What Ever Happened to Movie Theatre Etiquette?

Note: This article acts as a companion piece to the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania Review located in this issue

While Quantumania proved to be another average Marvel movie, the events on the screen were not what captured my attention, it was the audience around me. This proved to be one of the worst theater experiences I have ever had with my fellow “film watchers” being utterly rude and disrespectful. In a mere two hours, I witnessed: a woman repeating every joke the film made very loudly, a group of middle schoolers running up and down the hall and growling at each other, random people suddenly entering and leaving the screening, someone constantly forcing themselves to burp, and people yelling at the screen in response to random moments in the film. For example, in one scene the characters are in prison and remark how many times they have been arrested; what was seemingly just another throwaway Marvel joke (seriously Marvel is just rehashing the same material) was met with a group of teenage boys screaming how many times they themselves had been to prison. In another instance, these same boys got up and started dancing in the halls while turning their phone flashlights on and off. Ultimately the best part of Quantumania was not any part of the movie, it was watching these teens and their entourage running out of the theater after being yelled at by my dad. While initially, this article started as a companion piece to the film review in this same issue, my experience in my small hometown theater has caused me to look at the state of cinema as a whole. Perhaps with the rise of streaming, theater etiquette has become another victim of innovation…or more likely I just ran into a group of young kids who had nothing better to do than act like fools. In a sense I can not blame them, I was once a bored high schooler who had nothing to do on the weekends, but then again I did not cause issues for those people who actually found something to do with their time on a quiet weekend. In conclusion, I would like to leave a message for my dear filmgoers and anyone who still holds the theater in high regard as the ultimate sight and sound utopia, if you go to the movies then shut your popcorn hole and watch the movie.