The Cinema Experience
Like many people, we've just returned from seeing Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix at the Cinema. Unusually, we actually arrived at the cinema before the adverts started.
IMDB reports the movie is 138 minutes long. Impressive then, that we had a full 40 minutes of adverts before the film started. 30 of random adverts, followed by the normal 10 or so of trailers.
Especially irritating was an advert that initially looks like a trailer for Ratatouille - a film appearing in this country later in the year. It starts off with the lead character going on about how he likes good food, and that's a bit like a good movie. We then degenerate into a speech about how film piracy is of a lower quality than the 'cinema experience' and we don't want to be a 'knock off nigel'. They make a big deal about the sound and picture quality being much worse, but there were noticeable mpeg sound artifacts in the film we saw tonight - not to mention the idiots talking in the rows behind us.
So much for the cinema experience - awful sound quality, crap overpriced drinks and more adverts than a prime-time sky TV channel.
I'm already at the cinema having paid to see the movie. Treating me as if I'm at best some kind of idiot to be patronised or better yet, the suspect for a crime I'm yet to commit is only going to encourage me to go to the cinema less.
I wonder at what point the adverts will be longer than the actual film, and we'll have to have our memories of it wiped at the door lest we remember the plot and tell our friends.