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Comment by nayroclade | Hacker News Reader

Cinema's latest brainwave, at least in the UK, is to run patronising adverts about how great the "big-screen experience" is, and how we shouldn't ruin films by watching on our TVs, laptops, phones, etc. Except, like the old anti-piracy ads, they run these adverts in cinemas before movies, to a group of people who've literally just made the decision to go to the cinema. Like a priest ranting at his congregation about the evils of not attending church.

Every time I see one of these adverts, I think that cinema deserves to die.

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Funnily, the big picture is the least interesting part of the experience for me.

Back when I lived in NYC, I used to go to Nighthawk cinemas every once in a while for a date night. We'd pick a movie, shell out for some fancy cocktails and dinner, and enjoy the drinks and food while watching the movie. It was a great experience, really loved their menu. They even had a really smart ordering system, where you wrote your order down on a piece of paper and the servers picked them up silently so as not to disrupt the movie.

But most cinemas are just typical garbage big chain locations with way-too-loud, poorly balanced speakers, crappy food, crappy drinks, full of screaming children. Why would I go to all the trouble and expense for an experience that's just worse in every way?

I also prefer watching all content with subtitles, which makes me want to go to the cinema even less because so few showings have subtitles. Given that something like 70% of Gen Zers watch content with subtitles most of the time, I wonder how long it will take that to change?

> Back when I lived in NYC, I used to go to Nighthawk cinemas every once in a while for a date night. We'd pick a movie, shell out for some fancy cocktails and dinner, and enjoy the drinks and food while watching the movie. It was a great experience, really loved their menu. They even had a really smart ordering system, where you wrote your order down on a piece of paper and the servers picked them up silently so as not to disrupt the movie.

This is essentially how the Alamo Drafthouse works as well, and I loved their FiDi location (opened just over a year ago). The Alamo also has a monthly membership for 30 bucks that I used for a long time. Unfortunately, both of their NYC locations are inconveniently located for me, and I eventually switched over to AMC - and the amount of screaming children is insane - why are people bringing children to a PG-13/NC-17 movie?! The Alamo staff will come and shush people talking or disruptive in any way, while my most recent AMC experience had somebody in the theater smoking/vaping pot.

To add some context for those not in the UK or Europe...

I am guessing the advert you are referring to is the "Get lost in great stories" one [1] run in Vue cinemas. Other UK cinemas (Picturehouse, Odeon) mention the "big screen experience" but I think the Vue one is the only one that singles out that watching on a phone / laptop / TV can lead to a negative experience.

It's certainly one of the longer "please switch off your phones" messages, at over two minutes in length.

I used to enjoy seeing the adverts and trailers before a film at the cinema, but that was when I rarely visited. Now that I'm going much more regularly (sometimes multiple times a week), the lack of variety is very obvious: when I am forced to sit through the exact same collection of four or five adverts / trailers multiple times, it gets a bit old.

Of course, in my haste to post, I forgot the most important bit - the link to the advert itself!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6jrYeBA7BA

They probably run those ads as placeholders until they find some real advertisers. Youtubers employ this practice sometimes.

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