King Kong Sucked

Look, I'm not going to beat around the bush on this one: Kong sucked ass. It sucked way too long, and way too hard. I went in with low expectations because it was King Kong, a story I'd never really cared for. I figured with low expectations, the movie would easily surpass them. Wrong. No, it sucked.
Let me start from the beginning. Yesterday, my roommate asked if I was interested in seeing the midnight showing of Kong. Sure, why not. I had a free ticket due to a recent DVD purchase, so it wasn't really going to cost me anything. And I'm a midnight movie kind of guy, so I was alright with it.
So, we get there, get seats in a theater that ended up being only about half-full, and I proceeded to get popcorn and a drink. Now, I'm going to rant about the food a bit later, but let's continue with the story.
Previews come on and they're pretty so-so. X-Men 3 looked cool, yet another "Coach comes in and unites a team of players to get into the big game" movie is on the horizon with Josh Lucas starring this time around, and The Da Vinci Code's new trailer was shown (which, incidentally, caused me to do nothing more than groan).
Then the movie started. Naomi Watts is a vaudeville performer and she's kind of cute with it. Then Jack Black comes in. People in the audience found every fucking thing he did hilarious. I can't fucking stand the fucker. I've never liked him. Not in High Fidelity, not in School of Rock, I hate Tenacious D, I just hate the man. This movie did nothing to redeem him in my eyes. In fact, every frame of the movie with him in it gave me ADD; I started looking at everything but the screen while he was on it.
Kong showed up about an hour into the movie. Worthless. Later, at about 1:45, I was ready to claw my eyes out. At least the original had the decency to stop at the hour and a half mark.
The movie was three fucking hours long. It felt like six, but I was assured that it was only three.
Some people like to think that Peter Jackson is a directing god. The dwainker has always stated otherwise, and I've always known that he wasn't a god, but he was pretty damn good. I felt he deserved the Oscar for Return of the King because of the effort that went into not just that film, but the whole LotR trilogy. It was a whole long process that showed dedication, thought, and, well, balls. He made some mistakes, sure, but who hasn't? I mean, even Spielberg's record isn't perfect (from 1941 to War of the Worlds, he's slipped every now and then). So, Jackson could at least take on the story of Kong and make it look good, right?
No. There was so much soft focus in the damn movie that I'll be seeing blurs for the rest of the month. Naomi Watts looked cute and kinda sexy, but meh. The effects in the movie didn't really blend with the real stuff all that well, either.
There was also this sequence that was cut out of the original version, the spider pit. Several of the heroes fall down into this pit and are devoured by several different kinds of giant insects and spiders. It was completely, absolutely pointless. It only existed to gross out the audience, which it did. It didn't do anything for the plot except kill of characters who didn't need to die. Fucking worthless.
So, yeah, Kong sucked to me. Everyone will have a different take on the damn movie, that was mine. It sucked. It was worthless.
Now, here's my take on why movie theaters are going to go out of business sometime soon:
1. Prices are ridiculous. The tickets normally cost $8.50. Now, for twice that amount, you can buy the DVD when it comes out and watch it however many times you want. If you're on a date, you're going to pay that same amount anyway for two tickets, so you're not really losing anything.
2. Prices are ridiculous, part two. So, I bought popcorn and a drink. I looked at the prices and then saw they had a medium popcorn and medium drink combo. No price was listed for the combo, but I decided to go ahead and get it. It was $9.50, which, coincidentally, is the exact same price as ordering the same size popcorn and drink separately, so the combo had no value. About 50 minutes into the movie, I was out of popcorn and almost out of drink, so I decided to get a refill. The girl behind the counter said that they normally don't do refills on those sizes. Look, if I pay $9.50 for popcorn and a drink, how can they justify not refilling that at least once. Seriously, it's like 50 cents worth of stuff. The fuck? The girl went ahead and refilled it anyway since it was late and she really didn't care, but still, what the fuck? It wasn't posted anywhere, and the standard over the past several years has been free refills. They honestly can't justify that insane price anymore. Viva le revolution!
3. Prices are ridiculous, part three. This actually deals with movie making prices, which in turn affects ticket prices. Movies are made with insanely high budgets anymore, making it harder and harder for them to earn the money back. So, I watched The Island today, which also totally sucked ass. Here's the situation: The Island was made for roughly $122 million. Movie theaters have to pay a certain fee to show those movies. In order to recoup some of the money immediately, the studio charges some extra fee money. The cinema theater then raises its ticket prices regularly to cover those extra fees. So, some poor sap paid, what, $8 to see The Island and then ended up seeing a crappy movie. Then, because The Island only ended up making about $36 million dollars, the studio had to increase what it charged the theaters for their next movies to cover some of the losses it suffered from the crappy business of The Island. The theater then turns around and increases what it charges. Thus, the insane amount of money to make shitty movies affects everyone.
4. Stop with the damn special effects already. Look, stop making it so that you're constantly "pushing the envelope" with visual effects. They look nice, but I'm so damn tired of them. After Episode III, I really stopped giving a damn about visual effects. Make a damn film without using a damn computer sometime. Damn. I seriously hope that everyone out there comes around to the idea that a story and actual acting is more important than digital images, but I kind of doubt it. This is a problem affecting the entire film world, but probably isn't going to cause any theaters soon.
5. The home sound system has taken over, we don't have to do to a theater anymore to get "awesome" sound.
6. Other people in the theater are obnoxious, loud, and annoying. Here, at my place, I don't have to listen to people laugh at Jack Black's every move.
7. There are no new technologies on the horizon that will improve the theater experience. Theatre evolved when cinemas came about. Unfortunately, cinemas aren't evolving to react to DVDs and home theater systems.
So, yeah, those're my thoughts on the death of the cinema. Maybe it'll happen, maybe not.