It's been years since I've stepped foot in a movie theater - the last post I see here that attests to me being at a theater was from 2011. I'm sure I must have seen something else in a theater in the meantime (maybe Everything Everywhere All at Once? Great film, by the way), but I couldn't swear to it. However, I got a Regal Cinemas gift card for Christmas, and found something worth giving a go over the weekend, so away I went. Sadly, there's nothing like years of absence to make enshittification stand out when you do eventually return.
First things first though, the movie... Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die was both different and better than I could have ever expected, given the setup. A man shows up at a diner, looking like the prototypical paranoid homeless guy, ranting about being from the future, where things have gone horribly wrong due to social media and AI, and he's looking for team members to change how it all goes. This is one of those movies that's better to go into blind, so I'll just say it's a little dark, a little gory, and supremely silly. I giggled several times throughout, and not in an "it's so bad it's good" sort of way. I heartily recommend it.
In contrast, we have the Regal Cinemas experience. I mean, I know theater chains are struggling, but some of this shit is downright abusive. I've still got credit on that gift card, so we'll try another of their theaters in town for my next experience for a compare-and-contrast, but some of it is outside of any one theater's control.
I knew I was in for disappointment as soon as I went to order a ticket through their phone app. Yes, I'm sure there's some way to use a gift card without the app, but I'd already accepted that modern inevitability and set things up prior there, so it's not like the app itself is all that terrible, if you set aside the popup ads that get in the way of doing what you came to do, of course.
Anyways, I pick my seat, select an adult ticket, and go to checkout... and they hit me with a $2 booking fee on top of the ticket price. A booking fee, on their app, for their theater. If I were paying cash, I might well have noped out at that point, but somebody else already paid for this, so what the hell. Continuing on, as soon as the purchase is complete, I get no fewer than four "special offers" from various services that I have to decline before I can get the QR code for my show. At this point, I'm wondering whether the convenience of the app beats just showing up at the theater and buying a ticket.
I get to the theater about 10 minutes before the posted showtime. The first thing I notice is that the ticket booth is entirely unstaffed, humans replaced by touchscreens, so I fully expect the local purchase pattern to mirror the app. That's not my problem for the day, though, so I head up to the ticket taker (or whatever their job is called now), get scanned in, and head off to the theater - no time to stop for concessions, right?
As I arrive, the ads are already playing, so I find my seat. Turns out, whoever's in charge of arranging seats here has some airline experience. I mean, there's plenty of legroom (because the layout of the concrete steps dictates it), but the fold-down arm rests are close enough together that I couldn't comfortably sit with one arm squarely on each (never mind the one-arm method they must be envisioning). And of course, those armrests are also too short to lay an arm down, without your hand sitting in the drink holder - very convenient, if you have a drink, I'd guess. I'd get one, but the show's about to start.
Of course, the show wasn't about to start. From at least 10 minutes before showtime, to more than 20 minutes after, the ads continued to flow. They eventually shifted to mostly movie previews, as expected, but not entirely - there was one of those superbowl AI ads thrown in the middle, which was kind of funny in hindsight given the way the movie goes.
Eventually, the ads end, the movie shows, I have my fun, then I creakily lever myself out of the seat and go home. I will say, what was in the control of the local staff seemed to be fine - everything was clean and in seemingly good repair, and no hiccups from the projection and sound equipment were noticed - but, if this is the standard across theater chains for how they treat their customers, I'll stick with streaming, thanks.
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