Your national nightmare is over, moviegoers of America — at least, for now. AMC Theatres is proclaiming that texting will not allowed at their moviehouses in the foreseeable future.
In case you missed it and have been baffled by the endless gasping by your fussiest film geek pals, a massive sh*tstorm was conjured thanks to the chain’s new CEO Adam Aron suggesting that texting could make its way to their theaters. Why? Because younglings just can’t help themselves with that sort of thing. It’s a personal attack on par with limb severance, suggested Aron. Let’s go back to that infamous quote chunklet, shall we?
“When you tell a 22-year-old to turn off the phone, don’t ruin the movie, they hear please cut off your left arm above the elbow. You can’t tell a 22-year-old to turn off their cellphone. That’s not how they live their life.”
Naturally, that bit of musing triggered responses that ranged from “hmm… maybe I’d go to more movies for livetweeting” to “that’s a terrible idea” to “YOU HAVE MADE A POWERFUL ENEMY, AMC!” (There’s also the argument that texting isn’t going to revitalize theaters anyway, so let’s consider other factors.) Basically, it’s a subject that provoked intense reactions and screeds about millennials and the integrity of seeing London Has Fallen without some dip on their phone. Sure, loads of theaters can’t be bothered to actually enforce this rule anyway, but a switch was flicked regarding what’s expected of film etiquette in 2016.
The backlash was so fierce that AMC scrambled to clarify that it was an idea that they were merely considering in “test” form on a limited number of screens. Now we’ve reached the point where AMC has no released a statement saying texting is forbidden thanks to the pushback on the idea. Here’s a bit of what Aron had to say today on the issue.
During the past few days, you may have heard media reports about another idea AMC Theatres was considering, testing whether some moviegoers might want texting allowed in a small selection of our theatres. Unlike the many AMC advancements that you have applauded, we have heard loud and clear that this is a concept our audience does not want. In this age of social media, we get feedback from you almost instantaneously and as such, we are constantly listening. Accordingly, just as instantaneously, this is an idea that we have relegated to the cutting room floor.
With your advice in hand, there will be NO TEXTING ALLOWED in any of the auditoriums at AMC Theatres. Not today, not tomorrow and not in the foreseeable future.
Ooooh! He used caps! That seems pretty emphatic. The statement stresses that the discarded idea won’t be put into place in “the immediate future,” so that appears to leave the door open for it to return if attitudes change. Of course, if people want to text during a movie they tend to do it anyway. Heck, I was in a (non-AMC) screening of The Bronze and someone was playing Solitaire on their big-ass IBM Thinkpad, because moviegoing is a complicated beast. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes next.
(via the Hollywood Reporter)
