 As I sat in the theater waiting for Ghostbusters Frozen Empire to start on a Thursday afternoon, alone, I couldn't help but think to myself, man, it was so fun years ago as a kid going to movies, being hyped up for films months in advance, getting my ticket for that midnight showing, but here I am now, a grown man with two kids who have zero interest to go to a free movie with their dad in the afternoon to a property that's been around for decades because they don't give a single crap about it no matter how hard I try to make them. Let's rant about kids these days and whether or not the movie industry can handle them or sustain itself as they grow older. Before I begin, if you like movie criticism, conversation, rants, roasts, and live streams, I post them every single week on the channel. I do movies here, it's in the name, it's all I do and I have a good time and I like to think I'm chatting with you as a regular friend, someone that we share a common goal which is to express our opinions on movies and hopefully we get a bunch of good ones every year that we can be excited about and share with each other. Alright, with that being said, I really wish my kids have that someday as well, but I fear because of all the tech and all the exciting things to look at 24-7 movies are just kind of been there, done that for them before they even were there or did that very much. Now I think in more of an exception to the rule because I have raised my kids on movies, I know I'm on a movie channel so you watching probably do the same, but a lot of regular folks out there that watch sports and do all sorts of other fun things that I really don't care to do, they don't put their kids in front of movies and watch them with them. That's like a thing that doesn't really happen anymore, at least not where they're fully engaged. They might be sitting on their phone or doing the dishes or something while their kids just they're alone for the most part and I find that kind of sad, but everybody has their own way of parenting and doing things. Regardless, my kids are getting older now. I have a 15-year old and I have an almost 12-year-old boy, a girl and a boy, and I raise them on like Goonies, Sandlot, Star Wars, pretty much everything I grew up with. We dip into older stuff as they got older, you know, my daughter actually loves the shiny and it's one of her favorite movies. One of my son's favorite movies is The Thing, so I think I'm doing a decent job as a parent because both those movies I think are freaking awesome and I didn't really push them into liking those. I just wanted them to see movies that are kind of classics and there's plenty more to show them over the years. That's for damn sure. A week or so back we watched 300. Now that Connor is getting a little older, I thought, all right, now's a fine time. Let's watch 300. It's still easily my favorite Zack Snyder movie, but we had a great time watching that film and it just brought me back to when I actually saw that in theaters and what a freaking amazing experience it was. I saw it with my wife. She was of course captivated by all the rippling strong alpha males. That was cool. That was fine, CGI abs and all, but I was just, I thought the story was great. I thought the way that Snyder presented the film was so different, so unique. It was such an experience that could only be really appreciated on the big screen. It was going to always lose a little bit of its luster at home and the same goes for a lot of films like even the recent Dune movies. Seeing that in the big screen theater, that's going to be just so much better than at home. Even if you have a home theater system, I just don't think it can match the sheer overwhelming scale of a big screen theater in IMAX with the great seats and with an awesome crowd. That is unmatched. Now, of course, my theater is not that great, but I can imagine it's even better for some other people out there. This hasn't really been a thing that I've thought about a lot until recently. When my kids were younger, I didn't expect them to get hyped up for films or to know when movies came out. They rely on the parent for that. So I would take them to the Kung Fu pandas and the How to Train Your Dragons and all those things. And they were great. Kids loved them and we would go home and we would watch something later on a weekend. We watched a movie or two and it was just a fun bonding experience. But now that they're getting older and they of course have other interests and they have their phones and they have video games and they have all sorts of streaming apps, they just don't really give a shit in the same way. My kids will obviously sit down and watch a movie and have a great time with it, but it's different now. They don't really seek them out like I think you and I probably do. I know I do. I like to search for movies. I like being excited about what's coming up, the pipe, even though a lot of it's pretty bad now. There's still good films being made and coming out. I'm excited for a couple. I guess it just kind of blows my mind that a new Ghostbusters film comes out. My kids have seen the previous entries and they don't have any real interest in going. They didn't ask me when it's hitting theaters. They haven't even really followed up about what I thought about the movie. They did see the trailer. They just don't really, really care at all. Indiana Jones was the same way. No interest in going to see that. There's just every movie I can think of actually outside of the Taylor Swift live concert for my daughter. They haven't had a single really fuck to give. And that's kind of a bummer, I guess. It's kind of a bummer because it's just different. You know, everything's different than it was when we grew up and watching that kind of unfold and play out is a sad reality, I guess, that you have to hit. Like back in my day, I used to bike to the theater and buy a ticket for $4.50 and a pop for $3 and now a soda I think is like $7 for a small at Regal. A small is $7 and they don't even have Coke products. So basically you're giving me poison. Well, you know, worse tasting poison than Coke. And I'm supposed to give you $7. Are you out of your fucking mind with this? This is insane. This highway robbery. It's just a different world. And I think movies and studios have really shot themselves in the foot when it comes to younger audiences because they have oversaturated the market. There isn't a day that goes by where there isn't 20 different new things available on Amazon Prime, Disney Plus, the Coq, Paramount Plus, Apple Plus, Bonus Plus, Minus Plus, Plus Plus, like everything's a freaking math equation. That's another thing. Kids don't like doing math for the most part. Stop putting freaking pluses after things or they're going to think they have to do some addition. There are a ton of factors into what's happening, but I do genuinely have some concerns about what's going to happen with the movie theater industry once these kids start to grow up. Because I don't think they give a shit about going out to the movies anymore. And I think some of the reason is there's no real reason for them to go out to the theaters anymore. It costs a ton of money. It's typically a pretty mediocre or miserable experience because the movies aren't very good. They're all rehashes of films I grew up with. My kids don't give a shit about Roadhouse. Remaking Roadhouse? That's for me, I guess, but none of us wanted it either. We liked Swayzee. Even though I didn't mind the new Roadhouse, I still was annoyed that they used the title when it really didn't have anything to do with the original or like Twisters. Or the fact that there are five Indiana Jones movies and four Ghostbusters movies, five if you count the reboot, it's just overkill and it's nostalgia. Beetlejuice 2 coming out, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice. My kids have seen Beetlejuice. They still don't care about another one. They're like, great, it was what? The 80s that came out? What would he do? It was a fine movie. We move on. I've been trying for several weeks now to get them to watch the new Mission Impossible movie because it's on Paramount. I've also been trying to get them to watch John Wick 4. My son and I did a marathon of the three of them within a week. We watched all of them and now he doesn't care anymore. He's like, there's another one, Dad. The last one was really long. If you think I'm too harsh on film, you should talk to a kid sometime. They will tell you exactly how they feel and man is it refreshing. That movie's trash. I don't have time for that. No, it's too long, blah, blah, blah. It's so fun to talk to them about some of these things. I thought for sure Connor was going to love 300. My daughter loved it, 10 out of 10 for her. My son gave it like a six and a half, seven. He's like, it was too long. I didn't like the bad guy and I didn't like that Leonidus died. Those were his critiques and I thought, they're all kind of fair. That's fine. They're all opinions at the end of the day. I wasn't expecting it, but fair enough. And I think that's the biggest thing for a lot of them now. If it's not a huge event like a Taylor Swift concert or something that you can kind of get on social media with, such as Barbie doing the barbenheimer thing, then they just don't really care that much because it's a time commitment to drive several minutes, maybe a half hour to the local theater, wait for the trailers for 20 minutes to end, watch a two hour, sometimes longer movie, and then go back home. You're talking about four hours of your day gone when they could have spent that time playing a video game while streaming a tutorial of some Minecraft crap by a funny kid on YouTube. There's just a lot of ways for them to occupy their time. They could be having a FaceTime with someone while they're playing around Fortnite and they have their computer up with it. Like, there's just so much multitasking and ADV shit they can do as well. And I know I'm not alone with this. I know there's kids all over that just are in the same boat. They don't know when movies come out. They're not really interested in seeing the movie in theaters. They might want to see it, but they can wait. They can wait. When it comes out, I'll see it. When you present it to me, not make me have to go find it. That's great. There's an overwhelming amount of shit out there to do and to see and be exposed to. So we are looking at things in a different way. Kids are seeing things in a different light than we did. We didn't have much. And we had way more than our previous predecessors. But when I grew up, it was, okay, we have a big movie coming out in a couple months. The original twister I remember was coming out around opener fishing. Every year around opener fishing, when I used to do that with my family, there would always be a big movie that would come out. And I didn't like fishing, but I loved the camaraderie with the friends, with the guys. And I liked going up north to a different environment, and we would always go to a movie after a couple days of fishing. We'd always celebrate with the film. And one year, I saw Mad Max Fury Road with the guys. One year, I saw one of the Spider-Man movies. I think it was Spider-Man 2. Another year, it was Volcano. Not good, but it was a spectacle. Twister. I mean, these are the movies you live for. You're excited about. And months ahead of time, I would get so freaking pumped up. Again, not for the fishing, but for that moment in time when I'm in the theater, ready to watch something blow me away. And I think that's another thing that kids just don't have anymore, because it's all been done to death. Watching a tornado rip through a house has been done. It's been done very well, as a matter of fact. So doing it again, not quite holding the same weight, even if the special effects might have been updated, or there's a little bit more, you know, 3D at play. It doesn't matter. It all still looks kind of the same. Watching a volcano erupt downtown LA. That's cool. That's different. Watching Spider-Man for the first time on the big screen go between building, saving people and webs. This was so amazing. And now it's so easy to do. Superheroes can fly and catch cars and blow shit up nonstop 24-7. And it's all become so incredibly mediocre. The oversaturation of it all. And it's not just superheroes. That's across the board with cinema. It's all so played out now. And I think younger generations already know it. And since the studio and the industry is catering to my generation, with these reboots and these nostalgic hash grabs and sequels and remakes, they're alienating the younger audience. And then what do they have for them? Well, they try to jump on their trends. This one features a gay person. There's trans people in this one. Is that getting you to come out? Because you're seeing an influencer on YouTube shouted out? Or is that maybe not enough? Spoiler, it's not enough. It's not enough. They're not that desperate to see it. This is a rant video. I don't have a solution. I don't have a proposition. I'm just telling you how I see it. It's anecdotal, I guess to an extent. But we are seeing the box office numbers drop a lot. And yes, a lot of it has to do with the amount of money they're pumping into these films. But I think it's also because they know in the back of their mind, they know that if they're not spending $200 to $300 million on these super bombastic larger than life films, people are not going to go see them in the theaters. Because Fast and the Furious 25 does not have a smart script. It does not have good acting. It has spectacle. But you've already blown up everything. So then you have to go to space and blow up more shit. Well, what's past space? The multiverse? Does Vin Diesel fight himself in the multiverse next? Probably. We'll see multiple versions of Paul Walker now. It's been a long day without you, my friend. Driving on the beach side, Tokyo drifting into our hearts all over again. But it's going to be superficial. No one's going to buy it. All right, that was a good rant, I think. Let me know your thoughts, though. Am I wrong? Are kids just as into movies now as they've ever been before? Or are you noticing it, too? Are you seeing it, too? That 15-year-old demographic not quite hitting the streets and hitting the theaters like they used to, they're sitting home on a Friday night, they're streaming something from the comfort of their own couch. You might see the parents drag their little ones out to the theater and I just pity them at the end of the day because, yeah, good luck. You've got a four-year-old kid who's already crying before she sits down. You're going to throw a popcorn in front of her and make her sit through an hour and 45-minute film? Not going to happen. It's going to be miserable for not only you but also me because I have to listen to your shitty kid. Okay, let me know your thoughts. Please like the video if you had a good time. 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