I’m with you on that one. I am generally an even-tempered sort of fellow, but this is one of a short list of items that can get under my skin. I saw Batman Begins in IMAX when it was released, and I really enjoyed the experience. Except for the couple to my right; it seemed pretty apparent to me that it was a couple on a first date. Maybe not, but at least the young fellow was trying to enjoy the movie in silence, but his date kept talking and asking what was happening, who is this, why did he do that? Fellow seemed to be brushing her off – I didn’t hear any responses. I spent half the movie getting more fed up but unsure how to handle the situation. Do I say something? If so, what? I didn’t want to ruin this couple’s experience but they were seriously hampering my enjoyment. Finally, I think about halfway through the movie I had come up with my carefully thought out approach: I leaned over and said, ‘Lady, please!’ at something like stage whisper volume. I think I thoroughly confused her, but she did pipe down.
Between the high prices and inconsistent quality (how much trouble is it to hire a projectionist that can actually keep a movie in focus?) and how nice home theaters are getting, theaters are doomed.
I think the home theater revolution has ushered in a generation of people who don’t know your supposed to sit there and shut your damn hole during a movie.
Examples:
Quantum of Solace - had to ask the fat idiot in the NASCAR shirt behind me to shut up. This was during the opening car chase. His topic? “Bond drove a Ford in the last movie.”
Frost/Nixon - Dude in front of me starts reading his email on his million gigawatt Iphone. Me and the stranger next to him both leaned in at the same time to ask him to shut it off. This was during the crucial last interview.
That Russian Gangster Movie where you totally see Aragon’s junk - two actual Russian teenage gangster types, drenched in cologne, loudly laugh and jabber excitedly in Russian everytime someone says “Fag” in Russian.
Random annoyances include babies and children wayyyyy too young to be at that movie. Babies cry and the second Bourne film is too much for a four year old.
Get off my lawn…ect.
I’m probably a curmudgeon, but recently there was a guy sitting next to me texting through the movie. He was totally silent, but his screen was blazing in my peripheral vision and distracting.
I told him to turn it off, and he hid it from me, but halfway through the movie he must’ve gotten some terribly important message (and what is so important for the 20 year old goombahs that can’t wait 40 minutes?) and there was this blazing thing again.
So I put my hand up on the left side of my face as a little peripheral vision screen and felt like an idiot, but I couldn’t see his screen anymore.
Sigh. My wife used to do that all the time (using her blackberry in the theater) - she had a job where she was on-call essentially 24 hours and would invariably have to respond to some random “urgent” email every hour or so. So I feel for the guy, but if you’re doing it for more than like 30 seconds, you need to leave the theater.
So, what’s the etiquette for talking quietly during the pre-movie trailers? Acceptable, or evil?
Acceptable.
The bright screen thing totally isn’t, it is a little better than actually talking on the phone, but not really.
Personally, I don’t care what people do or say during trailers since they aren’t really what I came to see. I’m irritated generally with how much of a movie trailers give away these days, but that’s a whole other topic.
I would like to point out a contrarian opinion to the one I just expressed above – sometimes it’s fun to have a loud audience that’s really into a movie. I went to a late showing of The Phantom Menace and there were these three black ladies sitting a few rows in front of me and I’ve got to say that they completely made the experience for me. They just shrieked and laughed during the whole thing and I think I got as much from watching them as watching the movie. It’s probably why that particular film is my favorite of the latest trilogy.
I’ll add on that loud is occasionally very acceptable, but those are midnight shows and the like. My favorite was a screening of The Warriors at a local theater pub. Swan and the girl are being stalked by the gang that had the guy on rollerskates. The girl, frightened, asks Swan what he’s going to do…Swan spots Cochise, Rembrant and Ajax and turns to the girl…and an audience member shouts “Gonna Fuck Em Up!”. That worked.
Totally acceptable. Furthermore, if it’s the trailer for Shallow Hal, you’re actually allowed to yell “Because fat people are funny!” at the end of it to embarrass the theatre-goers who were laughing just 5 seconds ago.
Fat people are funny!
Yeah, sometimes loud audiences are good, if it’s funny. During X-Men at one point Halle Berry’s character is called “Where’s Storm?” and she comes on camera wearing some super tight low cut top and goes “I’m here!”, whereupon some jokester in the audience goes “Yes you ARE!”.
So sometimes the audience can make a movie . . . mostly during comedic moments. Though there are still massive irritations out there. The worst offender I even witnessed was a young mother who brought her 4 year old to Kill Bill 2 and let him climb all over the seats while talking on her cell phone. When a certain character’s eyeball was squished, he goes “Ewwwwwww, gross”. I’m thinking “Really, lady? Could you be a worse parent?”
I’d say the mother who brought her toddler and three elementary-age kids to the afternoon showing of 28 Days Later ranks up there. Kids were just running around ignoring the movie.
Philadelphia. Always making me proud.
Europeans are the fucking WORST to watch movies with. Back when that Clooney version of Solaris was in theaters, I went to a local Seattle showing. Pretty empty, but there was a European dude in the back who decided he wanted to have a fucking conversation on his cell phone during the movie. (And we knew he was Eurotrash cause of his accent.) We kept telling him to shush and he’d try to lower his voice for a minute, then get loud again. We finally yelled at him and he gave us a dirty look and left the theater.
Adults are usually the worst, yes. Whenever I have a couple of talkers sitting near me I’ll wait till someone asks a stupid rhetorical question to their spouse/buddy/whatever, like “Did you see that explosion?!?” then I’ll turn around, look them in the eye, and very coldly say, “Yes, yes I did.” They usually get the hint then. I think it’s my delivery.
Or it could be that there are so many of you.
Meh, just back into a corner and crouch, he’s pretty easy to take out.
H.
I thought that technique only worked on zombie hordes, not woolen hordes.
You’re thinking of zombie sheep.
When I saw Silent Hill in theaters a couple years ago, a man seated directly behind me talked in normal tones through the whole movie. He was explaining everything on-screen to the blind woman sitting next to him. “She’s going down some rusty stairs. It’s very dark. She looks scared.”
It was surreal.
I still would have shot him.
What a strange stereotype.
That and ‘white trash’ are the only universally accepted forms of generalized prejudice I know of.