I’m posting this quick note for anyone who has noticed that I’ve started publishing movie reviews and is wondering about an aspect of the theater experience that I don’t usually include in them.
Maybe nobody is wondering. Maybe I just want to explain it. Either way, here it is.
Regal and the other national theater chains are struggling. I do my part by seeing movies in theaters, and I sometimes buy concessions, which are an important source of revenue for them. They also run advertisements, and I generally support whatever reasonable measures help keep theaters open.
That doesn’t mean I enjoy watching commercials about plumbing, gutter cleaning and lawyers. I rent. Gutters are not among the things I have to worry about. Still, I understand why the commercials are there.
What I did not fully appreciate until I clocked it was just how long the preshow has become.
For my first viewing of Spider-Man: Brand New Day, I entered the auditorium at fifteen minutes past the hour. The movie did not begin until five minutes past the next hour. That was approximately fifty minutes of preshow material.
The second viewing had roughly forty-five minutes of padding, although I arrived late and personally sat through only about twenty minutes.
For my third viewing, I recorded the entire sequence:
- 5:50 p.m. — Seated; local and business commercials were already playing, including advertisements for gutter cleaning, lawyers and plumbing.
- 6:05 p.m. — Teasers and national advertising began, including Pepsi and Mountain Dew.
Then came the trailers:
- Godzilla Minus Zero
- Forgotten Island
- Fall 2
- The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping
- The Thomas Crown Affair
- Clayface
- A Samsung advertisement
- Klara and the Sun
- Jumanji 3
After that came Regal’s promotional material.
- 6:24 p.m. — The movie’s opening scroll finally began.
That was thirty-four minutes from the time I sat down until the movie started—and the local commercials were already running when I arrived.
If you are not determined to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day during its first couple of weeks, consider waiting for it to reach a second-run theater such as Wunderland Milwaukie Cinemas. You will probably get only a few movie trailers before the theater gets on with showing you the movie you actually came to see.