SACHA PFEIFFER, HOST:
Last year, I went to the theater to see the movie "It Ends With Us."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "IT ENDS WITH US")
JUSTIN BALDONI: (As Ryle Kincaid) I want to see you again.
BLAKE LIVELY: (As Lily Bloom) Now you see me.
BALDONI: (As Ryle Kincaid) You know what I mean.
PFEIFFER: It's about a toxic relationship. And I have mixed feelings about the movie, but the watching experience was terrible. A family of five was in the audience - two adults, three young children. And for the entire show, they talked, laughed, cried, yelled, played with toys, ate food, left the theater and came back a few times, and what most floored me was when one of the little kids began shining a flashlight at the movie screen. That experience made me vow never to see a movie in a theater again. Watching on my couch, even if just on a laptop, is easier, cheaper, quieter, pleasanter, and you can't beat the convenience. But I realize that seeing a movie on a big screen in a crowd of people is very different than Netflix at home. So for this week's movie conversation, I wanted to hear others make the case for why and when we should be going to actual movie theaters. I'm putting those questions to NPR's Marc Rivers, who produces these weekly conversations, and NPR chief film critic Bob Mondello. Hi to both of you.
BOB MONDELLO, BYLINE: Hey.
MARC RIVERS, BYLINE: Hey, Sacha.
PFEIFFER: I am not the only one, and we know this from stats, who is doing most of my movie watching at home. Streaming is so convenient. Many people have giant screens, home theaters, sound systems. Tickets are expensive. You don't have to sit in the theater and be annoyed when people's glowing phones come out and they're not paying attention to the screen. So I want to know what the two of you do now in terms of your movie watching - when you stay home, when you go. Do you still like the theater experience? Bob Mondello, this is your job.
RIVERS: This is what he does (ph).
MONDELLO: (Laughter) It is indeed. And on behalf of everybody in the movie profession, I want to apologize to you for the terrible experience you had.
RIVERS: I hope you reported that family.
MONDELLO: It sounds absolutely awful. I hope you went to an usher and said, this is not acceptable. I love seeing movies in a theater, and if I can possibly avoid watching them at home, I do. It just drives me crazy to watch things on - you describe it as a large screen. Mine is 55" which is, I guess, not bad for a television screen. But it doesn't compare to the tennis court-size screen that I watch things at a movie theater on. I love that experience, and demonstrably audiences do, too. I mean, I'm thinking of the moment - what was the last "Avengers" movie?
RIVERS: "Endgame" (ph).
MONDELLO: "Avengers: Endgame."
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "AVENGERS: ENDGAME")
CHRIS EVANS: (As Captain America) Avengers, assemble.
MONDELLO: All over the internet, right after that happened, you'd hear people had been filming inside the theater and showing the audience in the last scenes leaping to their feet and screaming at the top of their lungs.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED AUDIENCE: (Screaming).
MONDELLO: That was, like, everything you wanted from a movie, and it was the kind of thing that made me think, OK, this is still very much a live event - right? - that this is still exciting for audiences when it's like that.
PFEIFFER: And Marc, what about you?
RIVERS: (Inaudible.)
PFEIFFER: Because there's both the sort of cinematic special effects you want to see it in a big screen, but there's also the communal watching experience. So where do you fall?
RIVERS: Absolutely. I am all-in with Bob. I am all about the movie theater experience. I feel like these days, there are only a couple of things that we all experience together. There - you know, there are catastrophes, the bad things, and, I guess, the Super Bowl.
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: And one of the great things about 2023's Barbenheimer phenomenon - this is when the internet phenomenon that kind of turned Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" and Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" into this, like, must-see double bill - is that it was this great communal experience where we were all doing this fun thing together and - that wasn't just sports. And it felt like a throwback to a time when we all went to the movies, when the movie theater was just a common part of just the American experience, that you just - we went to the movies all the time. We talked about movies. We were excited about movies. We were all collectively experiencing this.
And I think when we're at home siloed off into our corners, into our bedrooms, you just don't get that. It's not the same. And I think what it comes down to also for me is, I know at home, I'm going to be distracted. I'm going to be on my phone or just thinking about certain chores. I can pause the movie, walk away, and a movie theater allows you to completely surrender yourself to the art.
PFEIFFER: Both of you may find this sacrilegious, but I recently watched "Titanic" on an airplane.
RIVERS: Ugh.
MONDELLO: Oh, I'm sorry. Wait.
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: So you didn't really watch "Titanic" is what that - is what you're saying.
PFEIFFER: Well, and this leads to my question, which is, can you each give an example of one movie where if someone watched it on a plane or on a little laptop, you think they thoroughly cheated themselves? Whether it's...
MONDELLO: Well, start with "Titanic."
(LAUGHTER)
RIVERS: Yeah, that is certainly...
MONDELLO: Good example.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "TITANIC")
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As Jack Dawson) I'm the king of the world - woohoo.
RIVERS: I can't imagine having first seen, say, the first "Lord Of The Rings" on a laptop or a tablet.
MONDELLO: Right.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING")
VIGGO MORTENSEN: (As Aragorn) You have my sword.
ORLANDO BLOOM: (As Legolas) And you have my bow.
JOHN RHYS-DAVIES: (As Gimli) And my axe.
RIVERS: That was a movie for me in my childhood that was - is foundational. I remember when Gandalf was doing the big, you know, you, you shall not...
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING")
IAN MCKELLEN: (As Gandalf, shouting) You shall not pass.
RIVERS: I had an out-of-body experience. I left my body, and I was just - I was in Middle Earth. And you're not going to get that at home. Another film I would have hated to have first seen on an airplane or on, like, an iPad is Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight" from 2008.
(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE DARK KNIGHT")
CHRISTIAN BALE: (As Bruce Wayne/Batman) You wanted me. Here I am.
HEATH LEDGER: (As Joker) I wanted to see what you'd do. And you didn't disappoint.
RIVERS: This had the kind of energy of, like - of a concert. There were Batmen running up and down the aisles before the movie started. They were playing the music from the speakers. But once the movie actually started, just hush just descended over everything.
MONDELLO: Wow.
RIVERS: And that first opening shot of the film, where you see the gleaming skyscrapers on that giant IMAX screen, the audience gasped. Just - it was like they had started falling into it. I would say even a small-budget movie is worth seeing on the big screen because, again, you just - you get to be immersed into it. But those movies where it feels like an event, you know, it won't feel the same if you're watching that in your living room.
PFEIFFER: Bob, could you give an example of one (ph) where you think the emotional connection with strangers around you is lost if you don't have people around you to experience what's on the screen?
MONDELLO: Sure. I did a station event with KUER in Salt Lake City, and they asked me what was my favorite movie. And every critic has to have an answer to that, so my answer is Buster Keaton's "The General"...
(SOUNDBITE OF CARL DAVIS' "THE GENERAL OPENING TITLES")
MONDELLO: ...Which is a silent film. And so, for a promotion, they took over a theater that was built in about the same year as Buster Keaton's "The General" opened and charged the same price as they did back then, which was 25 cents a ticket, and filled the place. So there was, like, 1,000 people in this wonderful old theater. And I got to see something that I have sort of dreamed about all my life but have never seen - because people used to talk about what it was like to sit in a theater where they were showing a silent film with an organist accompanying it - right? - and what the audience response was like. And the audience was gasping and was cheering and was doing all kinds of things.
And I thought, these people have never done this before, right? This is not something that anybody in this audience could possibly have seen in the 1920s. And yet, it was really exciting to see the audience fall into the rhythms that the filmmaker expected them to fall into. And I think, if I can articulate it that way, that's maybe what's wrong with watching it on a small screen, that the film wasn't designed to be seen that way.
PFEIFFER: The two of you are both in agreement. You're rhapsodizing about the theater experience. But the CEO of Netflix himself, Ted Sarandos, has said that the movie theater model is outdated - his word - and that movie makers need to somehow go where the consumer is. I'm not sure what that means to target them in their homes exactly, but...
MONDELLO: If I ran Netflix, I would say the same thing.
RIVERS: Yeah, yeah.
MONDELLO: But I don't believe that.
RIVERS: I think he believes that it is to Netflix's benefit that it becomes this updated model. I am of the kind of "Field Of Dreams" mindset, you know - if you build it, they will come - kind of thing. And if you make the movies that people want to see and you put them in the theater, people will go see it. You saw it this year with movies like Ryan Coogler's "Sinners," with Zach Cregger's "Weapons." And I think also it is a way for these films to kind of stick in the culture. I mean, if we care about the medium as something that's supposed to resonate and it's not just content, not just something you just dump onto a screen, then I think the movie theater is the place that upholds it in that way.
PFEIFFER: That's NPR's Marc Rivers and Bob Mondello making their passionate cases why we should still all be going to the theater. Thank you.
MONDELLO: Thank you.
RIVERS: Thanks, Sacha.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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