At the Movies
It's been a while since I've been.
I’ve written before about the enshitification of the internet and how the internet is now just a bunch of AWS cloud services that randomly fail and there’s no few unique voices from whom to read and learn, except maybe your favorite newsletter (cough)
I now want to talk about the state of going to the movies in 2025:
It’s always been fun going to the movies, but due to age/interest/funds/sleep- or all of them - I haven’t been for a while. Until today.
The child announced way back in July when she learned that Zootopia 2 was being released Thanksgiving weekend that she would like to go. I know better than to promise something 5 months away so as I am apt to do, I told her “we’ll see” and left it at that.
Five months later, “We’ll see” turned into “We went” . And we made it a family event and went as a group with cousins and aunts that we don’t get to sit beside in the dark eating overpriced snacks with - so that was nice.
BW paid for the tickets and somehow we had some sort of premier status where we could skip the line at the snack counter which was great and maybe saved us five minutes. Want to know what we didn’t save? Money. TWO tubs of pocpcorn and 2 sodas were $35.00
Thirty-five bucks! Holy. Now I wish we HAD skipped the line, but whatever.
We were running a bit behind so I was concerned that the child might miss the first bit of the movie.
I was WORRIED FOR NOTHING.
You guys, there was at least a good 20 minutes or more of previews.
Just previews
In case you were wondering the following releases are upcoming:
The young love drama movie: You know this one. Boy meets girl. Something happens - somebody moves away or gets arrested or becomes president of their local HOA. The partner will move heaven and earth and defeat all odds to get to the partner to profess their never-ending love for them. Titles could be “Against all Odds”, or “Heaven and Earth” or “Sunflowers Endure” or something along those lines.
The Upcoming Disney Movie: One of two things will happen here:Your child will beg and plead and you will cave and add $100 or more to Disney’s coffers to see the thing on release day. Oryour 14 year old will have figured out how to download the movie on the dark web and you can watch it on your TV three weeks prior to release. Titles could be: “anything - two: Spiderman2, Frozen2, Toy Story2, Shrek2 etc…”
The Space Movie. There’s a very good chance that this will either be a re-make of a star wars movie where there’s lots of space jets, snow and a little green man called yoda that knows everything. Titles could have the word galaxy, asteroids, war or stars in them. Bonus points of some characters have blue skin - and snouts.
The SpongeBob Movie. It’s a spongebob movie, so you’re either all about this or you will be good if you never hear his laugh ever again. If you know- you know and if you don’t - you will probably be buying tickets to the young love drama movie instead because now you’re a tween and too old for this stuff. But if you’re a kid or a kid at heart then you will be all over this. Possible titles include “SpongeBob and the XXL Pizza”, or “SpongeBob and Patrick and the Evil Plankton”
These are just the four or so previews I remember. Then we had the friendly, “let’s not offend anybody” ad for us to turn off our phones and devices during the show. This could be a much simpler production with black text on white background:
Turn off your phone if you want to see the end of the movie. Don’t be a Jerk.
Lastly, you get an ad for the theater you’re in and how it’s now using “laser” imaging with better contrast and colors than ever before..
Oh come on. Please let it end…
You start to get comfortable, and wait for the main attraction to start but then before it does because this a “2” movie, you have to watch clips of “1” so you can catch up before the plot opens and you ask yourself what happened to J.R.?
Once all of the above is over and done with, then you get to watch the movie you paid for while eating your now ice cold popcorn and lukewarm soda that cost you close to $20.00.
The movie comes on and before you get into the plot you realize the seats recline and you plan to have a nap but then so engrossed in the plotline involving talking animals that are police offers that you’re on the edge of your seat the entire time as the battle bad guys and good guys that are actually bad and you even laugh at a few of the jokes that are obviously for the chaperones and not the intended viewing audience.
The Child? She did great. She hoovered almost an entire bucket of popcorn and I don’t think there was any soda left and then afterwards she went to McDonalds 1without any adults that were not cousins so she had the time of her life today.
Me? I’m googling when the Spongebob movie comes out because it looks awesome, and maybe we can go when mommy’s not around and we can break all the rules.
Keep watching,
TH and Co.
And came home with a Zootopia 2 Toy of course.