The desolation of popcorn: Event Cinemas are really screwing this up

Who wants to binge the Hobbit trilogy? Not me.

No swimming. No dumplings. No libraries. No hugs. No sharing food, seeing friends or wandering aimlessly around a stupid mall. No using your car, no personal space.

Want to buy anything at all ever? Get in the fucking queue.

Remember lockdown? How much did that suck?

To be honest, I was fine with most of that. There are parts of level four - like biking around barren streets, or spending hours every day bouncing on the trampoline with my kids - I even miss a little bit.

But there was one thing I dreamed about during those months of isolation, something I felt truly bereft about: the closure of every single movie theatre in New Zealand.

I’m not a massive movie nut. I don’t care that my nearest cinema is at West City, which perhaps offers the country’s crappest movie-going experience. I couldn’t bang on about the elegant cinematography of mid-career Werner Herzog. I don’t have a black-and-white French film in my top 10 movie list.

Give me popcorn, a choc-top, robots, and two hours of uninterrupted bliss in the dark and I’m about as happy as a grown man can be.

So it’s been achingly weird to watch Event Cinemas well and truly bungle its big comeback. Because bungle it they have.

The country’s biggest movie theatre chain hasn’t just dropped the ball, it’s forgotten how to even hold on to the damned thing.

First, Event took its sweet time re-opening the doors. Despite other indie cinemas finding easy ways to re-start during level two, Event waited for weeks to do so, even when we were in level one.

It has only just had its first full weekend back, yet in Auckland, multi-plexes on Queen Street and Broadway remain shut.

I’d love to tell you that Event had spent the two months it was shut planning an incredible array of movies to entice punters back, curating a line-up bursting with big, bold, bruising films that remind us what an incredibly immersive experience going to the movies can be.

It hasn’t. On Friday, I surveyed the nearest theatres to me thinking there’d be a vast array of options to choose from.

Those films included Sonic the Hedgehog, which holds a 47 per cent aggregate review rating on Metacritic, Jumanji: The Next Level (58 per cent), Bloodshot (44 per cent) and Trolls World Tour (51 per cent).

None of these movies make me want to return to cinemas. I’d struggle to press play if they were options on a long hall flight to Quebec, to be honest, and that isn’t happening any time soon.

But wait, it gets worse. It turns out Event did put some thought into its movie selections. It decided to include a trilogy, a full three films, for punters to sink their teeth into.

Did they choose The Godfather series? Or The Matrix? Indiana Jones? Star Wars? Back to the Future? Nope. Perhaps David Farrier put it best…

David Farrier @davidfarrier

the good news: cinemas in new zealand are open for business the bad news:

I get that times are tough. I understand the movie-making business is under huge strain, and the industry is at a standstill. I know studios won’t release brand new blockbusters like Christopher Nolan’s Tenet in New Zealand early even if we have all of our cinemas open. We’re a paltry little market at the bottom of the Pacific that doesn’t bring them a hell of a lot of money.

But no way am I going to pay to see The Desolation of Smaug again. I say no to the entire Hobbit trilogy. Come, on, put some thought into this. If you’re choosing from Peter Jackson’s back catalogue, how about a Bad Taste, Braindead and Meet the Feebles triple bill?

Come on, Event. You’ve got a chance to curate the shit out of this, bring back the classics, pull out the big guns, and remind us all why we need to go to the movies again. Because putting Bad Boys For Life (59 per cent) back on the big screen only tells us that you don’t really care.