A skilfully paced film depends on our staying interested during the dramatic trajectory towards a third act, and that could be fatally undermined in the case of some films. And most importantly of all, the pacing of the film would be at the mercy of this new format that brings momentum to a crashing halt. Others would simply be inconvenienced by the wait when they were just getting engrossed in the films. People would leave films half seen and criticise them online, only to find out later the film really gets going in the second half. Nevertheless, do people want this? Would it add to the ceremony of seeing a film with friends and family to have the pit stop of an intermission in the middle? Perhaps it would be novel if Black Panther: Wakanda Forever does this like the writer imagines, but the mild additional sense of occasion would soon wear off if it became a trend. But I think I can wait for an al fresco podcast session until the credits roll in the majority of cases. As for food, just stuff more M&Ms in your cheeks before heading in if you really can't go that long without more than the family-sized bag of Maltesers you're hiding from your partner.Īnd on the third point, that it can be beneficial to ponder what you've seen so far and chat about it with your companions, that's all very well if the film has given you something to talk about. On the first two arguments, I don't disagree that these extra bits of convenience would be nice, but at what cost to immersion? Any emergency bathroom breaks can be taken anyway, and you just have to make peace with the lottery of maybe-I-miss-something-important-maybe-I-don't -that's the cinemagoing experience. The article contends that it would be nice for people to have a rest break, buy some food if they want, and take time to digest the drama up to that point. Lastly we come to the most important point, which is how it affects the audience experience. I think the only film I ever saw with an intermission was Titanic, and given how profitable that was it would be surprising if subsequent movies hadn't followed suit if there was some untapped profits to be had from that exhibition model. If this was financially viable, you'd think that the entr'acte would have become commonplace for things like Avatar, The Lord of the Rings, Endgame etc. A film that's 150 mins long could go from being slotted into 4 runs on one screen down to 3, which is a big drop in returns across a week. Depending on length, you'd be down a showing per screen with all this surplus time added. The portions you get at the movies are super sized for a reason, and I'd have to see the economic projections we'd be looking at before I was an intermission believer on the basis of extra revenue.Īnd this is before we even talk about the lost screenings due to adding 15 mins to each showing. Yes, theatres desperately need us to buy their overpriced food, but what would the net gain be between 10-15min snack sales and the extra staffing needed to police people coming in and out of the screening room? In places with 15-20 screens, I think the level of coordination that normalising intermissions would require is more than cinemas want to deal with. And whilst it was well written, I'm not sure it was convincing. This was a more in depth and respectful overview of cinema exhibition history than I was expecting.
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