Get caught adding one to a long Christopher Nolan movie, and they may never be allowed to show one again. Given that, you’d think theater owners would simply insert intermissions on their own. “It’s really great hearing the lobby buzzing,” he says, and “experiencing a film together as a community.” Mark Anastasio, director of special programming at the Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, makes a point of mingling with the customers who’ve been happily interrupted midway through the classic films his theater screens. If we really want to keep indie venues alive, supporting their bottom lines in this way is the least we can do.īut ask those local theaters and they’ll tell you it’s also about the vibe. It’s well known in the industry that snack and beverage sales double when they screen old movies with intermissions. Our beloved local theaters want this, too, by the way. The time to supplement the moviegoing experience on this continent with common-sense updates audiences love is now. In India, it’s hard to find a blockbuster without one. The Alamo Drafthouse, an upscale theater due to open in the Seaport this year, will serve full meals directly to your seat. AMC this year introduced premium pricing for the best spots, a first. Theaters these days justify higher ticket costs by adding cozier and more luxurious seats, with recliner buttons and retractable footrests. Box office figures for the latest Avatar (three hours, 12 minutes) make it clear: we’re just fine buckling in for a three-hour-plus epic, so why would we balk at an extra handful of minutes? Just as directors have gotten comfortable with mega-long runtimes, so have viewers. Or parents picking the brains of their excited kids about what might happen next in The Little Mermaid (which, by the way, runs two hours and 15 minutes). First dates, instead of sitting in silence for hours, bonding over how great (or terrible!) the new Indiana Jones is so far. Think of the camaraderie we’re missing without them: Buddies gushing over the violent acrobatics in the early part of John Wick: Chapter 4 and anticipating more to come. Intermissions, as I learned that fateful night eight years ago, are a blast. Nature, after all, calls - does Hollywood really expect us to hold it for an entire evening of cinema? Would they prefer that a majority of viewers miss some significant plot detail to head to the loo? Have they considered our kidneys? Even the Fast and Furious franchise isn’t immune: Its latest installment, Fast X, runs two hours and 21 minutes. Oppenheimer clocks in at about three hours. The latest Mission: Impossible is two hours and 43 minutes long. Sadly, they are almost impossible to find these days, even when every big studio is churning out movies that run well beyond the two-hour mark. Because once you’ve seen a movie with an intermission, it’s hard to go back.
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