This is unacceptable.
See, I actually like going to the cinema. I like the focus it gives me, the way I can just forget myself and anything else, turn off my phone, tune out, and do nothing but absorb the film. It’s nowhere near as bad here as it is in the US, where going to the cinema might as well be open mic night; It’s legitimately a nice place to experience a film.
Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to the wildly complex nature of things, as I’m looking for reasons here why a film takes two months to propagate from one first world nation to another.
Is it localization? I literally don’t know a single human being over the age of 18 that doesn’t know enough English to converse, and if international TV piracy has shown us anything it’s that people tend to not give a flying frog about subtitles. Quite the opposite, I know Norwegians with greater command of the English language than native speakers. Subtitles here are kind of a nice thing for the intellectually handicapped; When a AAA animated feature is released here, we get simultaneous dubbed and native language versions (unsubbed). So this happens.
Is it the rating process? I understand the BBFC is a heinously complex beast to work around, but the film I’m interested in saw a simultaneous UK/US release, so my take-away from that is that if the studios give a shit they can make it happen.
It just baffles me that they have the gall to complain about piracy in the same breath as they ask a huge number of potential customers to wait for months, all the while pirates peddle copies of varying quality. At some point, once the publicity reaches a certain pitch, the question of quality versus satisfaction becomes very real.
I’m not condoning piracy. I’m saying I have money here, I’d like to give it to the industry, but they are actively making my customer’s experience unsatisfactory. They are making second-rate citizens of something like 50% or more of their consumers.
You’d think after enough time and punishment, these dudes would start putting 1 and 1 together and figure out the cause and the effect.
For shit’s sake Hollywood, understand your product has a profitable release window and put it to market.
