You will enjoy it: are we financially obliged to enjoy movies regardless of quality?

You will enjoy it: are we financially obliged to enjoy movies regardless of quality?

Jun 02

The average ticket price at the Australian box office is around $15. Seniors get tickets for $10, kids are around $13, students $15, and adults $17; 3D or other deluxe options skew all these prices a few dollars higher, super $10 Tuesdays skew them lower, but it all works out to be around $15 bucks.

If you see a movie once a month, on average, that’s $180 a year on tickets alone; that number doubles if you visit the Candy Bar or bring a stingy date, and happily triples if you’re buying for your kids as well. So sitting down in a darkened room full of strangers has become a financial investment in addition to being a social obligation (as well as a genuinely fun thing to do from time to time). Does forking out that much cash weigh on our expectations and reactions to movies?

Consider your wardrobe. I can just about guarantee that hidden in there somewhere is a shirt that no longer fits or a pair of shoes that gives you blisters. Why don’t you donate it to an op shop or chuck it in the rubbish bin? Because you spent good money on that shirt, dammit, and you’re going to get your money’s worth out of it (somehow).

Studies back this idea up; part of our psychology involves clinging to things we’ve spent time or money on, even if they’re no longer useful. The transaction still needs to be balanced in our heads, or else we’ll realise how much money we’ve wasted and feel silly (and probably a little depressed).

The same thing applies to the movies. You go to the movies, drop your $15 bucks on a ticket to the latest blockbuster, maybe buy some Malteasers or M&Ms (at double the supermarket price, of course), maybe grab a popcorn and Coke, if you’re feeling indulgent (rarely less than $10, even when purchased together), and before you know it you’ve spent over $30 (again, this could easily double if you’re on a date and expected to pay, or if you’re taking your family, etc.).

To justify dropping $30 you subconsciously expect – even demand – a positive movie-going experience. While the film’s rolling, you laugh at the one-liners, you cheer the action scenes, you endure the obligatory romance sequence, and you tell yourself you’re having a good time.

When the lights come up you chuck your half-finished popcorn and Coke in the bin, wander out, confer with your date / mate / movie buddy, and talk about the things you liked. You come to the conclusion that, between the popcorn, peanut M&Ms and pleasant company, it’s been a good night out; you got away from the kids, or you didn’t have to put up with your roommate playing Guitar Hero 5 at top volume in the adjacent room, or you got to spend time out from your strict parents.

Next time you’re at work (or school, or uni, or wherever) and someone asks you about the movie, you say it was “pretty good.” You might throw in a recommendation based on a famous actor, saying “well, you know, Brad Pitt’s Brad Pitt; he’s always good.”

And so your workmates get a positive impression of the flick. And you had a good time, didn’t you? The cinema was clean, the service was friendly, the volume was at just the right level, the popcorn was salted and oiled and the Coke was perfectly carbonated – and the movie was good. Wasn’t it? You spent $30 on it, so it must’ve been good.

How different would the movie-going experience be if money was axed from the equation? Professional film critics not only get to see movies for free, they get paid for their trouble. You’d expect the inverse to be true of critics, then: where you had to pay, and bullied yourself into enjoying the movie regardless, the critics were paid to sit through something against their will, and should have no fun at all. Right?

Not really, no. Film critics often like movies. Sometimes they even love them, and wax lyrical about them for paragraphs and paragraphs with no concern for the reader’s time or patience. Sure, they’re trying to put themselves in your shoes, to gauge whether or not you’d get your money’s worth, but to be fair, they’re being a lot more honest than you could be, because they’re not paying a blessed cent.

Besides acting as some kind of judicial body responsible for defining, criticising and praising the medium of film, critics are there to help you. If three new movies come out in a given week, and you’re not sure which one to see, you could take a wild gamble and pick the one with the best poster, or the one with that actor you really like, or the one that the ticket cashier recommends.

Or you could go and check out what the critics are saying. If two of the new movies are duds and the other is bona-fide blockbuster material, you have a right – and a financial responsibility – to know. Because the price of an adult ticket plus popcorn and Coke is $30, and you want the quality of the film itself to match the quality of the trappings of film – the auditorium, the sound, the picture, the popcorn, and the culture of film itself.

If you spend $30 on, for example, Transformers, and expect a lot of noise, you’ll get your $30 worth. But if you go and see Star Trek instead, and expect a lot of noise, you’ll not only get your $30 worth of that, but you’ll get another $30 worth of genuinely fun characters and expert plotting.

Value is subjective, but worth is a lot easier to define. That’s what critics are for. They take the dollars out of the equation and judge films against themselves and each other and nothing else. And in the end, they’re just trying to make sure your $200 – $400 p.a. investment pays off in escapism and emotional attachment.

Besides, I’ve seen Transformers – and it’s not worth thirty of your hard-earned dollars. It’s more of an “oh, it’s on TV so I’ll watch it till I fall asleep,” movie – that is to say, a movie you didn’t pay for.