War of the Advertisers

So I went to see War of the Worlds yesterday. I went to a downtown Seattle theater, and I drove by it 5 mins late. I knew parking would be hard to find and so I mentioned to my brother who was with me, do you mind being late? We will miss the previews. He told me that was ok and so we found parking and were inside the theater 5 mins later.

So we walked into the theater 10 full minutes late. And guess what? They were still showing commercials! The previews hadn't even started yet! They went on for a full 5 mins after we were there. Where else are you forced to watch 15 full minutes of mind numbing commercials before you can see what you just paid $9 dollars to see?!?

War of the worlds was ok, I didn't notice any blatant advertising. I did however think that it followed the original movie too well. I mean seriously, If I was an advanced alien culture millions of years old, I would think I would know a few things about avoiding germs. I had hopes that instead of just being random germs that the US would develop a biological weapon to kill the aliens with. But overall the move was entertaining, and screen time commercial free.

I was however thinking while I was watching it that movie theaters haven’t changed much in the past years. THX was really cool 10 years ago. The greatest advance sense then was the lifting arm rests and stadium seating. So I now I think that there are two things the Hollywood needs to do to improve box office performance. 1) Stop adverting so much, 2) Develop a new wow factor for the theater, something that can't be done at home. Maybe 3-D movies, could you imagine the Matrix in 3-D?!? That would be cool.