Reserving the right to say "I told you so" on a spectacularly bad idea > Movie Mate

[Brad Miller]

So apparently encouraging moviegoers to do the one thing during a movie that makes people want to NOT return to the cinema is the genius idea behind this.

This will cause irreversible damage to the industry if the idea does not immediately die.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5R4DuWoNguo

I’m not the only person able to see the blatantly obvious here, right? Cinemas need to flat out REFUSE to even demo this.

[Travis Cape]

I will never go to another movie if cell phone use is encouraged. I already have a major problem with the policy of allowing small children in free.

[Carsten Kurz]

Well, you could advertise only certain shows for this, I guess the kids would like this. The question is, how do you keep this behaviour out of your normal shows once it has been established.

[Mike Blakesley]

I'm so sick of news media talking heads, who apparently don't go to movies, talking about the latest thing that's going to "bring people back" to theaters.

GOOD MOVIES, that's what will bring them in. Not back, "IN." They have "come back" repeatedly when there has been an amazing movie they want to see. The audience IS back, they just need good content to attend. The news media needs to talk about the latest idea that will "get people to go to more movies," not "bring them back."

There are a lot of people who don't go to movies, period. Some of them never will. There's no point worrying about them, they are married to their TV screens and their couches and they will die that way. It's been that way ever since TV was invented and will always be that way.

As for the idea presented in this thread, it seems kinda stupid to me. We hardly ever play any horror movies anyway so we probably wont need to worry about it here.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I'm sorry, but "stick an AI chatbot into it" is not the solution to everything, this is like the most egregious shoehorning of AI tech into an experience I have seen so far.

This reeks of a bunch of industry bean counters trying to latch onto buzz word hype in hopes it will save them. It won't, and has the potential to really backfire if it is not quarantined to very specific showings.

All the streaming services have a lower-third you can interact with that contains all sorts of movie trivia... actors on screen at any moment, yada yada. How many people even see that except when pausing to get food/drink, use the bathroom, or are interrupted by something else at home.

If you really wanted to allow phones to augment the movie watching experience, my vote would be a local stream on the wifi sync'd to the film so you don't have to miss any moments to go to the bathroom or hit the bar again for another drink/snack. People are used to not missing stuff at home (via pause), so let's import that capacity without requiring the pause. But how to make it work in the lobby areas only? (or just give up and let people use phones, as this piece is suggesting). oooof.

If you really wanted to allow phones use in an intentional way... the way to do it would be permit it only in the last 3 rows or something like that. Keep all those damn lights behind everyone else.

[Ed Gordon]

I won’t bore you with the rest of the trivia M3GAN inflicted upon me over the next hour and a half. Instead, I invite you to try it for yourself, since it turns out you didn’t need to be in a theater to chat with M3GAN. You can do it now, at home. The bot isn’t actually AI, and it’s certainly not smart enough to detect where you are when you engage it, which means you can pop in the disc or stream “M3GAN” whenever or wherever you want, and text “#H2H” to that @M3GAN account on Instagram to experience the same frustrations I did there in the dark. (Just know that you can’t hit pause without disrupting the flow.)

It was around that first (and only) quiz question that I stopped paying close attention to my “second screen.” It was clearly annoying the woman sitting right next to me, who got up and moved to another seat, presumably to avoid the light from my phone. I wanted to apologize and explain to her that this was what we were all supposed to be doing … except, no one else was doing it.

Those two guys below me had the right idea, staying dark throughout the film, then pulling out their phones to back-read all the chatbot’s messages when the end credits appeared. Funny enough, I’d chosen to see the movie at the AMC Century City — over the Alamo Drafthouse, with their strict no-phones policy — since teenagers are constantly annoying me there by texting and talking during the movies. Just not this one.

I have a few theories about why this Meta Movie Mate experiment was such an epic fail (apart from the hunch that no one really wants to chat with M3GAN). First, audiences aren’t stupid, and they can sniff when something is just a big marketing gimmick. After texting with M3GAN for an hour and a half, “she” fed me more or less what I knew was coming all along: A sales pitch for “M3GAN 2.0” — “i promise it’s gonna be one wild ride … mwah!” — plus a prompt to be alerted about “system updates.” No, thank you.

Full article at: https://variety.com/2025/film/column...il-1236383860/

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

That is the dumbest thing I have ever seen... Great way to get rid of the awful chains though! We rarely go to theaters as it is, because it is primarily an AMC (Awful Movie Center) Town. There is one passable Regal not too far from me, and that's where we've been going. There is one Imax here that last worked for the re-release of Interstellar. But Regal refuses to repair it. Heat exchanger apparently went bad.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This reminds me of this bad idea, which manifested itself about 12 years ago. A movie called "App", which featured a "Second screen" app, that synced content based on audio cues.

Adding gimmicks to your movies will not fix Hollywood...

[Frank Raia]

Cell phones are the number one reason why I don't go to the movies. I guess this will be yet another nail in the coffin for theaters. Soon the theater will be a novelty.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Cell phones are the number one reason why I don't go to the movies. I guess this will be yet another nail in the coffin for theaters. Soon the theater will be a novelty.

Maybe the shiny "new novelty" will be the 100% cell-phone free theater. I imagine some of those locker boxes they have at many of the more wilder attractions in theme parks nowadays at the entrance of the auditorium, where you lock your cell phone away for the entire duration of the movie...

I'm not sure if there is a medicine that suppresses those cell-phone urges for at least a few hours, but if it exists, the theater should offer that for free.

[Harold Hallikainen]

How does the antipathy towards cell phones square with the idea of Bring Your Own Device for HI/VI/CC? Will patrons' cellphones used for closed captions light up the theater?

[Frank Cox]

Maybe the shiny "new novelty" will be the 100% cell-phone free theater.

I actually have one of those, or as close to it as I can manage. Every time I see that light I go and tell the person involved to stop.

It's actually a fairly infrequent occurrence these days.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Great, now we only need some shiny marketing term for the concept.

How does the antipathy towards cell phones square with the idea of Bring Your Own Device for HI/VI/CC? Will patrons' cellphones used for closed captions light up the theater?

I consider those kind of solutions a way to cheap out, just in order to be compliant with local regulations. While no solution is perfect, there are less obnoxious ways to solve the problem, but they usually cost more money than essentially telling people to fix it themselves.

I've seen the most bone-headed stuff lately, like with cinemas that offer seat service that require apps. One of the worst examples is a local cinema that requires you to scan a QR code, to open a webpage for ordering. But in order to be able to scan this QR code, people need to activate their flashlights on the phone...

[Leo Muller]

This is simple, most of us here are die-hard purist for the cinema experience, that's fine, but the industry CAN'T and WON'T sustain itself from the shrinking number of die-hard purist movie-goers. You either adapt and change to give the new generation what they want from their experience or you die being that prude that thinks you know "what's best for others". I think there should be special screenings for the purist, and every other screening can be what the next generation prefers, even if that's phone use during movies. - my vote is for what keeps the industry alive and what keeps use all employed.

[Marcel Birgelen]

This is simple, most of us here are die-hard purist for the cinema experience, that's fine, but the industry CAN'T and WON'T sustain itself from the shrinking number of die-hard purist movie-goers. You either adapt and change to give the new generation what they want from their experience or you die being that prude that thinks you know "what's best for others". I think there should be special screenings for the purist, and every other screening can be what the next generation prefers, even if that's phone use during movies. - my vote is for what keeps the industry alive and what keeps use all employed.

I call this catering to gimmicks... And you know what about gimmicks? Countless of those have been tried in the last 100+ years, in order to entice people to come see a show at your place. Most of those gimmicks came and went as quickly as they came. The one true tested method that seems to have stood the test of time is as straightforward as it seems: Good movies.

We live in an age where companies like Netflix produce low-attention garbage on purpose, so people can keep scrolling through TikTok while simultaneously "absorbing" some of the dreck that's transpiring on their TV. It's the absolute devaluation of "content" right there. We're hooking people up to some never-ending soul-sucking 24/7 brain drain, consisting of lowest denominator splash poop and we're wondering why the world around is slowly but surely falling apart?

I've read about schools around here that started to collect mobile phones at the start of the classes. Chinese governments, actively limiting "screen time" for people under a certain age... Maybe they're onto something? Maybe we shouldn't silently stand by while our societies turn into generation Zombie? So, maybe, we shouldn't support the proliferation of the rot of our society?

But heck, who am I? Just go ahead... offer a cinema where phone abuse during the show is encouraged. Let's see how long it takes before the place is going to become a hangout for the most obnoxious people of the neighbourhood, while your remaining customer base quickly vanishes into thin air. A bad reputation is easily earned and hard to loose... If your business plan is to earn money on a bad reputation, then I hope you prepared for the consequences.