Movies are a beautiful art, and the best way to experience them is in a large dark room, on a big screen at loud volumes, and surrounded by a crowd of complete strangers.
But in recent years, I’ve noticed an increase in bad manners at theaters. At a time when streaming services are threatening to put the entire movie exhibition industry at risk, every movie theater attendee needs to put in the work to keep these cinema monuments a destination for film fans.
Even though I go to movie theaters a freakish amount compared to the average theater-goer – once a week since I was a kid – sometimes I’d rather watch something at home just because I’m worried about the audience’s behavior.
Any time I see someone pull a sneaky, “half-out of the pocket time check” with their phone on full brightness, my eyes immediately dart to that person, and my immersion in the film is completely disrupted.
As someone who frequents Chicago’s repertory movie theater scene, I vividly remember the discourse when David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me” screened at the wonderful Music Box Theatre in 2021. The movie is incredibly sad and frequently uncomfortable, but the crowd responded to the unfamiliar tone of the film with laughing, chattering, and clattering beer cans, as illustrated in a disgruntled Reddit thread from the day after the screening.
Repertory screenings, or the re-release of old films, have proven to be a financial boost for theaters around the world. According to the Los Angeles Times, over Labor Day weekend, “Jaws” came in second at the weekend box office after an international re-release. In May, “Star Wars Episode III — Revenge of the Sith” was rereleased and raked in $55 million at the box office over its brief run in theaters.
While these screenings have been popular, I’ve also found them to feature the most rowdy audience experiences I can remember.
Most audiences enter a movie theater with modern film sensibilities in mind. Unless you’re a film student or fanatic, you may not engage with movies made before 2000 very often. The shock in how different older movies felt, were paced, and looked can elicit some snickering or impatient sighs from modern audiences, which, while understandable, gets on my nerves.
I love seeing my favorite old movies in a theater. But if even I, someone whose wallet starts panicking when I open the AMC Theaters app on my phone, am hesitant to make the trip to the theater out of fear my experience will be ruined by rowdy casual viewers, how is the theater industry ever going to compete with streaming services?
The streaming addiction, as Caroline Reid describes it in an October 2024 Forbes article, has conditioned casual viewers to expect theatrical products to be available on streaming services quickly after release. Despite juggernaut films like “Oppenheimer,” “Barbie,” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” releasing in 2023, that year’s global box office gross of $33.9 billion was 15 percent lower than the average totals from 2019, 2018, and 2017, the three most recent pre-pandemic box office years, according to Forbes.
The COVID-19 pandemic shut movie theaters down and left streaming services as the only option for people to watch movies. This extended period of time captured people’s attention and for some, deterred them from theaters permanently. For those who returned to theaters upon their reopening, the effects of streaming were revealed to be more than financial: people act like they’re still sitting in their living room when they’re at the theater.
Billy Ogden, an Iowa City local, frequents both arthouse FilmScene and local megaplex Marcus Theaters, seeing a movie in a theater around once a week. They have noticed fewer people in theaters since the pandemic, but when those people are in attendance, they think there has been a noticeable shift in people using their phones.
“I think people fell out of the habit of going… they are less sympathetic to the person sitting next to them, in a way,” Ogden said. “One time, this guy answered the phone and talked at full volume as he got up and walked out of the theater. He didn’t wait to leave to answer, he picked up the phone and said, ‘Yeah, I’m in the theater, I can talk.’”
Generally, though, Ogden enjoys audience interaction. After the pandemic, they were especially looking forward to hearing a reaction during movies. There is always a line, though, and recently, many people have been having full conversations without a care for who can hear have crossed it.
“I think people might be more introverted, too, now. I remember when I was younger and going to the theater, and people would shush someone if they were being loud,” Ogden said.
Even if audiences have become more introverted, I know from experience employees at FilmScene and Marcus are happy to deal with a noisy audience member when asked.
I may sound like an old man shouting at clouds in complaining about this, but I am an old man deep in my heart, and shouting at clouds is my favorite activity.
During one of my multiple theater trips to see “Sinners” earlier this year, a group sat behind me and my friends and would not stop talking. One of them asked aloud, “Is that Josh Allen’s girlfriend?” in the last scene of the movie, after Hailee Steinfeld had already been in the movie for a solid two hours.
The popularity of recliner seats has been detrimental, too. Just because the seats imitate the comfort of your home does not mean you are in the comfort of your home, so stop rummaging in your popcorn bucket for three minutes straight, answering phone calls, and having full, audible conversations. I will throw my shoe at you.
Poor etiquette keeps people from theaters and is contributing to the decline in the industry, sure, but it also indicates a larger apathy problem that has become an increasingly noticeable scourge since the pandemic.
As Richard Gibson describes in an article from Prindle Post, the decline in manners at the cinema is indicative of the degradation of people’s compliance with the “social contract.”
It is the easiest thing in the world to obey the implicit societal politeness policy in a movie theater. You are sitting comfortably in an air-conditioned room while a large screen projects across your entire sightline, yet people frequently break the contract.
Theaters are my church, and movies are my bible. I care far too much about the continued health of the movie theater industry, so this is a call to anyone who goes to movie theaters — be quiet.
Especially as we approach the anticipated releases of “Wicked: For Good” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” be considerate of the space, the employees, and the people around you. This advice should extend to all environments, but at the very least, keep your mouth shut, put your phone away, and let the power of cinema whisk you away.