Get Your Stinkin' Ads Off My Movie Start Time!

Recently, I was pointed in the direction of a fairly interesting read regarding movie-theater marketing tactics, and I thought I'd second and echo some of the sentiments of the article for you here. With the occasional exception, I hate commercials. I love movie trailers, which are basically commercials for movies. But I hate, hate, hate car commercials. I hate, hate, hate fast-food commercials. I hate commercials for shampoo, restaurants, home-building warehouses, and department stores. They just annoy me. Any commercial featuring a truck on rugged terrain that nobody would ever drive on gives me an instant migraine. Any public relations commercial with a shot of a family enjoying a day at the beach -- from a company known for putting deadly gases in the air and charging an arm-and-a-leg despite their record profits, though they are now using this commercial to brag about how oh-so "green and family-conscious" they are -- is like a 4x4 swinging full-force into my temple.

I get that on paper it's a great opportunity to sell. Moviegoers are just like fish in a barrel. All we have to do in our chairs is look in front of us. We're there anyway and we aren't going anywhere, save for the occasional bathroom and snack bar visit. And if the ads can be entertaining, maybe it isn't the worst way in the world to pass the time before the movie starts. Plus, there are a good number of people who actually like commercials, right? Otherwise the revolution would have already begun!

My problem with commercials at the movies mostly has to do with when they take place. We already have way too many stages of the movie theater experience. Five actually, and they're as follows:

The Slide Stage
This is old-school slide stuff, though today many theaters have gone slide-digital. Now these wonderful images come with flash animation and sound too! Yay!

The "Entertainment" Pre-Show
Regal, I think, started this trend with their infamous "The Twenty" -- usually a hodgepodge of advertisements and entertainment news. Typically, a new, upcoming TV show is introduced by a washed-up actor who's on his fifth, doomed sitcom. You know the drill.

The Commercials
The lights dim and you almost start to relax, excited to finally be seeing Chris Nolan's follow-up to Batman Begins. But, wait ... a Sprite commercial! Those bastards! Oh no ... a GM commercial. Wait, gotta have some Coca-Cola plug. Oh wait, wait, let's plug the concession stand too. Because I didn't catch that two-hundred-and-fifty-foot bar with spotlighted cherry Slushies, Reese's, Raisinettes, and Goobers, with enough color to shame Speed Racer, on the way in.

The Trailers
Finally, finally, it's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. Watchmen teaser. Harry Potter teaser. We're ten minutes after showtime and things are looking up!

The Feature Presentation
The movie chain's 15-minute logo mercifully ends and you're finally in the comfort of the movie's cradling arms.

Here's the thing: the stages don't bother me all that much. Except when stage three rears its ugly head into showtime time. If my movie starts at 3 p.m. that doesn't mean, Hey, it's time to start the show and plug some commercials! Look here, clowns, you had your chance to do all that. I sat through slideshow ads for local dentists, boutiques and plastic surgeons. Then I watched some idiot host your movie chain's own "pre-show" that I've already seen ten times this summer (it refuses to change!!!!!!). Not to mention that the pre-show not only has ads during the show, but also its very own commercial breaks!

Now it's 3 p.m. The lights have dimmed. I don't want a Dodge Charger commercial. I don't want to see a movie by some college kid who whored Coca-Cola into his student film. Not now that it's time to begin the movie. Again, I want to see that Watchmen teaser. I want to see the new Harry Potter tease. That's what I paid for.

The marketing juggernaut moves on though and perhaps we are powerless to stop it. Maybe it's taken on a life of its own, like SkyNet. And if that's true, maybe we'll have our own revolution if this business continues. Viva la resistance!

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