8 Simple Rules For Being Polite in a Movie Theater

 

There’s been an asinine debate raging in my specific corner of Twitter for the last few days about theater etiquette. In short one person argued that it should be fine to snap a discrete picture of something during a movie in a theater which prompted a pile-on from hardcore theater goers insisting that any phone use during a movie is a no-no. The original poster has dug in and created optimal scenarios where phone use should be ok, while everyone responding replies with hardcore “no phone” policies.

I don’t care to call out the specific people here, because, frankly, the original poster seems to be trolling, and the responders are clutching too many pearls. This got me thinking though about what “proper movie theater protocol” really is.

Ideally, everyone shows up to the theater and quietly submits to the quiet and darkness of the theater while enjoying the brightness and volume of the movie they paid to see. Personally, that is what I practice. I turn my phone off when the movie begins and I sit in silence. I’m not perfect though. For years, I did think that going to a movie with a friend meant I had to make side comments throughout. I stopped that after the first time someone called me out on that, but there were a lot of years when I no doubt annoyed some patrons. There are times when I’ve seen movies where I did need to leave my phone on and check it on occasion. I do feel comfortable that I was sufficiently discrete in my phone use, but maybe someone did notice. I’m certain I’m in the 99^th percentile of theater etiquette hard-liners and even I’m not perfect.

Not to mention there are distractions that we’ve all agreed are acceptable. Like, someone leaving to go to the bathroom is as distracting as a bright phone screen, but since ‘nature calls’, I’ve never complained about that. Or how about people showing up late? I don’t know their story; why they’re late? I’m not in favor of theater doors closing for good at a certain point. It shouldn’t be that stodgy of an experience. Movies are meant to be fun.

Given all this, I thought it would be a fun exercise to put down what I think are the rules of seeing a movie in a polite society. In no particular order…

1. If you are worried about something you are doing, follow that instinct. If you pause for a moment and wonder if you should do something, you probably shouldn’t. If something you are doing is really ok, then you probably wouldn’t think twice about it. So, if you worry that your phone screen is too bright or that you are talking too loudly, you probably are. It reminds me of a Mark Twain quote. “If you always tell the truth, you never have to remember anything.” Applied to the movie-going experience, if you are thinking about an action then it’s because you know you shouldn’t be doing it. Follow that instinct. If you are rushing to take that picture or to respond to that text, it’s because you realize you are breaking some unwritten rule.
2. Phones off, or at the very least, brightness dimmed. Theaters are dark. That’s by design. They want your eyes to be drawn to the screen. Ideally, the result is that you get lost in the movie and forget where you even are. That’s the magic of entertainment. In the same way that you respond to something happening on the screen, your eyes are immediately drawn to anything that changes in your eyeline. So, when someone pull their phone out, it’s very hard to ignore. I don’t know the science behind it. I just know that as soon as I see another screen, it gets my attention. Suddenly, paying attention to the movie screen means that I am actively picking a screen to pay attention to. So, instead of watching the movie because it’s the only option, I’m trying to watch the movie. To be hokey about it, it kills the magic. The person who decided to pull out their phone has decided that whatever is on the phone is more important to them. And, they’ve made that decision for anyone else who notices. It’s really not as simple as “well, just ignore it”. That’s not how eyesight works. People choose to see movies in a theater specifically to avoid those kinds of distractions.
   And you really can find ways to use your phone that won’t distract other people. Sit in the back row. Cover the screen in strategic ways. I guaranteed that hundreds of people have checked their phones during movies that’s I’ve never noticed. By definition, I’m not complaining about them, because I didn’t even notice them using their phones.
   
   --OK. I know I said I didn’t want to harp on the specific Twitter argument that prompted this, but I do think it’s an illustrative example. So, the initial poster’s core argument was that they liked to snap a picture of the title cards of movies with the brightness turned all the way down. Honestly, I don’t care if someone does that. That tends to be early enough that it doesn’t really hurt the experience. The angry responses to this are of the slippery slope variety though. Most purists adopt a hard-line rule on this, because any give opens everything up. If I say taking a picture of the title card with your dimness turned down it ok, then how is that so different for taking the picture with the brightness turned on? Or, while one person determines that the title card is fine, maybe another person thinks 5 minutes in or 10 minutes in or during the climax is fine. Everyone has different rules, and it’s pompous to assume that other people share your specific threshold. So, in a polite society, the move is it adopt the strictest policy. It’s why hecklers aren’t tolerated at comedy shows. It’s why people don’t talk during stage shows. It’s why you can’t bring your own drums to a concert. Yes, these are going to extreme examples, but if you are chafing at this, you’re telling on yourself. 
   The argument of the person in favor of using the phone in the Twitter argument was that taking the picture of the title card was their way of documenting something special. As someone who has collected 20+ years of movie stubs to a neurotic degree, I get that. To this, I say this. You have determined that title card is the special moment to you. You remember things best with pictures. How about the person that gets that same special moment from actually watching the title card? Now, isn’t their memory instead of the title card coming up and being distracted by the screen? What if when you were trying to take the picture, someone in front of you had the tradition of standing up and cheering during the title card? That moment is just as special to them and now they’ve ruined your picture, which is your special moment. I don’t want to keep saying slippery slope but…slippery slope.
3. Phone sound off and don’t take calls. It’s insane that I’d need to explain this. Only assholes still fight this one. We can all hear you and your phone. If you need to take a call, you are allowed to get up and take a call outside the theater. This is why the people arguing about rule #2 are so odd to me, because it’s the same thing. Light travels and sound travels. Sure, the movie is louder, but that doesn’t always drown out your chatting. A phone screen is not different.
4. Know your audience. This is where I give some to the laze faire types in a theater. Some audiences are just more casual than others. I don’t go into a 11am Pixar movie showing and get annoyed when young children are making a lot of noise. I don’t see a raucous comedy and get annoyed when the crowd erupts with laughter. But you better believe that anyone taking a call during The Zone of Interest is getting on my shit list.
5. Keep talking to a minimum. I feel like a hypocrite on this one because for the first 23 years of my life, I was pretty bad about this. While I am writing these rules, I don’t pretend to be perfect about following them. I just want to outline what I strive toward. Objectively, it’s safe to say that no one showed up to the movie to listen to me talk. I realize this now. I didn’t appreciate it for a long time. So, if you do intend to say something, pay attention to how loud you are.
6. Bathroom breaks. These are fine. Do your best to not make a show of it. People get what’s happening. You don’t need to say “excuse me” above a light whisper.
7. Eating snacks. Again, I have no real issue with this. My only note is that this isn’t your first time eating something out of a plastic wrapper. Choose your moments wisely.
8. Showing up late. The later you are, the more content with your circumstances you should be. Yelling the name or the person you are meeting or turning the light on your phone to see is fine during trailers. If you are showing up 20 minutes into the movie, find the first empty seat you can and sit in it. It’s not like you are going to catch up with your party until after the movie anyway.

Look. The fact that I’m writing this puts me in the “stick up my ass” group. The only purpose this serves is to make the people who agree with me happy and piss off the people who disagree and wasted their time to read this. More than anything, I want this to serve as a reference whenever someone questions why I’m “trying to ruin someone else’s good time” at a theater. None of my rules are hard to follow or understand. They are reasonable, even if they are intense. And they all really come down to that first rule. If you have to think about it, that’s your evidence that you shouldn’t be doing it. No one ever questioned if them sitting in a theater quietly was a problem. There’s a reason for that. The second that you decide that something you are doing is something people shouldn’t be allowed to be annoyed by, you open the door for anyone else’s interpretation of what’s polite. I have no desire to gatekeep. I love seeing movies. I want everyone to love seeing movies as much as I do. The main thing I want everyone to think about is how would you like it if you were sitting behind or beside you in the theater. Better yet, how would you feel if everyone was breaking the same rules you were?

Movie Reaction: The American Society of Magical Negroes

Formula: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind / The Legend of Baggar Vance

Satire in film is a funny thing. There’s a “bite the hand that feeds you” element to them which creates dual valid responses to them. Last year, Barbie was praised for being both too feminist and not feminist enough. It called about male dominated society enough to make some uncomfortable while also being a wave or two behind on current feminist literature. American Fiction also had to balance how accusatory vs. inviting it chose to be to audiences. The American Society of Magical Negroes (ASMN) is having a similar conversation as American Fiction. They aren’t very similar as films, but both do tackle the idea of the white response to black people. Being in the white male demographic (and one with an inflated enough opinion of my thoughts that I’m posting this as though anyone cares), I struggle with what to think of my reaction to these films. I loved ASMN. So, my first response is to pat myself on the back for being a white person who “gets it”. Then again, this is a film with a wide release by a major distributor. To reach that point, it has to be a sanitized version of its message. It’s a film that is made to be palatable in its messaging so that someone like me can laugh at the jokes and come away believing that I got the message. And, without getting ahead of myself, I’ll say that’s why the end of the movie really packed a punch.

Let me back up an summarize a bit. ASMN is a film about a 27-year-old African American failing artist named Aren (Justice Smith), who is recruited to, well, a magical society of black people tasked with ensuring white people remain comfortable enough to not go taking their frustrations out on black people. The commentary is on the nose and it knows it. Aren's first task is to restore the ego of a frustrated programmer, Jason (Drew Tarver). This eventually leads to Aren having to decide if he can let go of a co-worker he has fallen for, Lizzie (An-Li Bogan), since Jason likes her as well. Oh, and if Aren does decide to put himself first, he risks of of the American Society of Magical Negroes losing their powers and dooming all black Americans. 

Frankly, I loved the movie, because in the middle of all the satire is a pretty straightforward and delightful RomCom, which Smith and Bogan are perfectly equipped for. There are some decent jokes throughout the movie, but it's not as laugh out loud funny as even American Fiction. It's far more aiming for clever, which I found to be the better tone for it anyway. Aspects of the end felt more unresolved than I cared for. A bit like writer/director Kobi Libii felt the limits of the metaphor. David Alan Grier, as Aren's recruiter to the Society, does a great job selling the logic of the group. Taver and later Michaela Watkins and Rupert Friend maybe make it a little too easy for people to not see themselves in the performance. I certainly thought, "I'm not perfect, but I'm way better than Taver's character". The cleverness of the premise and Smith and Bogan's chemistry really make the whole thing work.

Verdict: Strongly Recommend

After the Credits (i.e. spoilers)

OK. The ending. It turns out Lizzie is part of her own magical society - SOSWAG (Society of Supportive Wives and Girlfriends). At first, I thought it was just a coy little joke, but the more I've thought about it, the more it alters my entire perception of the movie. I was personally so focused on Aren's racial struggles, that I hadn't really thought about how much Lizzie was an idealized love interest. This even opens the question of who her target was: Aren or Jason? That could change everything about the movie depending on the answer. I already really enjoyed the movie, that stinger at the end made me so excited to watch this again.  

 

 

Movie Reaction: Madame Web

Formula: Spider-Man (2002) - Spider-Man (the character)

The thing about Madame Web is that it's kind of fun. It's not successful at what it's doing. It has oodles or squandered potential. It makes baffling decisions that surely stemmed from Sony not understanding what the movie is. But, it's kind of fun. I hate using phrases like "so bad it's good", so I'll say that most movies that get as much wrong as it does are not nearly as watchable.

This movie is a prequel to a movie that will never be made in an extended universe that doesn't really exist. Dakota Johnson plays Cassie, a FDNY ambulance worker. She's an orphan who lost her mom in childbirth while hunting a rare spider in Peru. After a near-death experience, Cassie starts seeing visions of the future which leads her to saving three teens played by Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor from a many with superpowers who is trying to kill them. There's a whole reason and it actually ties to Cassie's mother 30 years ago. I'd get into the details, but that would pressure me into making an "intricate web" pun.

A lot of the reasons why this movie is getting so panned or mocked is how entirely unsubtle it is about everything. Cassie is a co-worker and friend of Ben Parker (Adam Scott) who is about to be an uncle. The movie is set in 2003, maybe 15 or 16 years before Captain America: Civil War. At one point a character references a connection between having power and responsibility. If you don't see all the things I'm hinting at, then congratulations tuning out the last 20 years of Marvel movies. Even the dialogue that does directly relate to a certain webslinger is so obvious that I can't tell if they were actively trying for camp in the movie.

It's interesting the movie is set in 2003, because it really would fit better had it been made in 2003. It's from that era of superhero movies. You know, the age when the X-Men weren't allowed to wear their traditional costumes because execs were afraid of scaring off all the normal people. The time when directors like Sam Rami and Ang Lee got to experiment with styles to literalize the comic book feel. Madame Web was made to be in theaters at the same time as Daredevil. Frankly, all of those movies had some groaner comic book references like Madame Web, but it was before 20 years of inundation to the point where even casual movie-goers can pick up on them. 

Had Madame Web leaned completely into that, it would've been great. Watching a movie that they made pretending it was 2003. The problem is, it's made by 2024 studio executives with 2024 intentions. So, Madame Web is made like a first installment. It prepares an audience for a lot of really cool things to come. It does this because every superhero movie has to be a launchpad for an extended universe. It used to be that a superhero movie was made as though they might not be able to make another. They'd get to all the best ideas right away. They are in costumes in a half hour. The marquee villain shows up. We get the big fight. Unfortunately, no one gets a costume in Madame Web except in visions of a cooler future. It takes half the movie for Cassie to begin to get a grasp on her powers. 

It's a shame, because you know what movie I'd really like to see? A movie where Dakota Johnson leads a team of Sydney Sweeney, Isabela Merced, and Celeste O'Connor doing badass superhero stuff, delivering cheesy one-liners and not worrying about how it might affect a Spider-Man shared cinematic universe that can't really exist in the MCU anyway for contractual reasons. 

I love the cast though and it's competently made. Like, I see where the budget went. I hope some people find a way to enjoy it. If nothing else, I hope films like this and Morbius (which is so clearly worse than Madame Web) convince Sony to just think one movie at a time with these.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend

Movie Reaction: Argylle

Formula: Kingsman: The Secret Service – Stranger Than Fiction

Circa 2015, Matthew Vaughn had a strong case as covertly once of my favorite directors. Not knowing he was the same director for all of them, I really liked Stardust, Kick-Ass, X-Men: First Class, and Kingsman: The Secret Service. They weren’t all even the same kind of movie except for his recurring genre subversion. Since he started revisiting the same ideas though, I’ve struggled to enjoy his movies much. Kingsman: The Golden Circle completely turned me off, like all his clever ideas on the spy movie topic were spent in the first Kingsman. Then The King’s Man, despite having a solid twist, felt like rehashing the same idea. Even still, the man pulls casts that I can’t turn down, which made me curious about Argylle. Despite not loving the last two Kingsman movies, my memory of all of them was of them being low aspiring, frenetic, and fun movies that don’t have a significant bar to clear in order to be good although hard to be great.

In that respect, Argylle is fine, I guess. He revisits the stylized spy genre again, this time with the story of a spy novelist (Bryce Dallas Howard) who finds herself in the middle of an actual spy story inspired by the events in her book. A real spy, Aidan (Sam Rockwell) saves her, reminiscent to Knight & Day. Others like Henry Cavill, John Cena, Ariana DeBose, Bryan Cranston, and even Dua Lipa show up along the way. If nothing else, Matthew Vaughn is excellent at gathering A-list talent.

The movie does deliver on the promise of comically over-the top action and a stylized world that simply can’t be real. Everyone is playing big characters. It’s a silly enough movie that it’s hard to get that worked up about it.

This is a hard movie to pull off. On a script level, it relies on establishing a very convoluted premise while still working in twists. It’s buckles under the challenge of it. The twists can be painfully obvious and the lengths the story has to go to get around them really hurt the pace and structure of the movie. It’s hard to get too deep into what I mean without spoiling some of the fun. Bryce Dallas Howard is a great example of the overall issue though. She has to play both a timid author and an action star at different points, and it’s never that clear how much of one or the other the movie needs her to be at many points. The end result is a performance that isn’t really able to work at either level.

Side Rant: I don’t know why this specifically bothered me so much, but for most of Howard’s biggest set pieces, they give her a blonde wig. I really disliked that. I’m not sure if it was the implication that she couldn’t be glamorous with her normal hair or just that it really didn’t look right on her.

Basically, Argylle could’ve been significantly more fun had it not been bogged down with so much plottiness and serving a twist that doesn’t really make it more interesting than revealing it right away. It’s a weird movie where my audience seemed receptive to it as we left the theater (I heard several “I liked that”s or “That was pretty good”s), yet some of the biggest moments – like one that features a cover of a Snow Patrol song – I couldn’t hear a single person laughing.  Watchable, but missing the manic magic that Vaughn captured in Kick-Ass or the first Kingsman movie. It’s a shame too, because much of the cast was perfectly suited for the idea of the movie, and this could’ve been a really fun use of Bryce Dallas Howard in a rare actual leading role.

Oh, and despite all of the marketing, don’t expect Dua Lipa in more than a decent sized cameo role.

Movie Reaction: Mean Girls (The Musical...but don't tell anyone)

Formula: Mean Girls + Music

 

I had a much longer version of this. Let me take it back to basics instead. You know Mean Girls: the 2004 comedy that established Lindsay Lohan as a teen queen, gave Rachel McAdams her first of two breakout roles that year, and proved that Tina Fey’s writing could work beyond SNL. It’s a great movie with a crazy deep cast. No one should read any further if you haven’t seen it.

 

The 2024 Mean Girls is an adaptation of the musical version that was a Broadway hit. I don’t have the time or energy to determine why the fact that the movie is a musical has been so hidden from the advertising. I will note that a whole-ass musical version of the 97-minute 2004 film is only 15 minutes longer.

 

In other words, 2024 Mean Girls is massively-stripped down on a story level to the point that I wonder how much one could follow it without knowledge of the original movie. It’s very important to note that this is a musical adaptation though and not a remake. It is very beholden to the specific jokes, scenes, and structure of the original. So, when they aren’t singing, expect exactly the movie you remember although with a different cast.

 

The main issue with this Mean Girls is that I didn’t love the music. And that’s a problem for a musical. Ideally, you’d want someone coming out of a musical asking “How’d they do the ‘Fearless’ number on the screen?” not “How’d they do the Halloween party scene?” Not perfect comparison, but for example, when people talk about “Wicked” they want to know about “Defying Gravity”, not the flying monkeys or yellow brick road.

 

I even think on an execution level, the movie is a success. The cast could prove to rival the original when we look back a decade from now. Angourie Rice (Cady), Renee Rapp (Regina), Auli’i Cravalho (Janis), Jaquel Spivey (Damian), Avantika (Karen), Bebe Wood (Gretchen). They’re all really good at recreating those characters. The choreography and design of the musical numbers do a pretty good job of leaving the stage. It’s just that I don’t like the songs as much as the parts of the original they had to remove to fit the songs in.

 

Finally, I will fully accept any accusations that I have nostalgia blinders for a movie that came out when I was 16, and that maybe this new version will speak to 16-year-olds now in the same way. I doubt it. But I acknowledge the possibility. But overall, Mean Girls: The Musical – Good but not as good.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend