (one poster in the first thread said he had to wait 40 minutes before the movie started, I’d have killed someone by then).
If you go to the Galleria theaters, there are no commercials beforehand. No, you get slides of someone’s vacation to Hong Kong and an organist. An organist, I shit you not. And they serve Ted Drewe’s. So cool.
Ironically, the theater I go to (without commercials) charges less and is one of the newer big, big screen theaters with stadium-style seating and big comfy chairs. It’s a little out of the way, but it beats sitting through 20 minutes of commercials for crap (Pepsi, U.S. Army, Pepsi) before the previews even start.
Oddly, Finding Nemo was the only movie I’ve been to in the past year that had ZERO (0) ads. Lights went down, trailers began. Then there was the Regal Cinemas roller-coaster thingie, then the movie. I guess the manager figured kids don’t want to sit thru 15 minutes of ads. How about the same respect for your paying customers?
I’ve noticed my Regal Cinema has begun starting the commercials 5-10 minutes before the listed movie time. I imagine it’s in response to the lawsuit out west of a few months back.
I don’t mind commercials in the movie theatre as long as they conform to the following criteria:
– They were specifically produced for theatrical showings (that is, they are not commercials I’d see daily on TV).
– They are entertaining.
In other words, show me something I haven’t seen before, and make me laugh, cry, solve the mystery, wonder what’s going to happen next, or otherwise get into this short film that you’re using to plug a product.
In fact, advertising people might want to take note: don’t make me watch something that comes on my TV endlessly. Produce something original for the theatre, and remember that people go to the movies for entertainment, not to be hit over the head with sales pitches. If that’s the case, then I just might follow the OP’s lead, and avoid the product you’re selling. But if you’re original and entertaining, I just might remember your product when it comes time to spend my money.
I seriously doubt this. Movies existed for decades without subjecting a paying audience to advertisements. I think some numbnuts who never actually pays to go to the movies came up with the idea in the past decade, and the near-monopolies that own the theatres decided to start selling their captive audience.
Up until 5 years ago, I caught films two or three times a month because they were cheap. Since then the price has literally doubled-- and I now go to maybe one movie every four months. To have to pay money for the privilege of sitting through fucking commercials is disgusting-- and I voice my displeasure at the top of my lungs during ads.
I’m pretty sure that in the next year I will stop going to movies altogether, solely because of advertisements.
They have the exact same thing here in Texas.
Thos incredibly stupid coke games make me laugh. The find the coke bottle has 4 bottles in plain site. You would have to be a complete idiot to miss any of them.
