There’s an awesome new movie in theaters that you are just dying to see. These days, going to the movies is more of a mission. You pack all your friends in into one car and drive 15 minutes to the closest movie theater. But going to the movies has a lot of unforeseen conditions and circumstances. For example what kind of person you are determines when you leave the house. Are you the type of person that wants to see the previews or are you the type of person who wants to skip all the previews, and go straight to your feature presentation?
After figuring that out, you find your way to the ticket booth and tell the attendant which movie you’d like to see. Depending on how old you look and whether or not the movie is rated-R, they may ask for your I.D — which is cool when you’re 17, but not so cool when you’re 20. Afterwards the attendant looks at you and says, “That will be $12.50.” You look at them as you have a mini-heart attack over the ridiculous rise in ticket prices. You think back to when you were little and movies were only five dollars — ah, those were the days. After your slight outrage you pay the attendant, grab your ticket, and walk away wondering why you just spent so much money on a movie that has a fifty percent chance of being good. Think of all the burritos you could have bought with that money.
You walk into the theater and immediately smell butter-soaked popcorn coming from the concession stand. Then it hits you, did you remember to sneak food into the theater? If you did remember, congratulations, but if you didn’t the next five minutes can go one of two ways. You can stand in line and buy popcorn that will probably amount to $20, remember tickets are not the only things that have skyrocketed in price. Or you can walk straight to your select theatre number holding your breath at an attempt to resist the salty temptation.
After getting into the theater you and your friends try to look for a decent seat. Depending on when the movie came out or its hype, the theater can be completely full causing you to sit in the front —hopefully it’s not a horror film. Maybe the theater is completely empty which means laughing as loud as you want. After sitting down hopefully everybody remembers to silence their cell phones after seeing about four consecutive reminders on the screen. The movie starts and you feel yourself going deaf because of the supreme surround sound that envelops the room. Hopefully you didn’t bring that friend that talks nonstop during the movie —we all have them. And if you’re lucky you won’t have to pee during the movie because there’s always a terrible chance of missing an important scene. Hopefully, you are all wearing jackets because for some reason movie theaters are always negative eight degrees.
Finally the movie is over, and everyone walks out and either feels excited that you spent $12.50 on an astounding movie that you won’t stop talking about for weeks, or you walk out feeling disappointed you spent so much money on possibly the worst movie you’ve ever seen. But the real question is why do we still go to movies if there are so many things that could go wrong? Going to the movies is an adventure. Movies let us escape our responsibilities even it it’s only for two hours. Movies are exciting and allow us to discover new concepts and ideas. As a nation, I don’t think we’re ever going to stop going to the movies, but hopefully theaters don’t continue raising prices!
