There’s no greater feeling than sitting down at a movie theater for a movie you’ve been highly anticipating. But what happens if the viewing experience is disrupted by other watchers causing a scene for an internet trend?
Movie trends have gained more traction within these past few years, one of the common trends being dressing up in theme. When it comes to dressing up, there is usually a particular theme or color that is associated with the movie premiere.
Some examples are suits for “Minions: Rise of Gru” (2022) or pink and green for “Wicked” (2024). These are more easy to achieve and dress up for. Other themes take the more ‘creative’ and ‘excessive’ routes and dress in costumes, such as fans of “Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves” (2023) dressing as fantasy civilians or as their own DnD characters.
Recently, fans have dressed up as different versions of Hatsume Miku for the “Colorful Stage! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing” (2024) movie. These would be the more lighthearted trends and least chances of causing disturbance.
Darise Error, the Brookhaven Theatre director, when asked if the trend of dressing on theme causes a disturbance, said, “I don’t think dressing on theme is a problem. It’s kind of cool, actually. I was a “Rocky Horror Picture Show” kid in my youth, and you always go ‘dressed’ for that!”
Recently, another kind of movie trend that’s been going around was for “A Minecraft Movie” (2025), but not for the reasons many would suspect. Videos would circulate online of people causing disturbances during the “Chicken Jockey” scene; the theatre would be filled with screams, lights from phones and food being trashed and thrown. Some videos would even show people holding a live chicken among the chaos.
Angel Rios, an employee at a local Cinemark theater, said: “I think it was a little bit exaggerated. As far as how people acted, it was tame, but still too much for what the movie was”.
The movie became more of a meme than a piece of entertainment, viewers went to the theater for the memes instead of watching the movie. This was the most obnoxious of ways people would react. So much so that Jack Black himself, who played Steve in “A Minecraft Movie”, would show up to a random premiere to the movie and reassure fans to not throw popcorn or cause a ruckus.
Movie goers previously would cause mild disturbances, such as for the “Wicked” premiere, it came into conversation whether its appropriate to sing along to the musical. It’s always best to really check your surroundings.
While it may be fun to react certain ways when it comes to watching a movie, there are other people there that might be unaware of certain trends and just want to simply watch the movie. “Movie theater ‘dares’ – or ‘fun things to do in a movie’ – that are circulating online are juvenile and obnoxious.” Error said. “Others in attendance are not in on the ‘jokes’ and do not find them funny.”
Movie trends are fun – there was never a wrong in that, but there comes certain disciplinary consequences to prevent distractions or employees to be stuck behind, cleaning up a big mess because of a meme or joke the theater guests decided to egg on.
In the words of Error, “Watch the movie or leave.”
