Better Than Crabs

On Monday Jes and I went to the movies for the first time in a couple of months to check out Superman Returns. As we were using the quick ticket terminal thing (what are those things called?) we realized that the price seemed to have gone up per person. No big deal really as we’ve cut back on going to the movies but now there are quite a few out that we’d really like to see in theatre instead of renting (there is a difference in experience).

Anyway we made our way through and got to the concession part of the screen, we usually ordered the large popcorn and large pop and shared this as it was enough (and quite expensive). Lo and behold, they changed the price on this too and not only did the price go up but the sizes dropped down. So instead of the large we now had the regular size of both and for more. The concessions are where the theatres make their money and most people know this — I used to deliver goods to the theatre in town about 5 or 6 years ago and back then a 50 pd bag of popcorn kernels was $7 CDN and now they are selling a regular bag of popcorn and a pop for $9-$11 (I forget right now how much I actually paid for it) but the show and the “combo” brought me over $30 (tickets were $9.50 each). Okay no big deal. This is how they keep their theatre staffed. I then walked over to the actual concession and paid an extra $1.14 (after tax) to upsize my combo to the large size that we were used to. After the attendee person (whatever they are called) poured the popcorn in the bag I asked for butter,

“That’s an extra fifty six cents”
“Say what!”
“It’s fifty six cents for popcorn.”

Now what exactly is movie theatre popcorn without butter?

“Becel is free however”
“Okay I’ll take that”
But really, an extra fifty six cents for butter? How much butter do they put on the popcorn that it costs fifty six cents? I haven’t purchased butter at the store recently (okay I’ve never purchased butter) but I’m sure you can get a large stick of butter for probably $3 or so and how butter melts I’m pretty sure there’s more than let’s say 12 servings of butter in a stick (that’d be a $3 profit on the butter stick). Seeing as it’s a movie theatre the butter also comes in bulk, 50 pd boxes to be exact (yeah I delivered that too). I can’t remember what it cost but come on, you’re already making a huge killing on the kernels do you really need to charge for the butter? And who came up with the fifty six cent cost?

The MPAA wants to blame P2P file sharing for a loss of profits at the box office but how about the general public’s experience at these theatres? If this keeps going on I can see how nobody will be able to afford to go to the theatre whether the movies are worth going to see or not.

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