AT THE MOVIES (?!)

I went to see a movie last week. At least that’s what I thought I was doing. It’s been a while, but has it been so long that the whole paradigm has changed? There are, after all, expectations when one sees a movie in the theater. I’ve had these expectations my whole life. Of course some things have changed about going to the movies, but these changes have been subtle… until now.

It’s the “now” that I wish to speak about…

I arrived a half hour early, bought my ticket, and strolled into the theater. The screen was already busy with a kinetic flow of images and dialogue. I had been expecting to hear pop music playing coupled with the projection of local ads and a quaint movie quiz game. At first I thought that I must be late and that the coming attraction trailers were in progress. I saw Liev Schreiber, Elliott Gould, and Jon Voight. What movie is this? Imagine my surprise to find out that it’s no movie at all. Rather, it was a commercial for the upcoming Showtime series Ray Donovan.

This was followed by “info-tainment-mmericals” for some crap on History Channel that has no connection to history (imagine that), and other sundry cable television A&E shows, et cetera, ad nauseam.

TV ads at the movies?! Why on earth would a movie theater advertise to its customers a product designed to keep them at home? There is only one answer. Money. They are paid to run these infotainmentpieceoshit stuff and have little economic choice in the matter. I’ll bet Showtime and History and A&E are paying better than Johnny’s Scrub-A-Dub-Dub local car wash projection slide. Which is really too bad for Johnny… and me. I like to shop locally and now the movie theater has taken the last vestiges of that advertising platform away. (Although I must admit that I hated those tacky slides when they first appeared. Little did I know I was living in the halcyon days of local advertising at the movies.)

Okay. So I tuned the stuff out, as did most of the expectant crowd, who were instead transfixed by their glowing cell phone screens, finding it far more interesting than the Ray Donovan preview.  HOWEVER, I must concede that the Liev Schreiber project commercial did at least try to tell a story so as to entice me to watch. The same cannot be said for the movie trailers that unrolled before my eyes.

The lights dimmed and the MPAA billboard flooded every inch of the screen. “The following Preview has been approved for All Audiences.” It was the last intelligible thing I saw.

For the next 25 minutes I was treated to trailer after trailer after trailer of upcoming movies. Did I mention that this took 25 minutes of my life that I will never see again? I couldn’t tell you all of the movies that were advertised because it all seemed to flow together. None of the trailers told a story. Barely any showed an actor actually speaking with their lips moving. Instead I heard voice-overs from their dialogue slapped over hyperkinetic images consisting of CGI explosions and things zooming past the camera. These things could be anything, but the important part is that they zoom with loud sound. ZOOM! ZIP! Then—to give my eyeballs a break—they cut to an actor’s face in close-up with a slow dolly in. The actor, of course, says nothing but stares with intensity as if they were rendered mute by the awesome preceding explosions and zipping, zooming things…

Now I remember one of the trailers! It was for a film called Man of Steel. It’s the story of… well, this guy with a beard works on a fishing boat… then… somehow he also saves a school bus from sinking and… then he’s in a costume (no beard) but under arrest and tells the woman that the letter “S” on his chest means “hope”… but the wise-ass woman deadpans that here it is just an “S.”

How can you make Superman so uninteresting and lifeless? WHAT IS THE STORY? WHAT IS IT ABOUT? WHY SHOULD I CARE?

A 30-second television commercial for Cialis tells a clearer story than a three-minute movie trailer! How can that be? You have me captive in the theater. I am yours to sell. Make me want to return and spend more money at your theater. Instead I get “sound and fury signifying nothing.” These trailers are edited exactly as if they are the latest Assassin’s Creed or Call of Duty videogame commercial.

I actually used to look forward to seeing movie trailers. They were longer than a television commercial, told more of the story, and involved me (at least the good ones did) for those two or three minutes. Movie preview trailers used to feel like an appetizer before the main course. Now they feel like rapid tequila shots without the warm, fuzzy feeling—leaving only the burning sensation that leaves you breathless and ready to heave.

Can’t be much clearer than that.

I’m just saying…