I enjoy the cinema; weirdly, it was one of the things I found I really missed during the Covid lockdown. I found myself craving getting out of the house, and just having something new to watch... a way to escape a thoroughly crappy real world into a fantasy one, just for a few hours.
It's obvious the industry is still recovering from a couple of years' worth of dramatically reduced productivity, of course, but that's getting better now. This week my local cinema is currently showing a new Mission Impossible, a Spider-Man, an Indiana Jones and a Transformers, plus a handful of other movies that aren't 'big' popcorn munching franchises.
Ironically even though I do have a true 4K projector and a Dolby Atmos system, I don't go to the cinema any less often since installing those. I just enjoy a better experience when I watch movies at home than I would otherwise.
The things that have put me off the cinema from time to time have nothing to do with the likes of Netflix, or the difference in picture and sound presentation between home and theatre. Instead it's the little things...
- the fact that, every single time, I ask for a medium popcorn and have to go through the "it's only 50p more..." upsell. I hate this, and I'm sure the staff do too.
- the quality of popcorn has gone down, but of course, the prices haven't. In fact the ticket price at my local theatre is still very good indeed despite recent increases, but I'd rather pay another £1 and enjoy a better overall experience.
- during a number of screenings we've had to put up with a deliberately intrusive "screen checker"... someone wearing a hi-viz jacket wandering into the theatre and very obviously pointing a camera at the audience, presumably to try and spot recording devices. This happened 3 times during one particular showing, and I didn't go back for 6 months after that. I'm paying good money for a few hours' worth of immersion, it's not OK to break that, and don't dare try to use the 'c' word to justify yourself if the movie is already on file sharing sites.