The OG Film Watching Experience Is Dying

Going out for a film with your loved ones-be it family or friends, has always been a precious activity, a ritual almost, which I'm sure most of us are acquainted with. If you , dear reader, belong to the Gen Z, then you surely must have heard countless tales narrated by your parents and grandparents about the entire buzz that surrounded the act of watching a film in cinemas.They would wait for hours in unending queues, merely to secure a ticket. Oftentimes, this wait would not yield the sweet fruit of securing a ticket, which thereby inevitably led to frustration and a sense of several hours lost. With the advent of the Internet and the digitization of nearly every sphere of our lives, laying hands on movie tickets has become an increasingly simple task. Convenience is indubitably an advantage, coupled with the benefit of being able to view all the upcoming films, which theatres they air in, and a colour- coded map that enables you to understand which seats are taken and which aren't, along with the added tip of which seats are best-suited for the 'perfect viewing experience'. Now you're probably thinking: "Girl, stop making a mountain out of a molehill. Don't act like you don't buy your tickets online!" Yes, yes I do. Who doesn't want to take the easy way out? But, I've started reflecting on this a lot, and maybe, some day, I will cease caving in to ways that were meant to alter my behaviour.

As a Psychology student and a curious individual, it is in my nature to delve into the why of things, and I believe it is especially important in this case. Have you ever wondered what the real reason for this massive shift was? Digitization yes, but there is a deeper reasoning underlying this.

Control has long been a weapon of those in power. During the times that our grandparents and parents inhabited, it was exerted by creating a sense of scarcity. Standing in queues that led to only a select number of counters, which in turn displayed a scanty number of show times was no doubt infuriating. The control now has shifted, in that it is now exerted through attention loops such as flurries of notifications, countdown timers and CTAs such as "tickets filling fast", "grab yours before they're gone", among others. These platforms rely heavily on frequent engagement, refreshing, scrolling and comparing. Creating this sense of urgency ensures that the user is hooked to only that app, instead of resorting to another. Control has therefore shifted from managing bodies in space to managing minds in time.

Collectivistic thinking and behavioural patterns were the norm a few decades earlier. The popularity and success of a film was frequently determined by the number of people one saw waiting in queue, which then guided their understanding of various aspects of the film. In an age where data can so easily be collated and displayed online for the world to view (and consequently, judge), the box office numbers largely influence an individual's decision to watch the movie. Decisions are now becoming purely individualistic, guided by ratings, algorithms and recommendations. Isolation enables an ease of behavioural steering.

What one must also understand is how these systems have aided in the shifting of blame from an authority figure to oneself. Earlier, a failure to procure movie tickets meant that the organizers, theatre staff and box office personnel would end up bearing the brunt. Now, one can only hold themselves accountable if they end up missing the chance to get their tickets. 

As I pen down my thoughts on this topic, I can't help but be transported back to the days when I so dedicatedly would flip through the newspaper, only to understand people's opinions on the latest films (which I would then read out to my parents to convince them to take me out every weekend for a movie). One particularly interesting section in a newspaper (Mumbai Mirror, if I recall correctly) was termed a migraine meter. It essentially replaced the usual system of reviewing a movie out of, say 5 stars, with migraine tablets. I was always so fascinated by that system (and well, I still do reminisce about it with a smile on my face)- imagine warning audiences about how bad, or rather intolerable a movie was- by prescribing a specific number of tablets to cure their migraine! An extremely well thought of (and hilarious) concept indeed!

My rationale behind writing this blog is not to demonize online ticketing platforms or to romanticise the physical queues of the past, but to become conscious of what we are trading in the name of convenience. What once demanded time, patience, and collective presence now demands attention, data, and decisiveness. The ritual of watching a film has been repackaged, streamlined, and subtly engineered to shape how we choose, how quickly we commit, and how often we comply. Awareness, then, becomes the only real act of agency left to us. And maybe, just maybe, reclaiming the joy of cinema begins not with rejecting technology altogether, but with pausing long enough to ask why the easiest choice is so rarely the most neutral one.

~Veenaaz