We went to a movie today and we were reminded of why we never do that. Movie theater costs are not consistent with FIRE in any way. In today’s world movie theaters are only really great, even in a non-FIRE context, if you hate money and would like to have less of it.

Less Of A Ripoff In The Past

Movie theaters may have always been somewhat expensive, unless you were from a small market that played movies well after their release date. That’s the case in the small town where I grew up. In the 80’s I could get a ticket for $1, and my snacks of popcorn, candy, and pop were about $2 for a grand total of $3.

Community Feel

Even when you had to pay a higher price in other markets though, theaters used to have more to offer. There was a sense of community or camaraderie related to experiencing a movie with many people at the same time. This is one of the few past pros for movies that I don’t understand why it’s a past pro. American culture has just changed in that regard. You can see it in other ways as well such as the lack of a draw to broadcast TV, which had the same appeal knowing people in your community were likely watching the same thing you were. I doubt younger people even understand that appeal, having not been exposed to it.

Technical Factors

Other factors that made movies worth it was that nobody had a better screen, sound system, or ambience than the theater. It was probably in the mid 2000’s that average people could start setting up something as good at home. It’s around this time that I had my first projector hooked up to cable and a DVD player. At that point my desire for theaters began dropping.

The next killer for theaters was the ease of ordering movies and short wait for new releases. Theaters in the past had a monopoly on the timeline. For me this shifted in the 2010’s where we could rent virtually any movie via Amazon Prime on a firestick. The timeline to get the movies also seemed to shrink. You had to pay slightly more to rent them, but the $3-$6 or so was a steal over the cost of theater tickets, and insignificantly more than something like redbox that required leaving the house both to get it and to return it.

A final nail in the coffin is when streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu began producing their own movies. For the cost of one theater ticket you could subscribe to these for an entire month, and that’s all that’s now needed to watch the new release.

Only The Flaws Remain

Screen

Once the benefits of a theater have been neutralized, the flaws become glaring. One example of this is the screen. What used to be a marvel of technology is now either too big or too small depending on where you sit. The great news is that theaters are often pretty empty so picking your ideal seats is possible. In a home environment you have already set up your seating at the ideal distance from your crisp 4K TV.

The big thing I noticed today was the crappy resolution of the screen. It can’t compete with a 4k TV at home. Here I took this picture but it didn’t come through very well because my pixel phone noticed and corrected the fuzziness. Even my phone thought “Jesus let me fix that”. Think of the chart at an eye exam where the optometrist is still a click away from the clear setting.

Sound

Another flaw at the theater is the sound is ear-splitting loud. I hated this even when I was distracted back in the day by the benefits of the theater. I don’t even fully understand why the levels are the way they are. It must be to overcome the next flaw, which is crowds making noise. The down-side of having a bunch of people watching with you is that a percentage of them are probably very noisy. Better turn up that volume! They must have failed to reassess the volume when people stopped showing up.

Cost

There are a variety of smaller complaints as well such as temperature, inability to pause, etc. However the cost is just absurd at this point. With four tickets, two popcorns, four drinks, and four candy items, our total was $119. The tickets alone were almost $50. It’s just a laughable amount of money that nobody can afford on a regular basis. Even if you could afford that regularly, why in the world would you do that?

In about a month after the new release, I could rent that movie for $3-$6, and the same snacks would cost us $5. That’s $119 for a shittier experience compared to $11 on the high end. At our house in CO we have theater seats, a 70″ 4K TV and surround sound. The only thing slightly special in that setup is the theater seats, but any couch would do just fine.

Our Future With Theaters

We fully intend never to pay to go to a theater again. This was mostly already the case, having gone to just a handful of movies since COVID. I’m sure we will get a gift card at some point from one of our parents, since boomers seem to be the last generation that can’t let theaters go. If that happens we will of course go, but we’ll be wishing the whole time we could just have the cash instead.