Teens struggling with the cost of entertainment.
By Tyler A.
Let me start by asking where did the good times go? What ever happened to the cheap entertainment enjoyed by youth in the later decades of the twentieth century? Recently, I decided to take my girlfriend out to see the Disney movie The Lion King, which had been re-released to theatres in 3D. I was astonished when I saw my total come to nearly thirty dollars.
Thirty dollars to watch a movie!
A brand new copy of the Lion King dvd sells for eighteen dollars on the media sales website amazon.com. For less than twenty dollars you could buy this movie, and have as many people over to watch it as you want. So where is all this extra cost coming from? Why is it more expensive for two people to go see a movie once, than it is to buy the film outright and be able to watch it as many times as I want? The ridiculous prices however, don’t stop there. My next stop on this adventure through my bank account, was the concession stand. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the concept of supply, demand, and pricing. All companies are looking to make profit and I think we can all respect that as a capitalist society.
But there is a line. Seven dollars for a bag of popcorn, and four dollars for a soda was my next shock. If I drove five minutes to the nearest convenience store, I could buy eight bags of popcorn and two full liters of soda for well under what I paid at Empire Theatres. However I almost feel like I shouldn’t be the one complaining about this. I can only imagine how the families of five feel every time they decide to visit their local theater. They would easily spend over one hundred dollars before they even reached the concession stand, it’s absolute madness.
We know that no company would ever have their prices so high for no reason, so where are these unexpected expenses coming from? Every year the North American film industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars on their anti piracy programs to try and halt the illegal distribution of their movies. Not only are these programs ultimately failing, according to BBC news’ website, they are also doing nothing to try and increase revenue. The film industry needs to realize that it is doing nothing but putting itself in a situation where, at the very best, their profit will remain the same forever.
Instead of funding so many anti-piracy programs, they need to start spending that money on improvements to their theaters, and lowering their prices. People love going to the movies, the big screen has been a weekend tradition in North America since as early as world war two, and we still love it. The reason piracy is on the rise, is not because people all of the sudden want to be criminals, it’s because they can no longer afford to watch the movies how they want to, on the big screen.
The film companies need to start giving us reasons to go back to the theatres. Continuing to exponentially raise their prices is not the right way to do it. We need to let them know that we still love the movies, but that we refuse to overpay for an experience that has been virtually unchanged since it’s birth in the early 1900’s.
We need to let it be known, as a community and a nation, that we want to be able to afford going to the movies again. Despite what the film industry thinks, raising prices to all time highs, is not the way to earn money in these harsh economic times. We go to the movies to be entertained, to laugh, to scream, or to cry. We are supposed to be able to leave our problems at the box office and enjoy a few hours of fun with our family and friends. It seems that this is no longer the case, it is time for the industry executives to give us back our Friday night tradition.
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